Genre: Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Mystery
Page Count: Kindle Edition, 576 pages
Rating: 4.5 Stars
Release date: June 21, 2022
Synopsis:
Magic is a finite resource—and it’s running out.
Demir Grappo is an outcast—he fled a life of wealth and power, abandoning his responsibilities as a general, a governor, and a son. Now he will live out his days as a grifter, rootless, and alone. But when his mother is brutally murdered, Demir must return from exile to claim his seat at the head of the family and uncover the truth that got her killed: the very power that keeps civilization turning, godglass, is running out.
Now, Demir must find allies, old friends and rivals alike, confront the powerful guild-families who are only interested in making the most of the scraps left at the table and uncover the invisible hand that threatens the Empire. A war is coming, a war unlike any other. And Demir and his ragtag group of outcasts are the only thing that stands in the way of the end of life as the world knows it.
Review:
Glassdamn! This was a fantastic read! As a Brian McClellan virgin, I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this first book in his new series, or from him as a writer in general, but the sci-fi / fantasy nerd in me was definitely not disappointed!
This bad boy took me about 5 days to read, which is much longer than I will typically allow any single book to take me under for, but the book hangover is real!!! I’m a sucker for intense worldbuilding, ragtag groups of underdogs, coinciding timelines, and a bit of romance. This book had all of these things in spades!
What I liked about the book:
1. The worldbuilding was so well thought out and fantastical. There are several ongoing, linked storylines going at once, but they are done so well you don’t get confused by the jumps between characters.
The Sacking of Holikan:
Growing up, Demir was a young, protégé politician in Ossa and was set to be the greatest commanding officer of their military of all time. He was both a decorated general and a glassdancer, making him both equally feared and respected.
Glassdancers – Besides having the gift of sorcerous power to manipulate common glass, glassdancers also have a psychological edge over others. People fear glassdancers because they can kill with a thought. Because of this, most glassdancers consider themselves above others. Fortunately for us, Demir isn’t quite this dickish. He has never gotten the appeal of this type of power and thus he doesn’t use it in a threatening way.
At the beginning of this book, Demir and his warriors have just declared victory over the city of Holikan, who had rebelled and declared independence from the Ossan Empire because the Empire always treated them like second-class citizens. Unfortunately for them, once the “Lightning Prince”, General Demir Grappo, came into the picture, their rebellion was squashed. Upon snuffing out the rebellion, the mayor of Holikan offered herself in surrender to Demir, asking him to leave her people out of it and just kill her.
“Tradition dictated that he accept the surrender and then pierce the mayor’s neck with the ceremonial weapon, executing her on the spot. She was a rebel, after all; an insurrectionist and traitor to the Ossan Empire…[but] Demir had no intention of following outdated traditions just to please the Assembly.”
Instead of following tradition, he spares her and brings the city of Holikan under his guild’s, the Grappo family’s, protection. Unfortunately, someone didn’t get the memo, and forged his order to sack the city of Holikan. Despite Demir trying to stop the sacking, once bloodlust is let free, it cannot be contained. Watching his soldiers decimate the city of Holikan, killing everyone from the elderly to infants, he has a mental breakdown, all while holding the dead body of a little girl.
Feeling as though he has failed by his name being used to sack the city (even though he gave no such order), he leaves his army and his political past behind him and becomes a drifter.
The Death of Adriana Grappo:
After nine years of drifting from town-to-town every six months, Demir is tracked down by his friend and prior colleague, Capric, with bad news that his mother was beaten to death in a very public murder by six masked figures.
His mother, Adriana Grappo, “was a reformer: one of the few Assembly members who dedicated their lives to helping the masses, rather than enriching themselves.” A trait that she definitely passed on to Demir, who cares more about others than himself a lot of the time. “Reformers in Ossa had a long and glorious tradition of dying publicly, killed by their peers for pushing societal reforms too strongly.” However, Capric does not believe she was killed for her reforms, since one of the killers was a Grent soldier, who says he was sent by the Duke of Grent but he doesn’t know why.
