Review: Montego by Brian McClellan

Review: Montego by Brian McClellanMontego: A Glass Immortals Novella by Brian McClellan
Format: ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon
Formats available: ebook
Genres: epic fantasy, fantasy, gaslamp, steampunk
Series: Glass Immortals #0.5
Pages: 121
Published by Brian McClellan on May 23, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKobo
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Twelve year-old Montego al'Bou is an orphan, a provincial peasant boy left alone by the recent death of his grandmother. Possessing nothing more than his grandmother's cudgel, he strikes out to the capital where the influential Grappo have offered to bring him up in the luxury of an Ossan guild-family. He finds his welcome frosty, his new home full of confusing responsibilities.

He quickly discovers that the greatest sin in the capital is to be born without money, and the classist elite will not hesitate to remind him of his humble origins. Montego dreams of being his own man, of making it in the cudgeling arenas of the Empire's deadly spectator sport where even a provincial can be worshipped like a god.  But skill isn't the only barrier for a wannabe cudgelist. Without allies, cunning, and a helping of daring, he can't hope to make it in the capital.

My Review:

I picked this up because In the Shadow of Lightning gave me one of those epic book hangovers that lingers LONG after the last page is turned. Lightning is the first book of the Glass Immortals series, so I know that there will be more books to scratch that particular itch – but that doesn’t mean there are even any clues as to when that will occur.

But in the meantime there’s Montego, a combination prequel novella and origin story for one of the primary characters in at least that first book in the series. Or so it seemed when I bought it a couple of weeks ago.

Instead of being merely the origin story for champion cudgelist ‘Baby’ Montego, this is the story of Montego’s first days in the city of Ossa, when this boy from the provinces first met both Demir Grappo and Kizzie Vorcien, and the three children – and they were still children no matter how mature both Demir and Kizzie were forced to act and had come to be – forged a friendship that has the possibility of carrying through for the rest of their days.

It’s the story of how three became one – before politics and time and vastly different stations and personal ambitions and other people’s political shenanigans and political corruption – and did I mention politics? – came between them.

So, on the one hand, we have a lovely story about a boy very much out of his depth, figuring out how he can become who he already knows he wants to be when he grows up – in spite of the many, many decks stacked against him. We’re with him, seeing his world from his very much outsider perspective, as he learns to stand up for himself and his friends and take the blows that life and politics (yes, that again) send his way.

And very much on that other hand, we have the story of a band of unshakeable allies, when they were young and still at least a bit innocent, coming together to take on all comers – before their world and all the enemies in it do their damndest to shake them apart.

Escape Rating A: I had the oddest reaction at the end of Montego. I teared up. Not because this story ends on a sad note, because it doesn’t. It ends on a note of triumph and hope. But I wanted to cry because I know what those hopes lead to, and there’s a lot of heartbreak ahead for Demir, Montego and Kizzie. They just don’t know it yet.

But those of us who have read In the Shadow of Lightning most certainly do.

Which leads to a bit of a dilemma. Because on my third hand, this is a prequel. It is possible to read this without having read Lightning and enjoy it as the story it is on its face. But in that fourth hand I’m holding behind my back, the one with the cudgel in it, what makes this story rise is that if you’ve already read Lightning you know that the fall is coming and it’s epic and bitter and tragic with only the barest hint of hope on the horizon.

So I fell into Montego hard, and was more than a bit choked up at the ending because I know what’s coming and I know that Montego, Demir and Kizzie do not. But I don’t know nearly enough and ‘Glassdamn’ as the characters in this world frequently curse, I can’t wait to find out.

Review: War Cry by Brian McClellan

Review: War Cry by Brian McClellanWar Cry by Brian McClellan
Format: ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: fantasy, military fantasy, military science fiction, science fiction
Pages: 96
Published by Tordotcom on August 28, 2018
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
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Brian McClellan, author of the acclaimed Powder Mage series, introduces a new universe, new armies, and new monsters in War Cry
Teado is a Changer, a shape-shifting military asset trained to win wars. His platoon has been stationed in the Bavares high plains for years, stranded. As they ration supplies and scan the airwaves for news, any news, their numbers dwindle. He's not sure how much time they have left.
Desperate and starving, armed with aging, faulting equipment, the team jumps at the chance for a risky resupply mission, even if it means not all of them might come. What they discover could change the course of the war.

