Glass Immortals Books in Order

Glass Immortals is McClellan's big step into a new kind of epic fantasy, one built around industrial politics, family guilds, and a magical resource that is literally running out. The series takes place in the Ossan Empire, where society runs on enchanted "godglass" and everyone knows the party cannot last forever.

The central figure in In the Shadow of Lightning is Demir Grappo, once a golden boy general, governor, and heir to one of the most powerful guild families in the empire. When a miscommunication destroys his first command and leaves him drowning in guilt, Demir walks away from power and reinvents himself as a small time grifter abroad. The book opens years later, when his mother's murder drags him home and forces him back into the brutal world of guild politics.

In Ossan society, godglass sits at the heart of everything. Specially trained artisans called siliceers craft glass into jewelry and tools that grant speed, strength, healing, and more. Empires wage war to control the mines that feed this system, and the Grappo family has grown rich managing contracts and armies built around it. Demir returns to find hints that the godglass supply is failing and that his mother may have died because she uncovered how bad the problem really is.

Demir is not the only viewpoint. Thessa Foleer, a young siliceer on the run, holds the key to a device that could recharge spent godglass instead of letting it crumble to dust. Montego al'Bou is an orphan from the provinces who dreams of greatness in the empire's brutal cudgel fighting arenas. Prequel novellas like Montego and Swords, Cider, and Other Distractions deepen these threads, showing Montego's early struggles in the capital and Demir's attempts to outrun his past after a bloody suppression in the city of Holikan.

As the story unfolds, readers see just how many people have a stake in keeping the truth buried. Rival guild families scheme for control of contracts and titles. Foreign powers eye Ossan weakness. Street level enforcers, dockworkers, and soldiers feel the squeeze as shortages and political violence spread. McClellan blends glass based magic, cloak and dagger maneuvering, and large scale battles into a single, ongoing crisis.

The tone is still recognizably his flintlock style tight action scenes, military units under pressure, friendships forged in disaster but filtered through a different technology and a tighter focus on class and monopoly. Where the Powder Mage books revolve around toppling a monarchy and holding a young republic together, Glass Immortals asks what happens when an entire civilization has been built on a resource it cannot easily replace.

You can enter this world with In the Shadow of Lightning, then circle back to Montego and Swords, Cider, and Other Distractions for added context. Together they sketch a sprawling epic about found family, corporate style warfare, and the desperate race to keep the lights on in an empire of glass.