The bodyguards shooed them off as Demir and Capric approached, and they were soon inside, where Capric immediately pulled out a bottle of sherry and poured them each a glass on a fold-down side table. From Brian McClellan, author of The Powder Mage trilogy, comes the first novel in the Glass Immortals series, In the Shadow of Lightning, an epic fantasy where magic is a finite resource—and it’s running out. But then again, as I said, it felt like all the good things in this book never elevated to something more.

The author does a great job explaining things so that you can mentally draw a great picture of the events that are unfolding, and how this all takes place within the larger world.After his nation's army officers are assassinated, Demir is literally the only remaining person with military leadership experience left.

Demir pulled himself out of a spiral of suspicions and tried to focus on the calming hum of the skyglass in his ear.Es redudante decirlo, pero lo siguiente es obviamente mi opinión personal que puede coincidir por completo, parcialmente o en nada con la que pueda forjarse cualquier otro lector. Idrian’s chapters were my least favourite and the reason I rated the novel four stars instead of five. After his disgrace, he's not confident in his abilities to lead, so he recruits his old friends Kizzie and Baby Montego in his campaign of revenge. In the prologue, Demir led a successful military campaign, only to have a betrayer turn the tables on him and cause the campaign to end in disgrace. Still a fun read, and I'm hoping the next book takes it up to the level that I know this author is capable of.

The setting reminded me of a fusion of a gunpowder empire with the social dynamics of an early Roman city state- namely of a system of patronage between powerful families with client businesses/families. There is heavy political intrigue, and a fun unravelling of the mysteries that surround these concepts. Morlius whirled toward the rack of wine bottles, yelling wordlessly, reaching toward the bottles without touching them. So where Thessa explores the creation of the magical glass, the Ram uses the glass in battle to kill people. This is the first Brian McClellan book that I have read and I liked it but it had a pretty slow start after the prologue ended.By the time Overin fell to the ground beneath Slatina’s cudgel, weakly raising a hand to forfeit before she could administer a final blow, Demir knew that everyone had bought it: neither the judges, the audience, nor the bookies had any idea that the pair were well-paid for the inevitable conclusion. His racing heart and mind immediately began to slow, giving him time to take a deep breath and compose himself. I think that those that love reading about unique magical systems, political scheming, and battle scenes might enjoy this novel. Luckily, we started easing off the brakes again once we hit the second half, and with the introduction of some of the more, er, monstrous elements of the story, I found the last sections of the book really hard to put down. Unfortunately, though, the reality currently is that I have spent 14 days trying to read this book and failing.