Format: Hardcover, 448 pages
Release Date: July 21, 2020
Publisher: Tor Books
Source: Publisher
Genre: Epic Fantasy
A sparkling debut fantasy set in a diverse world, featuring dead gods, a pirate queen, shapeshifting mages, and a Sherlockian teenager determined to upend her society.
Buc and Eld: She’s a brilliant former street-rat, with a mind that leaps from clues to conclusions in the blink of an eye. He’s an ex-soldier, her champion and partner-in-crime. No…not in crime—in crime-solving.
In this fast-paced, action-driven, second world fantasy, the teenager and the veteran are the Holmes and Watson of a world where pirates roam the seas, mechanical engines can change the tide of battle, mages speak to each other across oceans, and earthly wealth is concentrated in the hands of a powerful few.
The Kanados Trading Company hires Buc and Eld to restore the flow of sugar—a source of power and wealth in Venice-like Servenza—from the Shattered Coast. Buc swiftly discovers that the trade routes have become the domain of a sharp-eyed pirate queen. All Buc has to do now is sink the Widowmaker's ship.
Unfortunately for Buc, the gods have other plans.
Unfortunately for them, so does Buc.
The Sin in the Steel
is the first novel in author Ryan Van Loan's The Fall of Gods series. It
is also the authors debut novel. 17-year old Sambuciña (Buc) Alhurra is a
smart, arrogant, and witty character who grew up living on the streets of
Servenza not knowing who her parents were. For the past 2 years, she's been
partnered with Eldritch (Eld) Rawlings a talented soldier she rescued who has a
tragic past and a deep hatred for magic. The pair have worked together solving
cases thought unsolvable. One of their cases ends with Buc and Eld being summoned
by the Kanadas Trading Company.
The book is full of pirates, mages, dead gods,
swashbuckling violence, and gore. Buc is gifted with genius intelligence but
was given a crappy lot in life. An orphan, growing up on the hard city streets,
Buc learned how to wield knives and use her wits to stay alive. Her best weapon
just happens to be a slingshot which she is deadly accurate using. Her
destitution and rebellious attitude evolves into disgust for the way the world
is: vengeful gods, nonsensical religions, corporate sleaze, and imperial
politics around every corner.
She and Eld found each other at the right moment in
time, pulling each other up by their bootstraps to form a strong bond of care
of support with the same mission to accomplish: overturn the hierarchy
responsible for the oppression that seeps through every pore of society. Surprisingly,
Buc also has a love for libraries; somewhere in this story I believe she claims
to have read 300 plus books including pamphlets which you get some cliff notes
at the end of the book.
There is a strange disconnect between the ages of Buc
and Eld. She’s either 16, or 17, and he clearly says he’s 22. Buc is supposed
to be a Sherlock Holmes of this story, but she makes so, so many bad decisions
and choices. She claims she’s never been wrong; I must digress. Lots of things
go wrong in this story. Eld creates much-needed balance in a story that Buc threatens
to spin out of control at times (though, he does not always succeed).
There are
some interesting side characters as well beginning with Chan Sha, also known as
the Widowmaker, is an engaging pirate captain. She may be more than just a
pirate. She has been targeting the Ghost Captain, also known as the Dead
Walker. I don’t think we’ve seen the last of her.
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