Grent is Ossa’s twin city, located a couple miles away. While Ossa is the head of the empire, Grent is a small but still powerful city-state that is independent of the larger nations around it. Grent and Ossa have a history of contention, but mostly over small disputes.
The Ossan Assembly (think of them as the 5-6 mob bosses of the families who effectively rule over Ossa) have voted for war against Grent because of the death of Adriana, as well as other meddlings done by the Duke of Grent. At this point in the story, they have already activated the Foreign Legion (read that as their super army) to invade Grent and declare war.
To add to all of this, Capric also tells Demir that his father, Father Vorcien (the highest-ranking Assembly member) has an offer: he is willing to take the Grappo on as a client guild-family. The Grappo would have the protection of the Vorcien patronage, they would pay off any debts of the Grappo’s, take care of the Grappo’s hotel, look after the clients of the Grappos, etc. All of this would effectively give Demir an out of having to return home after 9 years of drifting, which he desperately does want. However, slipping under their protection would end the Grappo guild-family and take away quite a bit of Demir’s freedom. Instead, Demir sucks it up and turns down the offer, deciding to go back home.
Home Sweet Home:
After returning home, he sees that the Cinders, the elite imperial guard who work for the Assembly, have confiscated all of his mother’s papers, notes, spy reports, etc. Through their family majordomo/Adriana’s secret lover, Breenen, he does receive one letter and a death journal from his mother.
In the letter, she proceeds to tell Demir of a partnership she had with Master Kastora, a siliceer for the Grent Royal Glassworks. Siliceers create all of the magical glass that glassdancers can use to increase strength, wit, speed, healing, and anything else you can think of. She tells him that he must go to the Master and continue the partnership she started with him, but he must trust no one, even Breenen.
While figuring out how to get to Master Kastora in the middle of the Ossa-Grent war, he also hires his childhood friend Kizzie Vorcien (yep, of the Vorcien guild) to track down his mother’s other 5 murderers. While he wants to know who killed her, he is more interested in why she was killed, and he believes Kizzie is the best for the job because of her “hard-earned reputation for being the only honest enforcer in Ossa. She is known to put personal integrity above her loyalty to the Vorcien guild, which should make her the most trustworthy to him.
The Apprentice and the Phoenix Channel:
Kastora is one of the best siliceers in the world, often working on secret projects for the Grent Duke, foreign clients, and even Ossan guild-families. His right-hand woman, and arguably the second greatest siliceer in the world, is a young woman named Thessa.
He decides to let Thessa in on a secret project of his: he has created a phoenix channel through his partnership with Adriana Grappo. A phoenix channel is a hypothetical mechanism used to turn energy into sorcery. In short, it could recharge spent pieces of godglass, allowing them to be reused indefinitely. Recharging godglass would become a whole new industry and help undercut the rising prices of cindersand. No one has ever made one that worked before Kastora.
But we just can’t have nice things. After learning of the phoenix channel Master Kastora has on site, they are attacked.
“If it is an attack, it means things are worse than I suspected. Ossa will want our cindersand, our research, even our siliceers. She [Adriana] warned me about this. I thought she was wrong. I thought we had more time. She told me that Ossa’s lust for cindersand was going to push it to war.”
In order to keep the phoenix channel from being stolen, Thessa has to break the phoenix channel, take the blueprint for it, and escape town trying to get to Adriana (who she doesn’t know is dead) to finish Master Kastora’s work in the event he doesn’t make it through the attack.
The Ram and the Master:
After things are squared away at home with Kizzie working on the murder mystery, Demir visits another friend, Idrian, aka “the Ram”, who he fought with before Holikan.
Idrian is a Breacher (basically a super soldier; “Breachers were little more than state-sponsored killing machines.”), who also has a personal investment in Master Kastora. When Idrian was younger, he had lost his eye from one of the beatings his abusive father dealt him. After all of the abuse he was dealt for years at the hands of his father, as well as all the deaths he had seen on the battlefield, he was suffering from major PTSD, which was leading to bouts of delusion. Master Kastora was able to create a fake eye for him that was imbued with sorcery to “keep the madness away”. However, as with all things imbued with magic, the sorcery is waning, and the eye is no longer working as effectively. Hoping that he can get Kastora to work on his eye, Idrian agrees to go with Demir.
