The Gauntlet and the Fist Beneath

I'm really sad to say this, but The Gauntlet and the Fist Beneath didn't work for me.

I want to take a moment to appreciate the cover and the font choice, because it attracted to me this book so much. I was also really interested in the storm and magic described in the blurb so I ripped through the book. One of the first things I noticed was the Scottish place names and dialect, so I got excited to see all the places I could spot. I really liked those additions. I would say that for a fantasy novel I wish more had been done with it. If you're creating fantasy words for things you could have thrown in a little more to build up your language. It just felt weirdly jarring to see all this perfect speech with no dialect apart from the occasional wee thrown in.

I struggled with how little expansion the world building got. Or more accurately, how weirdly placed the world building was in to the story. A world building concept, like the three types of magic users, would be named and used for 2/3s of the book with no explanation about the difference and just the barest context to figure out they're distinct peoples and enough information to guess at why for one of the three types. And then around 200 pages in it gets explained just because a new character asks about the difference? That happened with a few different things and a fair few others didn't get any explanation at all. I know you don't need everything spelled out and I certainly managed to make guesses based on context for most of it. But the amount of things left to figure out by yourself makes the story harder to follow and get invested in.

I didn't enjoy this one and can't see myself picking up any sequels.