So I didn’t actually read Brian McClellan’s Promise of Blood, not all of it. About halfway into the book, I realized that I wasn’t actually enjoying it and was only continuing so I could find out what happened with some mysteries; so I decided that it’d be better to just read a plot summary. Then when I started reading the plot summary, I realized that I didn’t actually care enough to bother with even that—blah blah old gods blah blah ancient magics, enh whatever.
So anyway, the cover of this book tells you everything you need to know about it. There’s a grimdark dude sitting on a grimdark throne holding a grimdark gun… and heck, the title itself is basically grimdark. This is a book where bad things happen to people who mostly hate themselves and each other, and it just keeps getting worse and grimmer, and in the half a book I read, there was literally one time that a character smiled (or maybe they almost smiled, but the point is: one non-grim moment in half a book).
If you like grimdark books that are all about the struggles of white dudes (female characters are not treated well, and the one non-white person is a sidekick to a white dude, and she’s literally mute and uses exotic, mysterious magics to protect him—I’m given to understand that this gets better later in the series, though obviously can’t say firsthand) and probably some kind of ancient grimdark magic stuff, this might be more up your alley.
But I can’t recommend it.
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