I loved the first Powder Mage trilogy. It was everything that I wanted to read in a series, with strong characters, an extensive and deep world and a fascinating magic system. In fact it had four magic systems which all sort of did their own thing and had their own place.  The Powder Mage aspect, mages who could manipulate gunpowder or increase their own abilities with it, fit perfectly with the Napoleonic Wars era world. It was imaginative and I lapped it up.

I didn’t, however, like the second trilogy as much. Don’t get my wrong, they were still well written but in a lot of ways it also felt like a retread of the first trilogy and an addition to a story that had already ended. I enjoyed it and some of the new characters introduced were fantastic but at the same time I wish it had more. It seemed to lean on the first trilogy a bit too much and some of the characters from that trilogy turning up there felt unnecessary. Also I found the ending a bit unsatisfying.

So going into In the Shadow of Lightning I was a little cautious. But those fear were quickly washed away.

It’s rare that you can actually see an author improve quite so drastically. Brian McClellan’s writing has grown stronger and at the same time a lot more flexible. It looks like he’s taken some inspiration from Django Wexler and I mean that as the highest compliment. In just this first book he’s easily surpassed the Gods of Blood and Powder trilogy. It’s such an improvement that I could see new problems in the Powder Mage trilogy because he’d fixed them here.

Demir Grappo is a fantastic main character. He’s one of those genius generals/plotter characters but he’s broken by events in his past and is only just piecing himself back together. It makes for a flawed person who can do amazing things but is also plagued by self-doubt, which is a very nice balance. He’s joined by a great cast of characters, which brings me back to the problems I saw in the Powder Mage trilogy. That also had a great cast of characters but by the end some of them were feeling a little superfluous. This doesn’t seem like it will be the case for In the Shadow of Lightning. There’s still a lot of moving pieces and I obviously don’t know what will happen but everyone seems to have a solid goal, reason to be there and motivations. I can’t wait to see where they’ll end up.

On some level it does feel a little like a retread of ideas again. The same broad characters types are present here that were in the last two trilogies but the world and the way they’re used are so fresh and different that it doesn’t really matter. A glass based magic system that works really well is exactly what I’d expect from McClellan and it’s used in great ways. The world itself is, as usual, nicely realised and presented. Also there seems to be a lot more LGBT representation in this, which is nice.

I just can’t wait to read more of this. It’s fully restored whatever confidence I might have lost in McClellan as a writer and just made me really excited to see what comes next.