Microreview [book]: The Memory in the Blood by Ryan Van Loan

The Memory in the Blood concludes Rvan Van Loan's Fall of the Gods (Buc and Eld) trilogy, by raising the stakes to a confrontation with truly metaphysical powers threatening to dominate the world.

Sambucina "Buc" Alhurra has been through a lot. From brilliant street rat with a mind like a fantasy Sherlock Holmes, to being bound to a shard of a Goddess that gave her even more power and ability, her goals have been clear ever since she met her partner Eldritch `Eld' Rawlings, former military officer (and much belike the Watson to her Holmes): destroy the Dead Gods and any other power

In The Memory of the Blood, Ryan Van Loan draws this story to a suitable catastrophic conclusion but the road to get there is by turns familiar and unfamiliar both, and like in the first and second books, Buc (and Eld) will have to grow, change and face hard truths about themselves and each other, and level up to deal with the foes they must face--the Sin Eaters, the goddess Ciris (responsible for the shard, Sin, in Buc's head), and the Dead Gods themselves.

First of all it is somewhat of a spoiler to say that at the beginning of this novel, based on the events of the second, Buc is pretty sure Eld has been dead and has been dead for sometime. Like the second novel, Van Loan doesn't feel to start right when the previous novel ended, instead jumping us forward, and letting Buc piece in, and the reader figure out, what happened in the intervening months. 

I want to explore that concept and elucidate it a bit more. There is the idea in photography of "negative space", of the space that is not filled by the subject or the focus, often left completely blank to show off the main subject . This negative space helps throw the subject, the actual matter of the photograph into relief and keep the viewers attention on it, but that negative space as an undertone helps define the main subject

I want to argue here that all of the adventure that Buc has between these novels, even though we get some parts of them related to one degree or another, are the negative space for the Fall of the Gods Trilogy. There are some fairly major events that happen in the space between the two novels--between the first and second novel. (The Sin in the Steel and The Justice in Revenge) there is a whole plot of Buc's grandiose plans in the Kanados Trading Company, and how they ultimately went down in literal flames. And for that being negative space and only something that is related, it is enormously important to the subject matter and themes of the novel, particularly colonialism. Through the events in that particular negative space, Buc learned a painful lesson which informs events and her actions in both The Justice in Revenge and here in The Memory in the Blood.  Again, too, between that second book and the third book, Buc has been through a lot, gaining allies and associates, and having uprooted herself into the city of Cordoban.  Cordoban is an entrepot of trading and commerce and knowledge, the names and terms vaguely reminiscent of Arabic and Middle Eastern languages. We get it in dribs and drabs why Buc is here, how that works going forward, and that negative space helps put the action into relief and visibility once Buc moves her plans to fruition.

One last thing about this negative space and withholding direct things from the reader, is that it happens within the narrative as well. Buc's relationship with the shard of Ciris known as Sin is an uneasy relationship at best, that unease having started in the previous novel, and having gone straight through to here. At this point, Buc is more than willing at times to shut Sin down and keep Sin from being aware of events and the situation. This is a point that Sin complains about when Sin learns it's been two weeks, complete with and a radical chance of scenery, since last Sin was aware of what Buc was doing.

So what is the author saying here in the use of these negative spaces, and how does it influence the events of the novel. I think you can take the negative space as a metaphor for any number of things, depending on your flavor of speculation, but the one that I do like is one of memory loss and PTSD, and what we remember, or do not remember, during trauma, and how those influences change a person. How people are changed by trauma also dovetails into the story of Eld.  As mentioned above, as a spoiler, he does come back, after being thought dead. His space and role, and what is expected of him, and how he fights to be himself could have been an entire novel from his point of view in and of itself.  Here it is a major subplot (and Eld gets a substantial amount of POV screen time) but it feels a little unexplained, directly, again, relying on negative space.

I've spent a lot in this review talking about things that are not there, and so I think at this point it is time to talk about what IS here, what is thrown into relief by the use of the negative space.  The first two novels, positive and negative space, lead up to this latest plot, and the stakes do go truly cosmic.Buc's desire to go against the Godshas been present since the first book, but here, in The Memory in the Blood, she has a chance to actually strike at the Dead Gods, and the very living and equally dangerous goddess Ciris as well. Like all of Buc's plans, as in the tradition of her progenitor Sherlock Holmes, her plans are a combination of clockwork precision, improvisation, and audaciousness. 

It should be noted that Buc's story isn't, in my view, really about Gods per se, in a theological sense. What Buc's story has been for me, since it's beginning, is all about colonialism, oppression and how Great Powers grind the average person on the street down in their endless appetites. That motif has been throughout the series, and Buc's attempts to come to terms with it, and upend the apple cart, has been the driving force of who and what she is.

Her attempts to join the Kandos Trading Company in The Sin in the Steel (and her fall from grace in the liminal space between that book and The Justice in Revenge) can be seen in the light of the brilliant Buc trying to co-opt and work "within the system" to make it better--only to find out that her attempts to do so in the end run up against too many entrenched interests, and taking a third option is the only way to do lasting change. 

