Wings of Steel and Fury, by Sarah J. Daley
28 Aug 2025The Book
Synopsis:
The human world is no place for a god, but toiling on Earth may just teach an angel how to fly once again…
Eleazar Starson, prince of Splendour and heir to the Great Throne of Honor, is living his worst nightmare. Betrayed and grievously injured, he has been cast from a world of light and beauty to suffer in the Below, a world of darkness and despair populated with demonic ghouls and vile creatures. It is a terrible world, a human world. It is an awful place for a god, especially one as beautiful and brilliant as Eleazar.
But, broken and lost, he is a god struggling in the muck, his only allies a pair of atheist siblings who would sooner worship a burnt ghoul than show him proper obeisance and the closest gateway back to Splendour is half a world away through a wild and daunting landscape of chaos, monsters and men. He has no choice but to endure the unspeakable horrors of this human place, this war-torn world of carbines and steel rails and smoke-belching factories, not if he wishes to return to Splendour and reclaim his place among the Angelus.
And he will, Eleazar the Fallen, for the desire for vengeance glows like molten metal in his godly veins. Crippled as he is, a half-angel, no better than a human, he must find a new way to fly. Even if it means depending on the strange and frightening technology of the beastly humans. He will return to Splendour. Or bring Splendour crashing down around him.
My Review
Wings of Steel and Fury is a dark fantasy novel written by Sarah J. Daley, published by Angry Robot Books. A different twist on the myth of the fallen angel, an emotional and layered story that is not afraid to include dark themes such as PTSD, grief and addiction in the narrative, following two siblings, Diver and Fury, reluctantly partnering with Eleazar, a fallen Angelus, in a tense and compelling journey.
Eleazar was meant to be the next ruler of Splendour, but instead, he finds himself betrayed and fallen to Below, the disgusting (according to their teachings) world of the humans; badly hurt, he's taken into care by Diver and Fury, two siblings, and probably the only two atheists of their country. Balance and trust are not easy to find between the humans and the Angelus, but they will need to learn to collaborate while journeying through a torn war country, in order to get Eleazar back to Splendour and if possible, to learn more about Diver and Fury's mother.
It is interesting how raw the main characters are: all of our three characters are struggling with their own demons, battling to overcome them, but not being shy of portraying the most difficult aspects attached to them. While the trust is lacking at the start between Eleazar and the siblings, we will see how mutual cooperation will be the seed needed for a good relationship to grow. A trio of characters that definitely was one of the highlights of the book.
I've also found the setting to be quite interesting, a secondary world in constant war (around pre-WWI technological level), all while resources are funneled to Splendour in order to avoid a punishment from heaven; a dystopic situation where only a few ones know the truth. The departure from more classical settings definitely picked my interest.
In terms of pacing, we could say the book has two clear halves, with a clear first one that is slower, with the trio recovering and journeying, while the second one packs most of the action and the tension.
Wings of Steel and Fury is a dark twist on the fallen angel myth, a great fantasy novel that you might enjoy if you like messy and complicated characters, and suffering together with them.
The Author/s
Sarah J. Daley
Sarah J. Daley is a former chef who lives and writes in the Chicago Metropolitan area with her husband and teenaged son. She earned a degree in Landscape Architecture from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. Though she still enjoys the heat and chaos of a professional kitchen, she is now writing full-time. She enjoys traveling, creating costumes for comic con, riding the occasional horse, and streaming old sitcoms for background noise.