Review: Death Rider by Zamil Akhtar
Blurb:
A disgraced warrior seeks an honorable death on the battlefield, but an eldritch god has other plans for her.
Review:
“Sometimes those fears do come true. But even then, you don’t just give up. You find the strength to endure, to climb out of that pit. You don’t dig yourself deeper. If you had a mother, she would’ve told you as much.”
Zamil does it again. Death Rider is a prequel novella that rocks just as hard as Gunmetal Gods. From the first sentence, I felt like I had slid right back into the fantastic world Zamil created in Gunmetal Gods. His characters and the surrounding eldritch gods that fill in the setting are so palpable, it immediately feels like stepping back into a dark, twisted version of home that welcomes you back with a sinister hug.
Death Rider takes us back in time to a legendary battle briefly mentioned in Gunmetal Gods. A disgraced warrior is given a second chance to lead a band of Death Riders on a suicide rush at the walls of the infidel’s stronghold. As we learn more about the horror that the defending army has welcomed into their city to prevent the conquest of Shah Jalal, Zamil truly shines as he mixes otherworldly horrors into a demonic carousel of a day.
The evil angel Saklas is a twisted, unheavenly creature of insatiable hunger that requires the bodily sacrifices of humans which it receives through an evil oath. Zamil delivers in spades on Saklas and the conquest of this city while hinting at much larger things to come for the rest of this series.
Again, while this is a dreary, horror filled novella steeped in the seedy death of war and the wormy danger of unholy resurrection, there is a soft core deep down that shines a ray of redemptive light. Death Rider delves into the frailty and inevitability of existence, emerging with the nugget of hope that love, even if finite, makes every hardship and misery worthwhile. If I had needed any further convincing of Zamil’s rightful place on the divan of Lovecraftian horror/fantasy authors after reading Gunmetal Gods, Death Rider cemented his position in my mind.
