Promise of Blood

I was lured into reading Brian McClellan's impressive debut novel, Promise of Blood (Orbit, 2013, no editor listed), by McClellan's "Big Idea" post on John Scalzi's blog, Whatever.  Napoleonic technology and an alternate-French Revolution setting with magic works for me.  It turned out to be a bit more alternate than I was expecting, but I liked it quite a bit.  A book trailer video is available on McClellan's website.

Below: no spoilers past the first eighty pages or so of the five hundred and forty-five McClellan gifts us with.