The sleek cover with the blue gray skies, hovering asteroids, space ships and sporadic laser beams is evocative of the much loved works of science-fiction one grew up on. However, when Lord Ganesha makes an opening into the narrative and goes on to play a stellar role, Ashok K. Banker's Gods of War reveals itself to be a unusual ball game altogether from the ordinary science fiction. Cutting through figurative, metaphysical, spiritual, existential and political planes in his storytelling, the novel lingers tantalizingly on the undying question of whether at the end of all physics is god and god is physics. Burdened with contrasts in the tonal quality of writing, the book could be distantly disconcerting.