That theme of colonialism and great powers moves upward from the Trading Company to the political conflict that overhangs the third book between Buc's native city of Servenza and the duchy of Normain, with powers like the Cordoban Confederacy caught between them in their struggle. Going up to the final, cosmic scale, the longstanding conflict between The Dead Gods and Ciris herself, a conflict Buc stumbled into quite literally in the second novel, is ultimately the most fulminating and grand scale expression of colonialism in the novel, a colonialism of temporal and spiritual power alike, with the fate of the entire world in the balance. Given Buc's arc up to this point, her efforts and goal to topple both of these oppressive forces makes for a logical endpoint to the entire series. 

There is much else here, from Buc and Eld finally figuring out their relationship, Buc growing as a person, and as in the first two novels, a stream of imaginary literary references and the books Buc has read. One marker throughout the series as to the time jumps between novels, is that in between them, the number of books Buc has read explodes. Van Loan likes to play with these references and fake books, alluding to ideas from our own history and philosophy and showing that at the bottom, once Buc learned to read, that she is in the end, like us, like those who pick up the series--she is a *reader* and likes to think about what she has read and how that applies to her life and what is happening now. In the end, I left the conclusion of this series with such thoughts myself--about colonialism, oppression and how to fight systemic injustice.

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The Math

Baseline Assessment: 7/10

Bonuses: +1 for a rich use of liminal space to tell the story of Buc and her fight against the Gods

+1 for excellent and immersive worldbuilding

Penalties: -1 Sometimes the pacing of this final novel isn’t all that it should be.

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10

Reference: Van Loan, Ryan The Memory in the Blood [Tor, 2022]

POSTED BY: Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I’m just this guy, you know? @princejvstin. 

Microreview [book]: The Sin In the Steel by Ryan Van Loan

The Sin in the Steel marries a genderflipped Sherlockian story with an epic fantasy context to create a strong and entertaining adventure.

Buc and Eld make an unusual pair. Buc is a young genius in the Sherlockian mode, able to analyze and deduct and run her brain at a mile a minute. Eld is a veteran with sword and fighting skills for the both of them. When they are boxed into a corner, though, the only way for the pair of freelance investigators is to take on a mission to find out why the sugar shipments from the tropics are no longer coming through. Buc and Eld discover a plot involving Pirate Queens, Undead sailors, scheming Gods and more in Ryan Van Loan’s The Sin in the Steel.

Going into the novel, I did not quite realize that this was going to be a twist on a Sherlock adventure, and it was a delight to meet Buc and Eld on Holmes and Watsonian  terms. The author takes this further than I expected--giving Buc a use of a drug in order to focus and think in a productive way, and making Eld a veteran Who Has Seen Things.. The youthful nature of the protagonists (Buc is 17 and Eld a couple of years later) puts them between a “Young Sherlock Holmes” and a Traditionally aged Holmes and Watson. This makes the pair placed in an interesting spot as characters--they are competent, sometimes frighteningly so, but they have NOT known each other for so long as to know every detail of their lives. In point of fact, revelations of the backstories of Eld and Buc, to each other and to the reader make up a lot of the work of the character drama that helps drive the narrative. And given their age, they are youthful enough to sometimes make painful but understandable mistakes. This provides us with well rounded characters.

One interesting technique Van Loan uses is to provide us with Buc’s point of view from the first person, and Eld’s from a third person point of view. I would have expected the reverse, as the Watsonian point of view of standing outside Holmes and having Holmes’s brilliance elicited from the outside. But here, since Buc’s character and character growth are so essential to the novel, having Buc as our first person character is the choice that the author makes here, and it is an unexpected, but effective choice. Given that she really is the focus for growth and change (as opposed to Eld, whose arc is more revelatory rather than evolving) , this gives us a strong character arc to ground the novel in. If you ever wanted to read a youthful genderflipped Sherlock Holmes character in a fantasy verse, The Sin in the Steel is definitely for you.

The plotting and worldbuilding equally shine here. Buc and Eld getting rooked into searching out the source of a sugar trade disruption works on a number of levels, as Buc tries to use her intelligence to make a clever deal, and at the same time, we get a whole sheaf of information on how commerce, mercantilism, government and more work. The feeling of the novel is in line with the Flintlock fantasy era in the vein of Django Wexler or Brian McClellan but with a less military and a much more economics and political focus. That politics extends into the magic and the religious aspects of the novel, as the story spins out a religious conflict that uses the magic and theology of the world to make it less of a Wars of Reformation and more of a shadow conflict that Buc and Eld find themselves caught up in. There is a lot of lumber laid down in setting this all up, and even by the end of the novel, there is plenty for future novels to explore, here.

The plotting itself puts Buc and Eld into the midst of a variety of interesting secondary characters. Pirate Queen. Check. Undead Sea Captain that would put Barbossa in the shade. Check. Ambitious and avid Archaeologist who might have the keys to solving the entire mystery of what’s going on. Check. All of the characters have goals, ambitions, plots and sometimes rather prickly and fraught relations and conflicts between the various characters. There is a good diversity of characters in terms of gender and sexuality, helping to provide a rich tapestry of different people to help propel the narrative. I particularly liked Chan Sha, the Pirate Queen, who is far more complicated in action and motivation than she appears and Buc and Eld suspects. Her relationship with the Ghost Captain illuminates the feeling that the characters Buc and Eld encounter have relationships, conflicts and plans of their own that they intersect, interfere and modify.

