Blurb:

Game of Thrones meets Arabian Nights in this blood-soaked fantasy epic inspired by the Crusades, featuring Lovecraftian gods, mischievous djinns, and astral magic!

They took his daughter, so Micah comes to take their kingdom. Fifty thousand gun-toting paladins march behind him, all baptized in angel blood, thirsty to burn unbelievers.

Only the janissaries can stand against them. Their living legend, Kevah, once beheaded a magus amid a hail of ice daggers. But ever since his wife disappeared, he spends his days in a haze of hashish and poetry.

To save the kingdom, Kevah must conquer his grief and become the legend he once was. But Micah writes his own legend in blood, and his righteous conquest will stop at nothing.

When the gods choose sides, a legend will be etched upon the stars.

Review:

“We’re all good men until we’re pushed to the edge. Then you either die a good man, or the good man in you dies.”

The most metal book I’ve read in a long time. Gunmetal Gods is a mystical, bloody descension into the dark cosmic horrors of vengeful gods, ruthless conquers, and devastating religious zealotry. The world and mythos that Zamil has created in Gunmetal Gods is mind melting and truly psychedelic.

For the majority of the book, we follow two main characters on opposite sides of a centuries-old religious Crusade to dominate the holy city of Kostany. We see the story unfold through their eyes in intimate first-person point-of-view. Zamil does a fantastic job of making each POV feel fresh and distinct without either muddying of the story as we switch from POV to POV. 

We are thrown into this Middle Eastern inspired story that is ruled by ferocious human warriors, gods, angels, jinn, and horrifying Lovecraftian cosmic horrors. Zamil has the ability to paint these larger-than-life characters with an artistic brush, dripping with blood and gore, that forcefully injects these shifting, incomprehensible monsters into the imagination with enough mysticism that the majestic dread of eternity is palpable. 

Gunmetal Gods was both significantly darker and much more hopeful than I had anticipated when I started the book. This is a book that is grown from a flowerbed of nihilism that becomes more and more apparent as our two main opposing forces sacrifice all while completely convinced of their holy calling to rain death upon the other unbelievers. The pages are littered with evil pacts with Fallen Angels and the desecration of what was once holy. Micah the Metal is a part of some exceptionally horrific events that made me uncomfortable. But the beauty in seeing all these events in first-person POV is that Zamil masterfully unrolls the psyche of the characters like a scroll, letting us understand (and often empathize with) their rationale for their actions. 

In the midst of all of this darkness, there is love and sacrifice for the greater good. There is triumph and even some happy-ish endings for some. The juxtaposition of dark, gritty moments with light, lovely flashes of magic was expertly handled by Zamil.

While the character work and story are top notch, I keep coming back in my mind to how immersive the setting and lore in this world are. This is a book that a bursting at the seams with imagination and complex religious history that has a Biblical weight. The Middle Eastern influences provide gravitas that significantly enriched the reading experience. Each of the gods felt like they had their own motivations and were just casually playing Micah and Kevah off each other to further their own, nefarious purposes which really only began to be revealed towards the end of the book.

Count me as another huge fan of Zamil’s Gunmetal Gods Saga. I’m going to be immediately following this read up with his novella, Death Rider. I cannot wait to descend once more into the dark, seedy depths of Labyrinthos to explore the rest of the twisted, depraved imagination of Zamil Akhtar.