Full Verse Review: The Covenant Of Steel. By SPBasilio.

Tell me, reader, what do you know of time loops?

Some might say they are the greatest advantage. Others, that repetition is the Mother of Learning. For those of us who once investigated mystical insurance coverage, I can assure you, they are nothing less than a pain in the posterior.

Have you ever tried to bill for damages that occurred in a deleted timeline?

No?

What about calling a witness who does not recall the incident because, legally speaking, it has not happened, will not happen, and—the one occasion it did happen—occurred in a branch of causality now deemed inadmissible?

You see the problem.

I quit that life in favour of reviewing web literature. You know where you stand with a novel. Usually. The pages do not reset when you die. The protagonist may suffer, certainly, but at least the chapter numbers have the decency to remain where you left them.

Yet here I am, reviewing The Covenant of Steel—a time-turning experience in its own right—enduring flashbacks of explaining to fraudulent claimants that if the gods do not claim the damage, their policy does not cover it.

I will save you all the time…

Get it?

That used to kill in the bureau.

The Covenant of Steel is an ambitious mixed bag: often compelling, sometimes vexing, but rarely lacking in imagination.

There is much to enjoy in the story, but also areas where I found it rather frustrating. Not quite as frustrating as explaining to Cyclops that after Jean Grey’s third resurrection, life assurance stops being assurance and starts being a subscription service, but frustrating nonetheless.

Before I dive into the particulars of the novel, let us take an overview.

As you have no doubt guessed, The Covenant of Steel is a time-loop fiction. It is also a science-fantasy isekai with mecha and progression elements.

We find ourselves in a world suffused with magic and ravaged by horrors. It is a world in collapse, one that has forgotten the stars and may just lack the will to gaze heavenward in search of them. It is a world in which sleeping captives dream nightmares into being—manifesting with black rain and slaughter without discrimination.

Lieutenant Leonard Von Altair awakens in this world having died more than three thousand times trying to save his own.

From there, he is made to live, die, and repeat against overwhelming odds in order to uncover the mystery of this new world and discover the truth of what became of the old one. And if, through all of that, he can recover what he had lost—all the better.

The blend of science fiction and magical fantasy works well in this novel. It is held together by early revelations that tie Altair’s lost world to the one in which he now finds himself. If you are concerned that the blend of high fantasy and technology might clash, the author melds the genres well—rest assured.

Unlike immortal policyholders…

They pay out of pocket.

So then, where do the cracks begin to show in this otherwise solid work? I will not keep you in suspense: the issues lie in the pacing and the craft.

We shall address those in good time. First, however, we must turn to the matter of…

Character & Voice:

By the very first chapter, Lieutenant Leonard Von Altair has died three thousand four hundred and twenty-three times, resisting an overwhelming strike by the nebulous Precursor forces. He is a man on the brink of insanity, held together by three things: the love of his fiancée, Elena; his AI companion; and the cocktail of emotion-suppressing drugs said companion relentlessly pumps into his system.

In the final iteration of his old world, the Precursors arrive not as an armada, but aboard a solitary, needle-like colossus of a starship. Altair dies one final time—and awakens in a magical world.

Through Altair, the author paints the portrait of a man coming apart. You feel the weight of his trauma in the prose: the deaths endured, the world lost, the woman he could not save, and the impossible burden of remembering all of it.

Take this example:

Altair, still watching the memory window, couldn’t hold it back anymore. His chest tightened in pain. He was breathless; numerous memories of deaths, including that of Elena, started assaulting him as tears streamed down his face…’

He is not a protagonist who simply rises above it all. He is wounded. Pining. Unmoored from everything he knew, yet still trying to remain himself in a world where he does not belong.

A less thoughtful novel might have asked the protagonist to shrug off all that Altair has endured. The Covenant of Steel does not make that mistake. His trauma lingers. It festers. At times, it paralyses him, and he feels more real because of it. Despite that, he still acts when action is required. He strategises. He suppresses his feelings. He keeps moving, aided by discipline, desperation, and the sort of AI-administered pharmaceuticals his insurers will certainly not be paying for.

Much of the story centres on how Altair reconciles his pain with the need to press forward—a need made merciless by resurrections that continue endlessly until he does.

