Posted by Man did I love this book omg!
This book is a flint lock military fantasy – flintlock meaning guns involved! If you liked Promise of Blood by McClellan I think this series would really appeal to you.
This book had two main POV’s with a few more limited POV’s scattered throughout the book. Winter is a female lead in the army and she’s not supposed to be there, she’s under a disguise as a man making her way through the lower ranks of the army as a basic grunt at first. Sometimes this theme can really fall flat, or it can be over done, or it can be cheesy/unbelievable but this book pulled it off so well I couldn’t get enough of her. Through unforeseen circumstances she’s placed in a higher rank in the military and now she’s in charge of men rather than the one taking the orders. She has to figure out how she’s going to function being thrown into a position she’s not ready to handle.
Marcus is the other main POV and he acts older than he is, when I first read this book I thought he was going to qualify for the r/fantasy bingo challenge for “I’m Getting Too Old For This Crap” because he feels like he’s in his 40’s or 50’s. He’s very mature, together, and a compete leader. There’s something so endearing about him, and often times in the book he’s referred to as having a Knights morals. I’m always drawn to those sorts of characters, so long as they don’t turn into do-no-wrong-can’t-make-mistakes sorts of characters, and this guy has plenty of challenges and flaws. He’s almost like a younger more flawed version of Dalinar Kholin from The Way of Kings/Words of Radiance by Brandon Sanderson.
I was grabbed from the beginning by this creepy as fuck introduction to a character known as Mother. I’m always down for weird, creepy, and powerful magic villians.
Magic in this world isn’t rigidly structured, but it’s not completely mysterious either, we get hints about how it works and certain boundaries and guidelines magic follows.
This books tone is hard to describe… it’s not light and funny but it’s not without it’s humor at points. It’s not overly dark and morose, but there’s a fair amount of killing and warfare. It has cursing, violence, mild sex scenes and lots of action.
I gave this book a 5/5 stars and I enjoyed myself the whole way through the book. I absolutely recommend it to people who are fans of military fantasy it’s full of tactics and warfare strategy, cannons, rifles, and battles.