And there is Nila, laundress for a duke's family when the coup hits and leaves her in charge of the five-year-old ducal/royal heir. Adamat is trying to keep his family safe while working for Tamas and dealing with thuggish creditors and malevolent lords.

His son Taniel, bodyguarded by a mute 'savage' girl of indeterminate age and mysterious magical powers, is trying to deal with the infidelity of his fiancee Vlora and with Tamas' seemingly cold use of him as an elite powder mage sniper.

Tamas is trying to solidify his hold on power in Adro in the face of royalist resistance, Kez spies, and a traitor on his council. Middle-aged Field Marshal Tamas and his fellow 'powder mages' have just staged a coup, assassinating the entire royal cabal of sorcerers so as to be able to execute the king and queen and most of the nobility, ostensibly because the king was about to sign an autonomy-ceding treaty with the Kez nation, and Tamas wants to hire Adamat to learn the meaning of a cryptic phrase uttered by the dying sorcerers: 'Don't break Kresimir's promise.' (According to the church, Kresimir is the god who summoned his nine sibling 'saints' to found the Nine nations before departing to explore the universe.) Thus begins a page-turning, bloody, and at times fresh dark epic fantasy in the vein of Steven Erikson (but with less wit and imagination). No modern educated man believes that sort of thing.Brian McClellan's Promise of Blood (2013), the first book in his heroic fantasy Powder Mage trilogy, begins with the summoning of middle-aged private eye Adamat to the royal palace in the city of Adopest (capitol of Adro). Just old peasant legends about the gods waking to walk the earth. Now, as attacks batter them from within and without, the credulous are whispering about omens of death and destruction. Stretched to his limit, Tamas is relying heavily on his few remaining powder mages, including the embittered Taniel, a brilliant marksman who also happens to be his estranged son, and Adamat, a retired police inspector whose loyalty is being tested by blackmail. But it also provoked war with the Nine Nations, internal attacks by royalist fanatics, and the greedy to scramble for money and power by Tamas’s supposed allies: the Church, workers unions, and mercenary forces. It’s a bloody business overthrowing a king…įield Marshal Tamas’ coup against his king sent corrupt aristocrats to the guillotine and brought bread to the starving.

Promise of blood by brian mcclellan