Yet even broken, Altair does not merely survive. He clings to his principles and military training, exploiting his time-looping curse not only to empower himself, but to secure the best possible outcome for those he chooses to protect. Even when that means abandoning one timeline to slaughter, so that another might have a chance at victory.

But the reset does not absolve him. The story does not treat discarded timelines as empty drafts, nor the people within them as temporary ink. It makes you sit with the cost:

‘With a sudden realization and a dagger-like feeling coming from his throat… he realized he wasn’t able to turn his head; it was already decapitated.
…
She couldn’t feel anything anymore, just silent confusion. Blood was now pouring out of each and every orifice of her body… “We aren’t even worth saving in your eyes?”’

The role of deuteragonist is filled by the AI Vigil.

As a consequence of being steeped in magic, Altair’s AI companion is granted true sentience—a feat the novel explains was never achieved by Terra’s advanced technology before its fall.

Vigil’s conversion from soulless machine to over-emotional, loyal companion is abrupt. In fairness, it does spend some time contemplating the nature of being, but this comes later in the narrative, not soon enough for a consciousness undergoing a transformation of such magnitude. There is a short recognition that Vigil is now alive, and then it is business as usual—only now with a slightly neurotic living computer riding shotgun in Altair’s skull.

To be fair, Vigil does awaken in the midst of conflict. That is a legitimate story reason for brushing past a moment that should have been more momentous, but the change still feels too drastic. The surges of emotion feel too pre-built, too pre-rendered, to ring true for a character experiencing them all for the first time.

There is a real lost opportunity here: an opportunity for Vigil to reckon with emotional experience it previously understood only as theory. It would have been a delight to watch the AI compare these new stimuli against its old models of behaviour, discovering the gulf between recognising grief in a pilot’s vitals and feeling something like grief itself.

Do not get me wrong: Vigil is by no means a bad character. It is just that its loyalty, empathy, and raw childlike dependence would have felt more earned had they been wrestled with, reckoned with, and developed into, rather than arriving as a pre-packaged soul update.

The cast is rounded out by a small party of adventurers. They are distinct and recognisable through the tropes they embody, but remain a touch one-note. I have no doubt that, as the story progresses, their characters will develop; the author sets each of them on firm enough footing. Even so, in the forty chapters I read, this band of survivors often functioned more as guides to the world than as fully realised characters in their own right.

Honestly, though, this shortcoming feels more like a product of the novel’s pacing than of the characters themselves—which brings us neatly to…

Narrative & Structure:

Much like policyholders who insist their prophecy should not count as a pre-existing condition, there is simply no arguing with it: the pacing of this novel is hit and miss.

Of the forty chapters I read for this review, nearly all were centred on a single monster attack wave. That is a bold structural choice. It gives the opening arc urgency, pressure, and a constant sense of danger—but it also means that little progress is made in exploring the wider world Altair has arrived in.

Please do not get me wrong. There is progress. Altair develops emotionally. The mystery surrounding his time-looping deepens. The fate of his planet becomes more intriguing. Much of this comes through visions, implications, and subtle hints.

It works.

By refusing to spell everything out, the author invites the reader to participate in the mystery alongside Altair. We are not merely being told there is something larger happening behind the scenes; we are being encouraged to notice it, question it, and piece it together.

I also understand the purpose behind drawing the battle out. The conflict escalates. The odds worsen. Altair is forced to adapt, fail, reassess, and refine his tactics until he can claw his way towards the best possible outcome.

That can be extremely effective. In time-loop fiction, it is not only expected; it is almost obligatory. Repetition is the engine. Iteration is the promise.

The issue is proportion. Too much word count is spent on details that could have been compressed. Alternatively, the crisis could have arrived later, after the characters had been more fully established and the world more thoroughly explored. As it stands, the opening arc sometimes feels as though the story has hit the accelerator before giving the reader enough time to properly learn the shape of the road.

Still, even with the pacing holding back broader exploration, the world itself remains one of the novel’s strongest draws. What we are shown is strange, haunted, and full of implication—which brings us to…

Worldbuilding & Themes:

The magical world of The Covenant of Steel is one facing collapse. It is a world that has forgotten all but one star in the heavens, and where a half-forgotten kingdom lies dreaming beneath corrupted waters. From those dreams, nightmares take form as monsters.