When they arrive, they find Kastora on his deathbed as a result of the attacks. He tells them about his partnership with Adriana and the phoenix channel, that cindersand is running out causing all of those in the know to lose their glassdamned minds, that Thessa has the blueprint to rebuild the broken phoenix channel, and that they need to find her and work together to restore it.
“Without cindersand you couldn’t make godglass. Everything depended on godglass. What Kastora was intimating wasn’t just the loss of a lesser material, but of sorcery itself. Civilization would collapse just as surely as it would with the disappearance of gunpowder or printing presses or waterwheels.”
This is also confirmed via another source to Demir:
“All the major players are conducting a secret silic war. Nothing formal, mind you, but serious. They’re buying up cindersand, tripling their espionage efforts, even sabotage – though none of that can be proved. They’re trying to be the first to develop something, but what it is only silic masters and the guild-family heads know.”
So, there is essentially a space-race-style war between the guild-families to produce a phoenix channel.
At Kastora’s request, Demir and Idrian take the remains of the burnt phoenix channel prototype and declare they will find Thessa to build it again. Since Idrian’s sorcery in his eye is waning, and the man who created it is now dead, his only chance to get a new one/recharge this one is to help Demir. He offers any services he can now or in the future to get the phoenix channel working. And of course, he will prove himself helpful later on in the book when it comes to the phoenix channel, having to steal resources from behind enemy lines.
What’s next?!?:
With all this groundwork set up, Brian McClellan is able to just keep building on this. Some things to expect while reading:
• A secret society that is particularly closed off to outsiders, but is down with the Assembly…
• Devia Kerite, aka the Purnian Dragon. The greatest battlefield commander in the world
• 1 traitor…2 traitor…3 traitor…GORE!
• A return to the battlefield
• Back-to-the-Future-style lighting powers
• A priest of Horuthe, a prominent death god
• Cthulhu-style monsters!
2. With worldbuilding and interconnected timelines that intense, the characters also have to be solid. I love a good ragtag, underdog team story and this one had all the great elements of that.
• Demir – I love how he have no intention of following tradition or the thoughts of the Assembly, he just wants to make the best life possible for his people. That is a true leader!
“The greater guild-families had tried to push him around when he was a young politician. They hadn’t succeeded then because he could outthink them. They wouldn’t success now because he had proper steel in his spine.”
With that said, he is definitely a flawed hero. He is cocky and arrogant at times, as well as plagued by deep self-doubt and PTSD because of the events of Holikan. He has this constant thought of wanting to abandon ship again when the going gets tough. Fortunately, he sticks it out and ends up finding himself / finding clarity on the battlefield again. He gets rid of his crutch on glass, thinks up something masterful without the use of witglass, and joins his soldiers in the melee like the great leader we know he can be.
• Thessa – I love that she is so f*cking brilliant!!! She is the true master!
Not only does she do a bunch of sh*t that no other siliceers have been able to do, but SHE SAVES HIM! I love a good the-girl-saves-the-guy storyline.
I also love that she is kind to everyone she meets, but she is not weak.
“Do not mistake my compassion for weakness. If you whisper a word…you will have an accident. You might lose an eye, or a hand, or get locked in a furnace when no one can hear your screams. Test me, and you will lose bits of you. That’s a promise.” – Damn! Thessa is not playing around!
Like Demir, she is flawed for sure. She jumps to a lot of conclusions, especially with Demir, and she tends to not think things through fully. Both of these can get her in a lot of trouble if she isn’t careful…Also, what the hell is with the “I could be Lady Grappo”-sh*t? Girl, you haven’t even slept with him, tone it down a bit until you find out if every bit of him is magical.
• Kizzie – God, I f*cking love Kizzie. That’s what’s going to make my assumptions going into book 2 hurt so bad.
I love how much of a total fighter she is, metaphorically and physically. As the bastard Vorcien, she definitely gets dealt low blows that she constantly has to rise against. She hunts down weak links like Magnum PI, fights like Elektra, and solves riddles like Alan Turing. She is basically the older sister I always wanted.
