The Storm Beneath the Glass

The Ultideic Prophecies #1

by Robert Wyatt, Todd Larsen

Victory was all but guaranteed but the threads of fate twist in unseen hands.

The Kingdom of Remalia has basked in years of peace, but now, a storm foretold in prophecy brews on the horizon. Religious unrest and brutal slave raids from Kushaan give the king the perfect excuse for a long-desired war. Crown Prince Stephir senses doom in the coming conflict, while his brother, Prince Andric, is eager to carve his name into history with blood and steel.

But wars are waged by more than mortals, and the prophecy whispers of unseen players pulling the strings.

With their connection to home severed, a mysterious disease dragging the king toward death, religious persecution erupting into chaos, and an unknown enemy invading, the brothers must race against time—and destiny itself—to save a kingdom slipping from their grasp.

As the Storm Beneath the Glass surges, the gods may have other plans.

Genres: Fantasy

1177 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 8, 2025

Reviews

[Dave C · Rating 4 out of 5]

This epic fantasy novel was an enjoyable and engaging read and I and will definitely be continuing this series. This is a one of those books that has however left me with mixed feelings.

The world-building and magic system are both very well done, there are some very engaging character arcs, some excellent battle scenes as well as a smattering of political intrigue. The scope of the story is enormous, with religion, actual Gods, demons and an approaching war all in play.

On the downside, the length was a drawback. I am not at all averse to a sprawling epic but this felt too full of unnecessary detail that distracted from the main plot threads. I also found myself going from really liking one of the main characters to finding them irritating and unpleasant. This may be intentional given the character arc but it didn't sit right with me.

That being said, there is an awful lot to like about this book and, being the start of the series, it has drawn me in. Whilst it could be trimmed down, the pacing actually felt good and there was plenty of originality here.

Thank you to Netgalley and Gatestone Publishing for an ARC of this book.

[John Brown · Rating 3 out of 5]

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

[Lizardley]

DNF’ed at about 100 pages, because this deeply deeply deeply needed another editing pass. I will not be leaving a star rating because I did not finish it.

I was compelled by the blurb for this and very excited to get lost in a new fantasy world, until I realized that I would be getting lost in the pages and pages of world building and character backstories that don’t add anything helpful for the reader. This problem is worsened by the authors’ propensity for telling emotions instead of showing them. As an example: Mistress Teer’s introduction.

We’re introduced to her in a paragraph that gives a physical description of her and her actions. Andric (the POV character at the time) refers to her as a “woman” and notes that her outfit marks her as a stable master, implying to the reader that he doesn’t know who she is, but he does know her by rank. Two paragraphs later, it turns out Andric knows exactly who she is (Mistress Teer), because he addresses her by name. Why would he have acted like he hadn’t know her before hand? Particularly when the next sentence tells us that she is the person who taught him how to ride. He clearly knows her. We are then informed exactly how Andric feels about her (it’s positive) through a sentence that reads (roughly) ‘Andric always liked and admired Mistress Teer’, before delving into one of the first mentions of this world’s magic system and then a lengthy rumination on Andric’s feelings of inadequacy when compared to his older brother. Don’t we have a crime scene to get to?

The authors are clearly trying to expand the world, but it’s superfluous information, because if the average reader is anything like me, they’re going to forget most of it immediately without any sort of context for what parts of this information are important. If an author drowns the reader in information, it doesn’t make the world feel more real; it makes it impossible for the reader to sort out what matters and what doesn’t. And so, I don’t remember any of it.

The book then gets dragged down to the point where investigating a crime scene takes 7 pages, but all the mess before that takes 25 pages, including a detailed description of Andric getting dressed, the history of the royal castle, the backstory of his friend Barak, and Andric trying to do some magic. I get that Andric is supposed to be bad at time management, but the other POVs are like this as well. The link to the wiki at the front of the book should have been a warning sign.


So far, the book reads more as someone’s TTRPG setting that they quickly slapped a few character archetypes in to make it work as a novel. It’s a shame, because I don’t hate the world (the way the gods work in this is neat! I was and am curious!), but I have very little interest in trawling through more fluff to get to the plot.

I received this book from Net Galley.

[Lex · Rating 3 out of 5]

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 this book through NetGalley.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

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!

[Karmalani · Rating 2 out of 5]

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 through netgalley, I won't continue the series.

[Ray · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a first of a series and both the writers wanted to give as much information about the story background, settings, the place where battles/crime happens, everything is very detailed.

The story does have a lot of information about pretty much everything that’s a part of the story which can make the story drag a bit however as mentioned above I think it’s to character and world build everything.

The characters are strong and powerful. Literally the writers take their time to even describe what they are wearing and everything in every little details. Some may like this some may not.

I would give this book a 5 out of 5 for trying something different and for the whole world building and all information about the world and everything which I loved.

[Jade. · Rating 1 out of 5]

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.

[Joebot · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first half of the was a 5 star-er. Political intrigue. Religious strife. Military poise. Three intriguing POVs, with a strong supporting cast.

And then midway through, things changed. Several new POVs were introduced. One was a fantastic add and served as a good counter balance to an established POV. But one, who took up a bulk of the second half, I just could not connect with and somewhere along the way in their chapters I got lost in the sauce and was just incredibly tuned out. This second half was a 2 star.

Liked the ending. Liked the setup for book 2. Ideally a second book won't suffer consistency errors like this one.

[TC · Rating 3 out of 5]

If this book was cut down by half it would be a vast improvement to the overall story structure, pacing and tone. There is descriptive writing and then there's overt, unnecessarily descriptive writing, that takes away from the story. This book falls into that category. This was a chore to get through.

[R RAM · Rating 2 out of 5]

it was just too boring for me