The image is wonderfully bleak:

‘They are the nightmare creatures spawned from the eternally dreaming citizens of the Kingdom of Babel… the kingdom sank after a never-ending black rain befell the nation… The kingdom now lies deep within the black lake now called Styx.’

This is where the novel’s worldbuilding is at its strongest. It does not merely present monsters as creatures to be fought, but as symptoms of a world that is itself wounded. Babel is not just a ruin. It is a sleeping trauma, leaking nightmares into reality.

From an insurance perspective, this is, of course, a catastrophe. Flooding. Mass haunting. Nightmare infestation. Divine negligence. One scarcely knows which box to tick first.

Beyond all of that, Babel is tied to Altair’s old world, deepening the mystery of his arrival and suggesting that this fantasy realm may not be as separate from Terra as it first appears.

Magic is commonplace, as are ancient artefacts—and Altair, together with his spider-like mech, is hinted to be not merely a stranger in this world, but one of its oldest relics.

The world is intriguing, and I have little doubt it will become more so as the story progresses. We know there is magic. We know there are steam-powered knights, guilds, ancient artefacts, and monsters. However, due to the pacing, that is about as much as I can say with confidence. Across forty chapters, the setting is scarcely traversed.

But what we do learn deepens the story’s themes of loss, horror, and striving against unwinnable odds—of carving victory from defeat. Not through sheer might, but through the refusal to accept a life lived on terms not of your own making. Freedom has a cost in The Covenant of Steel, and the story is at its best when forcing its characters to pay it.

Craft:

In my past life, a certain policyholder attempted to claim compensation for damages caused by a spectre that manifested only when unobserved. Her policy covered hauntings, certainly, but without a credible witness, I was forced to inform her that the claim was, regrettably, hit and miss.

The same can be said of the craft in this novel.

The prose is generally clear.

Often evocative.

But occasionally overwrought.

Certain scenes are overwritten. Take this as an example:

‘The Stygian immediately reformed its limbs into small blade-like structure, it raised its foremost part and slammed it in a downward arc, which Brennan deflected by using both of his hands and maneuvering the handle of the axe, so that the attack would slide into a different direction.
…

However, he did not let it bother him any further, so he moved back one of his feet, and redirected another attack, and as he was redirecting it, he used the power of his core and lower muscles to turn in a three-hundred-sixty-degree, and using the momentum of the turn he shifted his body to effectively transfer most of the energy into the axe, and slammed it towards the body of the Stygian….

The Stygian was sliced in half in a forty-five-degree angle.’

This level of specificity is not necessary. It is clunky. Worse, it is distracting, obscuring the action and ironically making the scene less clear.

Beyond that, the author sometimes relies on redundancy and repetition where they might trust the reader to pick up on nuance. Emotions are often stated rather than exhibited, blunting impacts that should cut like mythic steel.

None of this is a deal-breaker. As I said, the prose is generally clear. Where web literature is concerned, I would even say the writing is above average. What it is not, at least yet, is tight or fully polished. In places, it has the texture of prose that would benefit from another tightening pass. The ideas are there, the ambition is there, but the prose needs to be honed to a sharper point.

And if any policyholders find themselves injured by that point, please be advised that your insurance will not cover it.

Closing Thoughts:

The Covenant of Steel is not a flawless work, but it is an ambitious one. Its pacing can frustrate. Its prose sometimes strains beneath the weight of its own detail. Some characters, Vigil especially, would benefit from more room to breathe into the roles they are given.

Even so, there is a great deal here worth reading.

Altair is a wounded, compelling protagonist. The world is bleak, strange, and rich with implication. The blend of science fiction, fantasy, mecha, and time-loop progression is handled with enough confidence to make the whole thing feel cohesive rather than cluttered.

In short, I recommend The Covenant of Steel—with caveats.

Read it if you enjoy traumatised soldiers, impossible odds, grim mysteries, magical ruin, spider-like mechs, and protagonists who treat death less like an ending and more like a deeply inconvenient administrative delay.

Just be warned: the road is uneven.

But there is steel here.

And, with honing, it may yet shine.

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