My Review:

I picked this up because I adored the author’s In the Shadow of Lightning and was looking for something else by him but didn’t quite have the spoons to get started on his Powder Mage series. At least not yet. Nor does the sequel to In the Shadow of Lightning seem to be on the horizon. Although I just learned there’s a prequel (Montego) and I just picked it up. And, honestly, I was looking for something short.

Leading me to War Cry.

William T. Sherman is the American Civil War general famous for the rather pithy comment that “War is Hell”. War Cry is a story deep into just that kind of hell – and it’s a gut punch of a story.

The world of War Cry exists in that nether region between science fiction and fantasy, as well as the hellish netherworld of war. Teado and his clandestine unit have a battered airplane, an equally battered pilot, an illusion mage and a shapechanger. Teado is the shapechanger.

Their tiny little unit is nearly out of everything, food, supplies, ammunition, and most especially, hope. They started out being near the front but the front has swept by them and now they are behind enemy lines and waging a guerrilla war from the shadows.

They’re listening to enemy propaganda while they are on watch, each wondering which of the others is going to be the first to break and run for the enemy-offered amnesty. Or whether they will be the first one to give up and just go.

But the powers that be haven’t forgotten them – nor have they quite let go of a hope of peace.

Which is where Teado, his unit, and this story come in. They have a crazy chance of striking a blow against the enemy’s new forward base and stealing an entire cargo plane full of desperately needed supplies.

If they are successful, there might be a chance at the peace talks to actually get a little. If they fail, at least their own war will be over.

Unless they are all just part of something much, much bigger and way, way, way above all their pay grades.

Escape Rating B: What made this work is that it isn’t about building up one side as the “good guys” and the other as the “bad guys”. We don’t really get much of a sense of what the two sides are fighting over beyond the obvious motivations of resources and territory.

It’s never all that clear that the two sides are truly all that different, or that one is all that much better or worse than the other.

This turns out to be a story that embodies, not just Sherman’s “War is Hell” quote, but more especially a less often seen quote from G.K. Chesterton that goes, “The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.” Or in the case of Teado and his company, because he loves what is beside him.

Teado is fighting, not for himself, but for his friends and comrades. And so are they. Which is what makes this story cut deep, as the powers that be only see the big picture and which pawns they need to move to change that picture.

Where Teado sees, and we experience through him, the real cost of those pawns being moved.

Review: In the Shadow of Lightning by Brian McClellan

Review: In the Shadow of Lightning by Brian McClellanIn the Shadow of Lightning (Glass Immortals, #1) by Brian McClellan
Narrator: Damian Lynch
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: purchased from Audible, supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: epic fantasy, fantasy, steampunk
Series: Glass Immortals #1
Pages: 576
Length: 24 hours and 53 minutes
Published by Macmillan Audio, Tor Books on June 21, 2022
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
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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.
"Excellent worldbuilding and a truly epic narrative combine into Brian's finest work to date. Heartily recommended to anyone who wants a new favorite fantasy series to read."—Brandon Sanderson

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.
"Powerful rival families, murderous conspiracies, epic battles, larger-than-life characters, and magic."—Fonda Lee, author of The Green Bone Saga
"Engaging, fast-paced and epic."—James Islington, author of In The Shadow of What Was Lost
"Clever, fun, and by turns beautifully bloody, In the Shadow of Lightning hits like a bolt through a stained glass window."—Megan E. O'Keefe, author of Chaos Vector

My Review:

As the story opens, Demir Grappo is Icarus, and we see him in the moment of his spectacular fall. A cocky young genius both in politics and on the battlefield, we catch him just at the moment when he learns that someone has decided that he has flown too close to the sun – and that it is time to clip his wings. Or burn them.

It’s a broken man who slinks away from that battlefield, covered in disgrace where there should have been glory. To say that Demir plans to hide in the lowest and meanest places he can find is a bit of an overstatement. We’d call it a psychotic break. He just runs away from his shame and his responsibilities.

Nine years later the young man is a bit older, even sadder, and doesn’t see himself as any wiser at all. He is doing a better job of getting through the days, but he has no plans, no hopes, no dreams beyond doing that for another day.

Until an old friend finds him in the back of beyond, to tell Demir that has mother Adriana Grappo, the Matriarch of the Grappo guild family, has been assassinated. And that Demir is now Patriarch, if he is willing to take up the mantle, the reins, and the responsibility he left behind.

He’ll go home to protect his guild family and hunt down his mother’s killers. Even on his worst day – and he’s had plenty of them in the intervening years – he’d be able to smell the stink of a coverup no matter how far away he was from the seething cesspit of politics and corruption that is the capital of the Ossan Empire.

