She is also one of Demir’s childhood friends. Kizzie is an Enforcer, and a bastard from one of the most powerful-guild families in the empire. In addition to Demir, In the Shadow of Lightning gives us three other POV character through which to explore the complex world of Glass Immortals: Kizzie, Idrian, and Thessa.
“And so that turned into, ‘OK, this would be an industry, like a major industry in the world.’ And then that extrapolates to, ‘How does it affect the economy? How does it affect the wars? How does it affect individuals?’ And then, from there, it started snowballing into the world and the characters and how everything would interact.” “We landed on these little glass baubles that enhance people, depending on the impurities in the sand that they’re made with,” explains McClellan. McClellan’s thorough exploration of this industrial magic system is one of the strongest elements of the epic story, as the author follows questions about how such a resource would impact a society’s various systems. That doesn’t really quite work with my style.’” And I’m like, ‘Oh, that’s kind of like Pokemon.
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“There was a point at which I was trying to figure out how to work out like demon summoning that you would trap in glass balls. “I went through lots of different iterations of how to use glass in a magic system,” says McClellan.
McClellan said he had been thinking about building a magic system with glass since about halfway through the process of writing the Powder Mage series, but it took a particularly productive conversation with his wife while they were in a London hotel for a convention for the idea to settle into something he wanted to move forward with. They are called glassdancers, and Demir is one of them. While anyone can use godglass, there are those who are born with the ability to control glass. auraglass augments charisma, while cureglass augments healing, and so on.
Like the Powder Mage trilogies before it, the Glass Immortals trilogy is set in a world of “industrial magic.” Here, magic-forged glass of various colors called godglass is used to enhance natural abilities or states -e.g. “Character-wise, it’s about a failed prodigy who is forced to return home and be the person that he ran away from because his mother has been murdered, and he has to solve that problem, take revenge, and also deal with the wider consequences.”ĭemir is only one of several POV protagonists in In the Shadow of Lightning, but his story is a engaging human starting point for a new epic fantasy trilogy from the author of the celebrated Powder Mage series. “ In the Shadow of Lightning is, at the very basic core of it, is about a civilization that runs on industrial magic, and the consequences of that magic running out,” McClellan sums up. Nine years pass, and perhaps nine more would have, if not for the murder of Demir’s mother-an event that pulls the character back into the dangerous and desperate world of the Ossan elite, as it faces the potential end of its magical resources. “And I wanted to take a character like that and then destroy them.” He does, and it all happens in the book’s gripping prologue, immediately pulling readers into this world of industrial magic and political intrigue.
“I liked the idea of taking one of these people who was just very naturally gifted and really quite brilliant from childhood, and giving them a moral center that is different from the world in which they exist in,” McClellan tells Den of Geek via Zoom, when asked about Demir. But when a miscommunication on the battlefield leads to the horrific sacking of a city, Demir flees his power and privilege to become a drifter with no greater responsibilities. As a magic-wielding leader and a member of one of Ossa’s ruling guild-families, young Demir has a bright future ahead of him. When we first meet In the Shadow of Lightning protagonist Demir Grappo, he is on the cusp of his first major military victory.