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Notes on the audiobook at the end.

There are so many interesting things in Promise of Blood and I give a lot of credit to McClellan for being able to blend sorcery and gunpowder. The Power Mages are mages who get a steroidal effect from the ingestion of gunpowder and can use magic to control bullets (nudge them a bit if their target moves, keep them flying for longer distances than should be possible, etc). It was a very interesting and unique concept that really drew me in from the beginning. But the Powder Mages aren't the only great thing in this novel.

The world-building was superb. The world has a very rich history that was revealed to us naturally, as opposed to an information dump. There are a lot of conflicts going on in this story - the oncoming war with Kez (a neighboring country), the internal conflicts of Adro, and the conflicts between characters - and I thought they were all weaved together elegantly.

The PoV characters include Tamas, the aged powder mage Field Marshall who leads the coup against his king; Taniel, a skilled powder mage and the estranged son of Tamas; and Adamat, a retired inspector. I thought the three stories were crafted and fit together well, especially because they were three very different PoV.

I also have to say that I admired McClellan's ability to make this book stand on it's own while still being part of a much larger trilogy. I often find when reading shorter series that the books don't stand well on their own - you finish one book and you're left with a disappointing feeling and far too many questions. There are definitely some ongoing conflicts, unanswered questions and a pretty major cliffhanger; but overall I was satisfied with the book on it's own.

Promise of Blood has a bit of everything in it - politics, mystery, fantasy, gods, religion, war, poverty, money, power, traitors, sorcery - but it all fits. I'm definitely looking forward to the next in the series which, unfortunately, will not be out until February.

Audiobook

The audiobook was narrated by Christian Rodska. It was pretty decent and I did love his Tamas, but I felt like Tamas and Adamat could have had more of a separation. I was also a bit weirded out by some of the accents. Most of the main characters have a British accent (some more 'proper' and others closer to the Cockney accent), but a few of them had accents which were closer to an Irish or Scottish accent. I'm not sure if that was a distinction intended by the author or if it was just a way to distinguish characters, but given that the characters in question were all from the same country, it seemed odd to me.