• Idrian – I really love the harshness that Idrian and his viewpoint brings to the table. We see Idrian having to react mostly to battlefield and mental strategy situations, and the dude is FIT!…except the whole thing about hearing voices and whatnot…BUT OTHERWISE, HE IS FIT! He is the heart and soul of his warrior group, the Ironhorns, and a real key player throughout the book.
I’m so sad for him because of his abusive past and how he won’t allow himself to get close to anyone. I mean, I get it, but still….
“As was his habit, he would bury his feelings until the end of the conflict, at which time he would properly grieve.”– Awwww, boo!
However, I will say, as much as he tries to shut himself off from people, he can’t help but jump in wherever help is needed and put his life on the line in front of others.
I love his relationship with Braileer, his vastly underqualified armorer who he wants to fire for the first week he knows him. Once Braileer shows that he will not leave Idrian’s side, even in intense battle, Idrian knows that he will not dismiss him despite his greenness. Because of this, and despite Idrian’s tendency to shut himself off from people, they grow close. In fact, there comes a pivotal moment towards the end of the book where Idrian makes a personal sacrifice for Braileer. Let’s hope that one works out!
Also…ok…I’m just going to throw this out there. Idrian gives off major dom vibes which I’m totally ok with.
Basically,
• Baby Montego – aka Demir’s adopted brother / best friend. Aka Kizzie’s childhood sweetheart. Aka world cudgeling champion.
Cudgeling – the national sport of the Empire. “Two contestants in the arena wore powerful foregeglass earrings to make them stronger and faster, and then beat the shit out of each other with weighted sticks until one of them forfeited. Or died.”
Dude is a beast! There is no other word for him. He is a normal person who scares people more than a glassdancer, which is badass. I wish we had more of him, but I have hope for this going into book 2!
3. This book really has so many great lines.
“Madness and greatness are separated only by the degree of success.”– Fact
“He’s said a lot of good things about you.” “That’s because he has a very poor judgment of character.”– Self-doubt is a b*tch.
“Purpose – not just pursuit of wealth or fame or sex or revenge but real purpose – had been thrust upon him.”– Yay! I love when the hero finds his/her purpose!
“Your optimism is foolhardy.” “And your despair is pointless.”– Only a brother can throw this kind of shade at you and get away with it.
“Remember, Demir, you can’t conquer your enemies until you conquer yourself.”– I tell myself this every day.
“The more you know, the better you can plan. Primary plans, secondary plans, tertiary plans. Plans for failed plans. Plans for the failed plans of failed plans. Information is not just useful, it is everything.”– Oh geez, this hits way too close to home.
“Don’t die. I’m starting to like you.”– Dawwww, Idrian ❤
“You’re far too wise for your age.” “And you’re far too haunted for yours.”– Oh my god, age-gap romance! This is the start people!!!
“You are sending me to fail.” “Others would fail worse.”– Thanks for the vote of confidence, bro.
Why I knocked half a star off my rating:
1. This was super long. I should have known better when I saw that page count. It’s really not Brian’s fault. It’s not you, it’s me.
Assumptions going into book 2:
1. Baby Montego and Kizzie will get that tea date.
2. Thessa and Demir will definitely…(what’s the equivalent of Netflix and chill here?)…tempt fate and copulate? Eh, you get the gist.
3. Volos (hidden gem / reference for those who read the book!) actually is good and will probably die because of that.
4. I don’t think we’ve seen the last of Devia Kerite.
5. We definitely haven’t seen the worst of Papa Vorcien.
6. Please, Kizzie, don’t do it…I have minimal faith you won’t, but there is faith nonetheless.
7. I don’t think Braileer is going to play his fiddle anymore…
8. Idrian, I swear to god, I have a really bad feeling you are going to get hurt and it just might break me.
9. Godglass is the only glass a glassdancer cannot manipulate. So, that’s probably going to come back as a common theme for problems going forward.
10. That little girl Demir held in Holikan…yeah, I bet she’s Thessa’s little sister.
Special thank you to NetGalley, Macmillan-Tor/Forge, and Brian McClellan!
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