Pitched as Mission Impossible for fantasy readers, A Gamble of Gods is an ambitious debut novel, which blends science fiction, fantasy, and adventure, marking the start of The Order of the Dragon series, by Mitriel Faywood, one of the SPFBO9 entrants. A character-driven story, told from the perspective of our three MCs, which makes a fun adventure with high stakes, and some romance.

The first of our POVs is Kristian, a professor from a futuristic university, who gets forced to be on the run after an assassin starts targetting him. And Faywood, when introducing this character, sets perfectly the adventurous tone we can expect from the novel, with a character whose idea of life was the exact opposite of what he's going to live.
The second one is Connor Drew, a thief-for-hire, who spends most of his time stealing valuable artifacts for dukes and kings of his world; a sort of Casanova living in a land where magic is the norm, instead of the exception.
And our final POV is Selena Soto, a woman from the Earth in the year 2037. She's feeling unwell, but doctors can't really diagnose her; she cannot imagine that all will end leading her to the adventure of her life.
The three characters are somehow related to a mysterious order, the Order of the Dragon, which will throw them into a mission that will put them in danger, but at the same time, will shake down all their beliefs.

With this premise, we have a really entertaining plot, full of action, which takes us to explore the different worlds that are part of this shared universe, having the opportunity to see how these characters behave in situations that are unfamiliar to them. As there are several worlds we explore, different between them, it's difficult to ascribe this book to a concrete genre, because some of them have elements that are clearly fantasy, while others (for example Kristian's) are clearly in the territory of science fiction.

The pacing lands in an excellent spot, not being excessively fast despite the several action scenes that are packed into this book. Building those characters take time, so sometimes we are given a breath in between more tense scenes.

Probably, the only aspect that I didn't really like was how romance was established among some of our characters. It was frustrating at some points, but overall, it's a minor gripe for me.

A Gamble of Gods is an excellent debut novel, which sets pretty much a world that I hope we continue exploring in subsequent adventures with this group of characters. Faywood has proven her skill as a competent novelist, and I can't wait to see her next books!