Demir is willing to tear the Empire down to get the truth. Little does he know that the plot he plans to uncover will require him to save it – whether it deserves it or not.

Escape Rating A+: “Glassdamn.” It rolls easily through the mind, or trippingly off the tongue, as though it’s an epithet that we’ve always used – or at least could have if we’d had a mind to. And glassdamnit but this is a terrific story.

It’s “glassdamn” because the scientific sorcery that powers the story and the world it explores is based on the use of specifically tuned, resonating glass to provide its power. While there are multiple religions in the world none of the deities or pantheons rule much of anything. Glass is king, queen and knave and everyone swears by it and at it and about it all day long.

Glassdamn, indeed.

The title is a bit of a pun. Our protagonist, if not necessarily or always our hero, Demir Grappo, spends the entire story living in the shadow of the political and glass dancer prodigy “The Lightning Prince” – his own former self, the self that he has been running from for all these years. Demir and the man he once was are going to have to come to some kind of resolution if he is going to have even half a chance at fixing everything that’s wrong with Ossa, with his guild family, with sorcery and especially with himself. It’s difficult to tell which will be the hardest job.

The story is told from several perspectives, so that the reader is able to see what’s happening over the vast sprawling canvas that is this first book in a protected trilogy. While we follow Demir, we also have a chance to see the Ossan empire from other points of view, including the childhood friends he brings back to the capital to help him in both his quest and his more mundane work, the master craftswoman he partners with in order to carry out his mother’s last request, and his uncle Tadeus, an officer in Ossa’s much vaunted Foreign Legion, an army that takes nearly as big a fall as Demir once did.

They may rise together – or they may discover that the game is beyond them all. It’s a question that is not yet answered when the story concludes. Which is utterly fitting for the first book in a trilogy. I just wish I had an inkling of when the second book is going to be available, because this is a story that left me with a terrible book hangover. I can’t wait to go back.

One of the things that both sucked me in and drove me crazy about In the Shadow of Lightning, but which also explains why I liked it so glassdamn much, is the sheer number of recent stories it reminded me of, as well as one long-loved classic and, surprisingly, a videogame.

Throwing Age of Ash by Daniel Abraham, Engines of Empire by R.S. Ford, and Isolate by L.E. Modesitt, Jr. into an industrial-strength book blender will get you close to the feel of In the Shadow of Lightning. All are stories of empires that have already rotted from the head down. All have ‘magic’ that is treated scientifically, to the point where their worlds are all much closer to steampunk than to epic fantasy – which doesn’t stop all of them from BEING epic fantasy anyway. None of them are about classic contests between ‘good’ and ‘evil’; instead all are about people attempting to turn back the tide of the type of evil that results from power corrupting. These series starters are not exactly like each other, but they all ‘feel’ very similar and if you like one you’ll probably get equally immersed in one of the others.

The individual character of Demir Grappo, that mercurial broken genius, appearing as antihero considerably more often than hero, trying to save as much as he can and willing to sacrifice whatever it takes into the bargain, recalled a character from a much different time and place, but whose story was still conducted over a sprawling canvas. If you’ve ever read the Lymond Chronicles (start with The Game of Kings) by Dorothy Dunnett, Demir is very much in Lymond’s mold – and it was a bit heartbreaking to watch Demir making entirely too many of the same mistakes and sacrifices. I’m also wondering if he’s going to face some of Lymond’s desperate compromises and am trepidatiously looking forward to finding out.

And for anyone who has played the Dragon Age series of videogames, the corrupt guild family political power brokering – as well as the open use of assassination as a political tool – bears a surprisingly sharp resemblance to the Antivan Crows. I half expected someone to leave a message that “the Crows send their regards,” because they most certainly would, with respect upfront and a knife in the back.

The audio made that last bit even more evocative because the narrator did one hell of a job with all the accents. He also told a damn good story, giving the feeling that we were in each character’s head when it was their turn “on stage”, and making each and every voice distinct. AND he managed to put me so completely inside both Demir’s and Tessa’s heads that I would have to stop for a few minutes because I could tell that whatever was coming next was going to be awful, and I cared so much that I almost couldn’t bear to experience it so closely with them.

So, if you enjoy big sprawling epics, whether fantasy or SF, In the Shadow of Lightning is just the kind of world-spanning, world-shattering, monsterful and wonderful binge read just waiting to happen!

I can’t wait for that glassdamned second book in the trilogy. I really, really can’t.