This book needs another round of editing to be shortened. It was too wordy for me to get into it. Since I did not finish the book I will not be posting a review publicly.

The Storm Beneath the Glass de Robert Wyatt et Todd Larsen est un roman de fantasy dense et ambitieux qui nous plonge dans le royaume de Remalia, un monde au bord du chaos, déchiré par les tensions politiques, les croyances religieuses et une magie ancienne.
L’intrigue suit plusieurs personnages, dont les princes Andric et Stephir, pris dans un enchevêtrement de prophéties, de trahisons et de conflits imminents.
L’univers est richement construit, avec une mythologie détaillée et une ambiance proche de la fantasy classique à la Game of Thrones.
L’écriture est soignée mais très descriptive, ce qui ralentit le rythme global du récit. L’action est rare, parfois trop en retrait au profit des intrigues de cour et des dialogues politiques.
Ce style peut séduire les amateurs de world-building exigeant, mais risque de décourager ceux en quête d’aventure et d'une lecture "rapide".
Le livre pose beaucoup de bases pour une saga à venir. Attention, pas mal d'informations c'est donc une lecture assez exigeante, mais gratifiante pour les passionnés de fantasy mature et réfléchie.

Thank you to Netgalley, the publisher, and the author for providing a free e-arc in exchange for an honest review.

I'm going to have to soft DNF this unfortunately. Maybe once the story is edited and the number of pages reduced will I pick it back up. It is a great thing when settings are detailed where you can immerse yourself in a world and feel like you are actually there, but when it feels like someone is describing something to the point where you can't continue on with the story it just makes it drag. I got about 100 pages into this almost 900 page book and I just couldn't continue. The book has potential, but is in desperate need of editing.

This was one of my most anticipated reads of the year as soon as I seen the cover and it did not disappoint.
The world building was one of the most unique descriptions I’ve ever read and instantly had me hooked

Thank you to NetGalley and Gatestone publishing for this e-arc in exchange for an honest review.

Firstly - my goodness, I had no idea how big this book was when I requested it!! Opening it and seeing how big it was felt daunting... but I stuck with it and rather enjoyed it. I would say that it's longer than it needs to be - it's very descriptive (overly so in areas!) and wordy, but at the same time - it's pretty impressive at how thorough and detailed this book is... well, it's amazing the amount of work that went into this book. The writing is beautiful and the imagery that it creates is truly beautiful. The interactive map that the QR code leads to on the website is truly impressive and really helped to understand the book and where we were at, where we were visiting, and where we were going.

The world building itself is really impressive - it's lengthy and too much in a lot of ways, but it's also incredibly impressive. The magic system is also top tier - it's descriptive, and easy to understand as well. The characters are beautiful, and I really enjoyed some of their arcs especially! The battle scenes were by far my favorite, as they were descriptive and easy to picture and be involved in.

Boy I did not realize this book was this big when I requested it from Netgalley. I can see the issue people are having with it because it’s so much longer than it needs to be, too overly descriptive, too wordy, pretty much too much everything.

The book is impressive on how much work they put into it. I mean their website has an interactive map, Character Wiki that resembles Fandom, culture descriptions, etc. I greatly appreciated the effort. I think there is a really good book in here that just needs to be professionally polished

This could have used another round or two of editing.
Someone once said, that as a first time author you only get one or two POVs and after this book I get why.
The world is interesting but the authors managed to leave me both confused about what is going on and irritated about all the info dumping that is happening.
Characters get introduced as not understanding social interactions very well and proceed to analyse social interactions to a T including micro expressions.
I get that people have given names and surnames but changing the way they are referenced all of a sudden is just confusing.
I honestly hated the characters. Most of the humans are selfish, annoying, misogynists or another form of asshole. Some POVs just feel unnecessary as they just get dropped and never appear again.
I was honestly waiting for one side character to betray the princes any moment. Not sure if that was intentional or not.
The thing that really gets me is the fact that the name spelling isn't consistent. And I'm not talking about a side character.
Honestly this was a slog and while I'm grateful to have gotten to read it, I won't continue the series.

Thank you NetGalley for this arc!

This book definitely needed another round of editing. Having 10 pages to describe someone getting a horse was much.

𝐀𝐑𝐂 𝐫𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐞𝐰
𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐦 𝐁𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐡 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐆𝐥𝐚𝐬𝐬
𝐛𝐲 𝐑𝐨𝐛𝐞𝐫𝐭 𝐖𝐲𝐚𝐭𝐭, 𝐓𝐨𝐝𝐝 𝐋𝐚𝐫𝐬𝐞𝐧
𝐑𝐞𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐞 𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐞: 𝐀𝐩𝐫𝐢𝐥 𝟖𝐭𝐡

- - -

Thank you, Netgalley, for this ARC.

