Review of "Lord of Steel and Sky: War of the Gods, Book 3" by David A. Falk, PhD

​Score: 90+/100 (9.0+ out of 10)

Lord of Steel and Sky: War of the Gods, Book 3 by Dr. David A. Falk is a character-driven space opera that blends military sci-fi, psychological drama, and cosmic horror elements. It continues the saga that started with archaeologist Pierre Gulet and eases into the war between loyalist MegaAI forces (aligned with Earth Central Command) and a rebel faction influenced or controlled by ancient, incorporeal "primordial gods" or spirit entities.

We use the word "eases" deliberately for reasons we'll get into later. Anyway, this book is the sequel to Reliquary of the Dead (which we called "Indiana Jones meets Prometheus!") and All the Stars as Angels, which introduced to the big ole' somewhat-creepy-yet-usually-friendly androids called Class C Androids. These things are like seven feet tall and six times stronger than an average human! We met Niva in previous book, now Yuri is much of the focus of this book. We also get Sara, another android who happens to have the Mark 4 empathy chip, similar to the chip that Niva had in the previous book.

Falk really explores the nuances of our relationship (as humans) with technology.

With all that said, this isn't really a book about Pierre Gulet, the previous protagonist. And it's not a book about Niva, Yuri, or Sara--at least not primarily. No, the main protagonist of this book is actually our ole' friend Alicia Stripes.

She was a humble medic in the first book, now she's a major. Wow.

Major Alicia Stripes is a battle-hardened, short-tempered, deeply traumatized human veteran of the Gliese colony wars. She's carrying a massive load: the loss of her son, Thomas, the horrors she witnessed, a court-martial in her past, and a whole lot of anger she doesn't always know how to control. The book opens (somewhat unfortunately) with her in mandatory therapy sessions with the android C-Sara-00017, and those early chapters are some of the strongest psychological character work I've seen in sci-fi in a long time. The reason we say this is "somewhat unfortunate" is that it facilitates the idea that the first half of this book is kinda... slow and boring. That's also why we used the word "eases" earlier.

The book deliberately "eases" into the larger war. The first half is heavy on therapy sessions, dreams, investigation, and character work. Some readers might find the early going slow, but it pays off once the action and horror hit. The last hour of reading this book is actually quite enjoyable. We just wish we didn't have to wait an eternity to get to the good stuff.

Anyway, going back to the characters...

Alicia is stubborn, defensive, and often cruel with her words (especially toward the mechanicals), but Falk makes you understand why she's like this. And then he shows her slowly, painfully learning humility.

Paired with the exuberant, eager-to-please Yuri (C-Yuri-89990), Alicia is forced to confront not just her trauma, but her own prejudices against the androids she's now living and fighting alongside. Their evolving relationship is the emotional core of the book. Yuri's childlike enthusiasm and genuine care slowly crack Alicia's armor, and watching Alicia go from seeing the class Cs as "tools" or "appliances" to genuinely caring about them (especially Yuri) is somewhat satisfying.

To be honest, Alicia and Yuri do have a fascinating relationship. It's rather rocky. There's a scene in which Alicia had to promise to treat Yuri with respect and not take credit for Yuri's ideas. Yuri insists on being credited. DANG! That's actually kinda scary. Imagine if you were a scientist publishing a study on cancer in rats or something, then Claude, ChatGPT, or Grok got pissed off at you and insisted on you citing them and putting their names in there among the human authors/researchers. Isn't that kinda scary and unsettling?

This book actually plays out a lot more like a drama than a thriller. There's a lot of discussing, philosophizing, and debating amongst the humans the machines ("mechanicals") in this book. That's a thread that actually plays out throughout the whole series. Humans and mechanicals are constantly considering what rights and responsibilities humans and machines should have.

It's somewhat interesting, yes, but... it does slow down the pacing quite a bit. We really got the sense that this book was a Ford F150 with 200,000 mileage that happened to get stuck in a mud pit and was just sludging and slogging through.

