Steel Gods is the second book in Richard Swan’s The Great Silence trilogy which itself is a follow up to his The Empire of the Wolf series. This series is set a few hundred years on from the first and is best described as “flintlock fantasy” based as it is on a world that in some vague ways resembles late nineteenth century Europe only with species like werewolves and mer-men, a tangible afterlife and plenty of arcane objects. After a slow start in which characters are reintroduced, Steel Gods quickly ramps up into a darkly compulsive, violent, page-turning romp.
The first book of this series, Grave Empire, revolved around a group of characters learning about an existential threat to their world, and at least one character seeking to profit off of this danger. That threat comes from the realm beyond where a power is rising that eats the souls of the dead. In the mortal world this allows the unscrupulous to remove people’s souls and turn them into mindless “thralls”. When Steel Gods opens, the small Sovan taskforce that came together in the previous book is trying to gather more information about the threat but the range of competing interests soon pulls them apart and makes their task infinitely more difficult. Meanwhile on the other side of the world, a sea captain is bringing a mage from the Ayakashi Shogunate who has powers that can help them.
As with Grave Empire, Steel Gods is split across a large number of point-of-view characters. Central to them is Sovan ambassador Renata Ranier, but she gets equal time with many of the other key characters including the more than slightly mad and evil Lamprecht von Oldenburg who is seeking to use his powers to promote the Sovan Empire while also taking it over. All of the characters face desperate situations and Swan quickly makes it clear that no one is safe. And despite being separated, he once again brings many of the characters back together to take part in a massive final confrontation in which guns, canons and swords mix with dangerous creatures and arcane magic.
Steel Gods is a perfect second novel of a trilogy. It builds on the story started in the first book, shifts around some of the alliances and deepens the peril that its characters are in. And while Swan manages to bring the action of this part to a natural conclusion he ends with a twisted cliffhanger which leaves things looking decidedly not good for our remaining heroes going into the final book which promises to be darkly epic.
Steel Gods by Richard Swan
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