Gunmetal Gods

In a genre that's overwhelmingly dominated by worlds and stories inspired by Western European history and mythology, seeing a series that draws instead from Ottoman culture, paired with a heavy dose of H.P. Lovecraft, immediately caught my attention. It felt like such a rare combination, something genuinely different from the usual medieval-Europe-with-the-serial-numbers-filed-off fantasy I've read a hundred variations of, and I decided to dive in almost as soon as I heard the premise. Being a huge fan of grimdark helped a lot too, dark, morally gray, unflinching fantasy is exactly my wheelhouse, so between the setting and the tone, this felt like it was written for readers like me specifically.

This story basically takes place in a kingdom inspired by real-world Constantinople, modern-day Istanbul, and it was genuinely so cool for me to realize that as I kept reading, especially since I actually live near that history myself. Seeing a fantasy epic built around the fall and defense of a city so clearly modeled on Kostantiniyye, with its own mythologized version of the Bosphorus, its own political intrigue echoing Ottoman court dynamics, was such a refreshing change of pace from the usual pseudo-medieval-England settings the genre keeps recycling.

The protagonist is Kevah, and the antagonist is Micah, and both characters were really well written. Kevah in particular stood out to me, a once-legendary warrior now buried under grief and hashish smoke, forced to dig himself back out of that hole to become the hero his people need again. There's something genuinely compelling about a protagonist who isn't naturally heroic in the moment, he has to actively claw his way back to it, fighting his own trauma just as much as any external enemy. Micah, on the other hand, makes for a fantastic antagonist precisely because he doesn't see himself as a villain at all. He's a true believer, a zealot marching an army of religious paladins in the name of what he sees as righteous conquest, and that conviction makes him far more unsettling than a cartoonishly evil villain ever could be.

What I really appreciated about this book is that one of the characters most dear to Kevah is killed off, and it happens in a way that genuinely landed for me, giving the strong impression that no one in this story is safe, no matter how central they seem to be to Kevah's arc or how much emotional investment you've put into them. That's another great thing about grimdark as a genre in general, it refuses to let you get comfortable. You can't coast through a book like this assuming certain characters are protected by plot armor just because they matter to the protagonist, and that constant undercurrent of real danger makes every scene carry more weight than it would in a more traditional, safer fantasy. Akhtar clearly isn't afraid to make his characters, and by extension his readers, actually suffer for the story to hit as hard as it's meant to.

The story itself moves forward at a decent pace, nothing groundbreaking in terms of structure, but it keeps things moving well enough that you're never stuck waiting around for the plot to actually get going. The book overall is easy to read too, the prose doesn't get bogged down in overly dense worldbuilding exposition or convoluted sentence structures, which made it a smooth, fairly quick read despite the dark subject matter and heavier themes running through it. It strikes a nice balance, accessible enough that you can breeze through chapters without much friction, but still weighty enough in its content and character work that it never feels shallow or rushed.

There are also some genuinely uncomfortable scenes in this book, so consider this a trigger warning for anyone who might get irritated or distressed by this sort of content. At one point, the Sultan's entire family is killed right in front of him, and it's not glossed over or handled with any real restraint, it's brutal and difficult to read, exactly the kind of scene that earns the grimdark label. There's also an uncomfortable sexual assault scene in one of Micah's chapters that readers should be aware of going in. I don't think either scene is included gratuitously, they both serve the story and the characters in meaningful ways, but they're intense enough that I think it's worth flagging clearly for anyone sensitive to that kind of content before they pick this book up.

The magic system here is very soft, it just kind of works whenever it's convenient to move the story forward, which isn't something I personally enjoy, I much prefer hard magic systems with clear rules and limitations. Also, and this might be nitpicking on my part, but some of the terminology feels inconsistently sourced, some terms are clearly Ottoman Turkish inspired, while others lean more Persian, for example, in the Ottoman Empire the equivalent term for king would be Padishah, but in this book it's called Shah, which is Persian. It makes the whole thing feel more like a general, blended inspiration from Islamic cultures broadly rather than a deep, specific dive into one culture in particular. I think the author missed a real opportunity here, he could have built out multiple distinct cultures each inspired by different, specific historical traditions, but instead we get one culture that's more of a blend pulled from a wide range of sources. That bothered me a bit, though again, I recognize this is me nitpicking.

My bigger criticism of the story itself is that things just tend to work out. Yes, it's grimdark, I understand no character is safe, but in order to keep the plot moving forward, some long-lost characters conveniently reappear, and someone you thought was dead turns out not to be. That's a genuine dealbreaker for me when it comes to storytelling, it undercuts the stakes the book worked so hard to establish elsewhere.

On top of that, when I'm reading fantasy with magic and swords in it, guns are just about the last thing I want to see, and this book has them front and center, entire armies of gun-wielding paladins marching to war. Again, this is entirely a personal gripe and more nitpicking than an actual flaw in the writing, but for me, guns fundamentally change the texture and feel of a fantasy world in a way I don't particularly enjoy. There's something about the clash of swords and sorcery that feels distinctly fantastical to me, and once firearms enter the picture, it starts pulling the setting closer to historical fiction or a more grounded, gunpowder-era conflict than the kind of high fantasy escapism I usually read for. I know plenty of readers love that blend of magic and muskets, flintlock fantasy is practically its own subgenre at this point, but it's just not really my cup of tea, and it did color how immersed I felt in this particular world.

Kevah and Micah's character arcs are great as well, Micah's especially. The book does a great job exploring whether the ends justify the means, and how power corrupts even the truest believers. It was genuinely well done. Kevah's arc was great too, a man who's got nothing left to lose, a man who essentially wants to die taking his kingdom back, but who keeps getting pushed into more and more responsibility along the way, whether he wants it or not. I really liked that arc as well, watching someone get dragged back into purpose against his own will.

Overall, it was a great read, and I'm genuinely excited to see where the series goes from here. It's refreshing to see fantasy books drawing inspiration from different cultures for once, and I hope we get more of that going forward, not just in this series but in the genre as a whole. I believe this is the author's first published book, and for a debut, this is very, very above average. Congratulations to him on that.

4 out of 5 stars.