Book Review: Sword of the Godless

Reviewed by Frankie Martinez

A gripping fantasy about a scribe-turned-gladiator desperate to keep his humanity despite terrible betrayals

Simeon Severals never imagined leaving the slums of the lower Bajebluff, not that he minds in the least. It may be overrun with illegal dealings, its authorities weak to bribes, and Delores, his mother and a tutor for Upper Bluff children, overly strict, but it’s home. 

Simeon soon finds himself uniquely talented in a new trade when Delores tasks him with making a copy of the legendary Book of Amadán for the Fifth Pantheon, a religion with new gods wholly unfamiliar to Simeon. However, a longtime friendship with local thief Paul Little puts a sudden end to Simeon’s time in Bajebluff when Paul steals and destroys his almost completed copy of the Book of Amadán, as well as its original.  

At first, Simeon is content with building a new, peaceful life as a scribe at the Fifth Pantheon’s seminary, even if Delores had sold him against his will in order to clear her debt for the lost scripture. Despite being in a lower rank than the priests and higher divinities, he is fed and watered, finds pleasure in his work, and is surprisingly comforted by the now-familiar gods that employ him. But Simeon’s luck quickly turns again when a forbidden affair with a priestess-in-training takes him away from his chosen trade and enrolled in the brutal gladiator school, Escola, in order to be trained as a warrior for entertainment. 

Sword of the Godless is a coming of age story about making the most of misfortune in a world where people are as expendable as the pawns on a chessboard. As its protagonist, Simeon is atypical in regards to his peers not only in the way he values camaraderie with others, but also in his desire for nothing more than what is presented to him, acting as a foil to his many betrayers including Paul, who turns against Simeon in the Lower Bluffs due to his own greed, and Kara Blithe, the Fifth Pantheon junior priestess committed to the seminary by her father, who seduces Simeon on a whim because she is above him in station. 

While Simeon’s story moves along what feels like a set trajectory with little agency on his part, Lucas proves masterful at balancing slice of life scenes of Simeon wending his way through the labyrinth of the Lower Bluffs and Fifth Pantheon religious festivities with thrilling skirmishes between thieves and sword fights to the death between gladiators. I found myself gasping out loud during pivotal moments, especially those of shocking despair: “A small cloud of dark smoke hovered just above the sack. As the flames swept the sack into oblivion, one final fragment of one of my pages held back, stubbornly unlit amidst the inferno, but only for a moment before it, too, joined the blackened charred remains surrounding it: Who are thou? Whence you come you—Gone.” 

Sword of the Godless is exhilarating. Its nuanced character dynamics add to the mystique of Lucas’s intricate world of revered prisoners and absent gods, and its twisty plot elements will keep readers on tenterhooks about Simeon’s future in Bajebluff, the seminary, and the gladiator’s arena.

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