3.5 stars

My review will go live on my blog in early April

I liked the world – it’s a Soviet-type world (as clear from the cover) complete with secret police and a modern, brutalist feel. It’s not the typical Imperialist Russian setting, which helps set this book apart.
However, the use of a quasi-religion around the magic storms and with the only “Russian-esque” words being linked to the magic (no words in italics slipped in for food or as swear words as you often find in obviously inspired worlds) made it feel more distinct, like the story was pulling on ideas from various cultures rather than just one.
The magic was rather confusing. It took a while for the book to explain what the different "categories" of magic were, so they were yelling about category three and category one for a while without me understanding any of it.
The sort of alternative-plane-thingy they went to when doing magic felt explained at first. However, as the book progressed, I found myself more and more confused by the way the planes interacted and how the magicians did stuff in one but not the other. It became harder and harder to keep track of as more information was added without full explanation.
It all needed a bit more time and set up. I feel like I was expected to have some prior knowledge of this sort of magic system in order to follow it.
As for the plot, I enjoyed it. The layers of deception were really fun to unravel alongside the characters and I loved not knowing who I could trust. There was a real sense that anyone could be an informer, and yet Celka and Gerrit needed to trust someone in order to get anything done.
As the action sequences relied a lot on magic, they weren’t the easiest to follow, and so I enjoyed the moments when they were deliberately not using magic more. As such, it meant I found myself drawn to the characters more than usual, because I was most engaged by the moments of quiet interaction. They both have similar pasts with their parents, and both have been warped. It meant they really got each other.

I found this story to be initially off putting and hard to get into. Some of the language and world building were confusing at the beginning. However, after the story picked up and I'd spent more time in the world, I found myself enjoying the magic system and world that I was getting to experience.

This book turned out to be SO much better than I thought it would. I absolutely loved this book. The world was exquisitely painted. The characters felt so incredibly solid that they just came alive for me. Once I got about 75 pages in, I just could not put in down.

Those first 50 pages were a bit rough. This is not your standard LOTR-esque fantasy setting (thank God). It is completely unique to anything I've ever read, and it took me a bit to understand the world that exists in this book. At no point does the author sit you down and explain the rules of the world to you. It happens organically, which is definitely better, but it initially left me feeling confused and not knowing what was going on. I particularly struggled with the long fight scenes at the beginning. I'm not a fan of long fight scenes in the first place, and I didn't really understand what was going on. I almost abandoned the book entirely, but decided to give it another 50 pages. And I SO very glad I did. Fellow readers, do not hesitate to pick up this book. Give yourself 75 pages to get grounded in this world, and then you won't be able to put this book down.

Thanks to NetGalley for providing me with an advanced copy of this book I exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Like some other reviewers, I had a difficult time getting into this novel, due partially to the sporadic use of Russian-esque words, dropped seemingly without context. While that style of world-building can work, it usually involves context arriving quickly after, as you often see in cyberpunk or dystopian novels. However, once I began to piece together understanding of the magic system Lee introduced, Weave the Lightning began to flow a little more smoothly. I still had some struggles remembering what specific words meant; it really shows my inherent English bias that you can through a few "z"s into a word and I get them all jumbled. Overall I enjoyed Weave the Lightning; if you can get past the difficulty in understanding the magic system, it's a very nice novel.

I struggled with this book. I thought the premise of a travelling circus and the Russian revolution was amazing. I liked that there was magic involved but unfortunately i found this super hard to get into and it was confusing. My main problem was the book throws you straight in and doesn't really explain anything at the beginning which left me feeling very confused and I felt I couldn't keep up with what was happening. The inclusion of Russian names for things also was a little confusing. There are a lot of characters that are introduced and it was hard to keep track of them and what they were doing. Overall i was a little too confused to actually enjoy this book but I hope people will enjoy it.

DNF @ 10%. While some of the concepts were sound (traveling circus with mages? so cool!) I struggled to be drawn into the story. It was unclear to me at first whether the story was taking place in a past alternate Russia, as I first thought, or a different world entirely. The inclusion of seemingly random Russian names for things interspersed throughout added little in terms of world-building. I also felt uninspired by the magic system.

Weave the lightning, by Corry L. Lee, I struggled with this book, had very little introduction into the rules of the world into which it was set, or much storybuilding beyond plunking you down quickly into what was happening and a lot was happening fast.

I was expecting a historical fantasy set during an alternative Russian Revolution, but unfortunately this was just a big disappointment.

I may not even be qualified to write a review about this book because I was utterly confused during the entire thing. There were lots of weird words referring to some unexplained people, places, or things that just didn’t seem to make any sense? From the get-go there were too many characters introduced which made the story hard to follow. I had to force myself to get through this, and to be honest, there were lots of parts that I merely skimmed over because they were so confusing.

What would have greatly helped this book was if the fantasy world was set up before plunging the reader into events that they had no background information on. Placing the story during the actual Russian Revolution and injecting it with a lot of magic would have made this book readable and engaging.