I am going to keep this short.
I was intrigued by the blurb and the cover. It sounded very promising and really thought I would like it.
Sadly, this is not my cup of tea. It took about 10 pages (I might exaggerate a bit) for the MMC to mount his horse. This book was too descriptive, and I now understand why the book is thick. It could be much shorter. And I did not really like the MMC. A prince with a huge ego and does not really care about his people. He just gives me this kind of vibe.

DNF.

I think if I had really what this was about, I may not have decided to not read it all. Now that I have read it I am not dissatisfied or disappointed. I am not blown away either though. Whenever you step into a new world you either fall into right away or by the end of the book you find yourself liking ti or not liking it. At the start I didn't like it that much but by the end I did like it somewhat. Didn't care for all the characters for sure but found some of them likable at least. Andric was sort of bratty punk at times and then like a really great and interesting character with depth and feeling. His brother in the story Stephir I found to be pretty even keeled for the most part. For both brothers there is growth that will come later making them better characters hopefully. Quarian was the one I found myself enjoying about the most I think although not sure why. The magic/power system is not clearly described for me, but others may find a better understanding of it. The story itself I found sort of not interesting in some ways and others I enjoyed turning the page. For me I think this a book that will do better after a reread as I will I have a better understanding about the book and the world it place in. All in all, this was a solid read for me and a decent beginning of what I hope proves to be a great series. So thank the authors for working together to right this and netgalley for the chance to read a good book.

DNF after 100 pages. I just couldn’t trudge through another page. The MMC was unlikeable from the first chapter. He looks down on the people of his kingdom. He describes how his city is prosperous and there’s no poverty…except far from where any “decent people congregate”. Which leads to my issue that the one beggar he comes across has dark skin that isn’t discernible from the mud on her and he describes her as a subject. Every poor woman he passes is too ugly for him to even look at. The chapters are also bogged down with pages of unnecessary description for some things and not enough for those that matter to the plot. The first 100 pages are convoluted and boring. We do t need 5+ pages describing a friendship/person without any development.

I had a few issues with this and eventually had to dnf it for now. There was so much exposition and so much description to the point where at times it became unbearable to read. Everything and anything was spelled out and I had to fight my way through the first chapter. I've put it down for now but I do intend to come back to it.

I would like to thank NetGalley and Gatestone Publishing for providing me with an e-ARC of The Storm Beneath the Glass.

This novel has certainly been a challenge for me. I loved the premise, and I was fairly excited to read it, but that initial happiness, unfortunately, expired by the time I was finished with the first chapter.

After years of peace, the Kingdom of Remalia now stands at the edge of a storm. The rising religious unrest and slave raids from the neighbouring Kushaan pave the path towards war, a conflict that was foretold a long time ago.

After the king falls ill, the fate of Remalia is put in the hands of the crown prince Sephir and his younger brother Adric. Throughout the book we follow them as they try to save the kingdom from chaos and ruin.

While I do think the plot was pretty good, unfortunately it was buried under a tonne of quite useless information. I am hesitant to call it world-building because it does not add much to the world or the story. The readers do not need to know detailed information about how the prince was choosing his outfit or what he was wearing. They also do not need to be presented with what feels like entire biographies of characters that only appear on a few pages.

This novel, without any questions, needs more editing. There were many moments where I felt like the last 15, 20 pages were completely meaningless and did not add a single thing to the story. I personally think that this book could have been shorter. Nearly 900 pages for a debut novel seem excessive, and it is definitely overwhelming. I have been reading fantasy for 20 years, but I still struggled to keep up.

While this book is extremely heavy on information, it did remind me of the old sci-fi and fantasy, mainly Roger Zelazny´s The Chronicles of Amber.

Despite all the information this book contains, I do not think the important things, like the magic system and religion(s), were well explained. Not to mention that the wiki is incomplete and just as chaotic as the book.

Another issue I had with this book was that in a few instances, the language used to describe dark-skinned people came off as racist. I absolutely do not think that this was intentional, but it did certainly put me off.

My biggest issue lies with the number of characters and POVs. I think I counted 8 or 9; I genuinely lost track. This is, in my opinion, quite extreme. I could barely remember or keep up with what was going on, and it was unbelievably difficult to say what information might be important. I also found it difficult to remember or connect to any of the characters.

Genuinely, I think the authors wrote this book for themselves. It felt like they did not exactly take into account that somebody who is not them and who does not understand the world they created would read it.

Despite all that, I truly feel like this novel and series are filled with a lot of potential. I am curious about what comes next and what the future novel(s) will bring for the characters. I would also really love to see the authors grow, as the world they have created is quite beautiful.

I hope that we will get to see the sequel soon.

