Wings of Steel and Fury

If you read about the gods, most of them are a little messed up. If they are not descending to pretend to be a swan so they can sleep with woman, they are basically ignoring all the human suffering going on. Are gods omnipotent or just much more powerful than humans? Everything feels like magic, until you know how the trick works. In Sarah Daley’s Wings of Steel and Fury, the gods may be powerful, but they will eventually fall to human weapons if you fire enough bullets. 

Eleazar Starson is heir to the throne of Splendour, a land that sits high above the Earth. A land of winged godlike creatures, who show their benevolence to the humans below, by not destroying them. When Eleazar is betrayed and falls to Earth, he is found by the only two atheists in the land; Fury and Diver. With one wing gone, Eleazar must work with the help of these two humans to rise again. His time on Earth will change the way that he views everything. 

With winged men who have godlike powers, Wings feels like it would be high fantasy, throw in a love triangle between Eleazar and his two human allies, and you could think this was romantasy, the hot genre of the day. It is these things, but its heart beats with dark, brooding blood. This is Grimdark, a low fantasy book, that happens to have angels and romance, but this is less love making and more rutting. 

Wings is a bleak fantasy world. The world of Splendour may be light, but for it to shine, they keep the humans below in the dark. The oppressive tithes are bad enough, but constant war also ravishes the land as different people believe themselves to the chosen of the gods. We are witness to the fact that no one is chosen, the likes of Eleazar see humans as only playthings. 

It is this harsh world that we find Fury and Diver, and a world in which Eleazar falls. As a trio of characters, they are as layered and as complex as you will get in fantasy. The unserious Eleazar grows into a man with a mission. Diver has recently come from the front, shellshocked and changed. Fury stayed behind shunned by her neighbours, the houser of secrets. The three of them bounce off one another; enemies, reluctant allies, lovers. 

The central dynamic is complex, but this sits on top of an epic background, this is fantasy, so you not only have to deal with your sibling, but also gods. I am a fan of low fantasy, but even I found the going rough at times. Just when you think it could not get much worse, it does. It is hard to trust anyone when everyone has been brought up to betray one another. 

The central relationship is so strong that this book would benefit a reader who likes personal drama in their books. There are action and fantasy, but it comes back to the angst that these three central characters have. It may seem more brutal and violent than most, but this is a romantasy novel, it is just that in most of these novels' angels do not get their wings violently torn off.