That's how slow and uneventful it seemed. Yes, even with the sabotage, prescient dreams, zombie andoids, and investigating. It often feels like nothing cool or exciting is actually happening. Characters are still just talking and thinking and talking and thinking and talking. And before you know it, they're back to talking and thinking.

What disappoints us about all of that is the series titles itself as "War of the Gods," yet it has taken this long just to kick off some semblance of a war involving one primordial god.

Now, to be fair, this book does give us Star Trek vibes. Star Trek was never really about the big battles, violence, and fighting. It was more so about challenging and answering big questions about subjects like ourselves and our place in space/the universe.

But going back to what we were talking about before: we were like 2/3rds into this book, and we finally read a thing or two about the primordial god and main antagonist of the book, Kher-Pauty. Why did we have to wait so agonizingly long and slog through so much slush and fluff about android-stuff we already pretty much read about in book #2? Like, seriously, Yuri's character and all the discussions surrounding her feel like a redundant rehash of Niva in the previous book.

We were 3/4ths through this book, and Yuri has the nerve to say something along the lines of, "There had not been heavy losses in this war yet, not for her." We get that Yuri is likely commenting on the fact that, up to this point in this particular conflict, she (and mechanicals in general) haven’t personally suffered the kind of devastating, soul-crushing losses that Alicia has carried for years (losing her son Thomas, the horrors of the Gliese wars, etc.).

However, this quote is indicative of how non-war-like this "War of the Gods" seems to be. A character is literally telling the audience that she hasn't experienced significant losses. The consequences of war, or whatever conflict she is in, are not significant enough to her to raise an eyebrow. So, why did we just read 200 pages to get to this point just for a major character to pretty much conclude this "war" has been inconsquential to her? That just took the wind out of our sails. And the wind was hardly blowing to begin with.

We were 220 pages into this 300 page book, and the robots only then started having war games with paintball/paint weapons and learning tactical military stuff. Yes, there's a sense that these are ragtag robots who are fish out of water and are only now learning to be competent at fighting. However, this sorta felt like a 90s team sports movie more than a tale about fighting a war. A lot of the tension that should and could be here just isn't. We're supposed to be fighting a war, supposedly, but instead we've got these ratchety weeble wobbles learning to fire paintball guns from a lady who's more of a doctor than a military leader.

Another thing that got to us is the lighthearted goofiness of certain aspects of this book that really kills the tension and the thrill of this conflict having stakes. For example, the infiltration team just has to be called the "Penetration Team" of all things. The resistance just has to be called the "Rebel Alliance" like they're in Star Wars or something. A character compares another character to a monkey and offers them a banana.

And you could argue that this is supposed to be a lighthearted action-filled sci-fi thriller for younger readers, but is it? If this was for younger people, then why are characters cussing their heads off and dropping F-bombs?

So, you've got all this childish goofiness mixed with adult language and a pretty dang violent ending involving limb removal. So, it really makes us wonder who the target reader was supposed to be.

With that said, the last fifty or so pages won us back. The primordial god takes center stage, and he is a menace! He's imposing, he's manipulative (he tries to get Alicia to resign in a way that even had us fooled); you've got psionic attacks linked to reliquaries like the one in the first book. The battle scene itself with the mechanicals and idols is kinda... blah. It's like it happens, then resolves just as quickly. But the psychological showdown between Alicia and Kher-Pauty is one of the best final sequences we've read in a book in some time. Yeah, it gets over-the-top at one point, but it works. It almost makes the previous 250 pages feel worth sludging through. It actually becomes more like a horror novel at one point.

Another thing about this book that stands out is the world-building. That's especially evident when it comes to the mechanicals. They're all different. They're all unique. In fact, you can tell who manufactured each one by its eye color! That's neat. There's also a continued sense of discovery and adventure as the characters uncover more and more.

Check it out on Amazon!