It was good, I guess. But not as much as I thought.
In my opinion books in fantasy or scifi words MUST hook you from the beginning and never let you go, but i think maybe this is not something that everybody agrees upon. Alas, the book wasn’t for me, and i’m really sad about it. However the writing was good and had some very unique things that maybe catch your eyes. I think you should check it out if you want something new. Thank you net galley for give me the opportunity to read this book and say my opinion. Much appreciated.

This book was so good! The premise and the characters were top tier. I can't wait to see what the author does next? Totally worth reading!!

I found the reading the story to be particularly difficult. First, I cannot get the entire text to fit on the screen: in other words, while I may see the bottom of the first page, the two lines at the top of the next page are cut off. I have tried adjusting the settings on my iPad with no success. Second. I cannot keep track of all of the different groups that are being referred to, most especially all of the many religious groups, as well as the various provinces, characters, etc. There is not enough commentary in the text to be able to gain any clear sense of exactly what’s going on. Certainly this kingdom is facing war, the king has concerns about the allegiance of one of his dukes, but there is also difficulty with one of the religious orders. And then the religious order in question is able to summon demons, which is confusing with regard to the term “religion.“ Summoning powers makes sense, casting spells would work, but demon versus religion seems counterintuitive. Not enough details, context clues, and/or explanations are provided to be able to differentiate between the different groups and innumerable characters involved… even while the plot moves inexorably forward. The failure to craft a solid structure for the plot and the absence of continuity and clarification, simply results in a pileup of information that I found impossible to sort through or string together to find any clear sense of what was going on. If this kind of structure is not provided from the very beginning, what is to keep the reader interested enough to invest time and energy, waiting for things to make sense? I was not engaged as a reader, and that is the most important element in any book that I read… Can it carry me to the next page, to the next chapter? It sounded as if it wanted to be a Jeff Wheeler novel, with a setting in a mystical location, but it just did not deliver.

Not quite what I was expecting. I think there are far too ,many ideas here and it made the book seem like a cobbled together fantasy story using a number of already standard tropes. It is entertaining though and that's why I gave it three stars.

The plot and story in this debut book of the Ultideic Prophecies series is epic in nature and incorporates politics, religion, the human nature of prejudice and contempt (and also some positives, we aren't all bad!), a magic/power system that has it's own intrinsic positives and negatives, and war. There is a lot going on!

It did take me a while to get into the story (I think it was about the 20% mark) where things started to progress enough that it didn't feel like it was going in circles; however, now that I've finished I do think those circles were necessary to establish the scale and scope of the story that followed. I am very glad that there were maps provided because the number of new words for people, places and things was heavy. The twists that came throughout helped propel the story forward nicely and I really enjoyed the different perspectives for each chapter - it gave a very good immersion into the story as you saw viewpoints from outside just royals leading an army.

Two negatives for me were the writing style and expansive descriptions. There were a lot of short sentences that were like reading a list of bullet points and knocked me out of what I expected to be a smooth reading experience, particularly when it comes to how the characters were acting or thinking. The second is the long and expansive descriptions of many aspects of the world, again with what the characters were feeling/thinking. If these two aspects were smoother and tighter it would probably be bumped up to at least four stars from me.

Overall, the storyline is engaging, the world is expansive and has a lot of potential to be developed into many spin-off series. The cultures and people and bringing all of the aspects of politics, religion and all the other ones listed above was actually done quite well. Quite looking forward to the next one!

The blurb of this story was very intriguing and drew me in. With the magic, politics, and religious aspects both of the authors put time and effort into this story. You can tell from page one how descriptive they are and how much thought they put in. That being said, the length is very off putting especially for a first book. I think that some of the scenes could have been shorted and describing the same charachter regularly wasn’t always necessary. The world building and magical system was deeply thought about and was something new. For a reader just getting into Fantasy, this isn’t for you. I enjoy fantasy and this was a tough read for me due to the density of the world building and descriptions. If you are up to the task, it is a worthwhile read. It does take some time to fully digest. I greatly appreciated receiving the ARC through NetGalley.

It saddens me to say I had to DNF this somewhat early on into the story. The blurb is what drew me into the book and is what made me get excited to read it, but once I started it felt like an overflow of information that may or may not be a lot for a reader to take in. Having a story with its own unique world building and magic system is wonderful and major kudos goes to authors who take the time to make an entire new world. That being said, I felt like the world building could have been spaced out better, and less feeling like they're trying to cram as much information as they can as soon as they can.

If you're a fan of stories with A LOT of information about the world building, then this could be for you! Personally, it made my head hurt a bit by how much was thrown out within the first chapter alone. I wasn't going to give it a star rating because I DNF'ed it, but because I have to, that is why I'm giving it a one star, but as I said, if this is up your alley don't let this rating deter you!