And for a character and plot focused novel, the action beats when they occur, are good. The flintlock fantasy setting means there is plenty of guns and magic and swords at play and Buc, for all of her Sherlockian self, can be a dangerous opponent as the veteran Buc is. I found her use of a slingshot a rather unusual weapon of choice, but she makes full and effective use of it throughout the novel. The action beats, be it a standoff with undead, or a ship to ship battle are well described, excellent paced and explicated and provide lightning bolts of excitement in the narrative to galvanize the reader. There are plenty of buckles to be swashed here.

One additional thing I did like about the novel is the literate nature of Buc and how that literacy not only works to her personality and character growth, but also to plot and also to worldbulding as well. This is a world where literacy is still a niche activity and libraries are by and large small. Buc is an avid reader, but this is a world where that means that she has read a prodigious number of books for her age, her time and place -- but that still means it’s only several hundred books. Buc is a literate personality as well, sharpening her mind on books in the same way that a Tyrion Lannister might, and what she has learned and the lure of other books definitely. The end of the book has notes on some of the imaginary books that Buc has read, and not only what they are, but what Buc thought of them. I do hope further books with Buc continue this practice.

While there might be some first novel pacing and plotting issues in the novel, they are not overly serious and did not overly hurt the enjoyment of the novel. On the contrary, I am really interested in what the author can and will do with Buc, Eld and this world. The Sin in the Steel was entertaining, flowed well, and kept wanting me to pick it up again and again to continue the narrative and story. More, please!

The Math

Baseline Assessment: 7/10.

Bonuses: +1 for a wonderful pair of main characters, as well as a diverse set of secondary characters with goals, dimensionality and power.
+1 for inventive and interesting worldbuilding with a variety of techniques and methods to showcase and build the author’s world.

Penalties: -1 A little bit of first novel roughness in plotting and writing.

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10, well worth your time and attention

Reference: Van Loan, Ryan. The Sin in the Steel [Tor,  2020]

POSTED BY: Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I’m just this guy, you know? @princejvstin.

6 Books with Ryan Van Loan

Ryan Van Loan served six years as a Sergeant in the United States Army Infantry (PA National Guard) where he served on the front lines of Afghanistan. He has traveled around the world with his wife, wandering Caribbean island haunts, exploring the palaces and cathedrals of Europe, and hiking with elephants in the rainforests of Southeast Asia. Ryan's forthcoming novel, The Sin in the Steel hits shelves on July 21, 2020. Today, Ryan lives in Pennsylvania with his wife and two dogs where he’s hard at work on his next novel.

Today he shares his Six Books With Us.

1. What book are you currently reading? 

The Blacktongue Thief by Christopher Buehlman. It’s about a newly minted thief who has to pay off their student loan debts to the guild (relatable), a witch-in training, and a kickass knight with a war raven who go on an adventure together. It’s dark, but delightful in a gritty way that hits some of my favorite adventure fantasy notes. Fans of Nicholas Eames, Douglas Hulick, and V.E. Schwab will enjoy this one...unfortunately Christopher’s fantasy debut doesn’t land on shelves until next year.

I hate when someone names a book that’s not out on shelves right now, so let me also plug the book I read before this one: The Steel Crow Saga by Paul Kreuger. It’s a tight, standalone fantasy--think Pokemon in the immediate aftermath of World War II with half a dozen richly imagined cultures that reminded me of southeast Asia and a cast who all have mysteries they hope none discover.


2. What upcoming book are you really excited about?

I have to pick one? My understanding is that we’re getting books from the aforementioned V.E. Schwab, Jim Butcher, and Scott Lynch to name a few! Heh. I am hearing really great things about Katherin Addison’s (The Goblin Emperor) The Angel of the Crows. The title alone had me, but the premise--1880’s London with vampires and werewolves and angels and Jack the Ripper--made click pre-order as fast as I could.

3. Is there a book you’re currently itching to read again?

So many! I grew up in a rural area so before I could drive, my only friends in the summertime were books and I loved reading so much that I was reading 5+ books/week from the age of 10 until right around the time I graduated college. I have a lot of old friends I want to see again. That said, I think I’m probably due for a Watership Down reread. That book taught me a lot about friendship and perseverance and in the year 2020, those are both important things to have in your life.





4. How about a book you’ve changed your mind about – either positively or negatively?

This is a great question! By which I mean it’s a hard one… N.K. Jemisin’s The Fifth Season was a book I immediately appreciated, but I had reason to re-read it recently and I was just blown away by what a master class it is in voice as a device for the story and how point of view can dramatically influence a scene(s). Then there are the themes of the book itself and the layers upon layers of craft that she wields throughout that build to an emotional crescendo that I saw coming, but still was utterly unprepared for. So my answer is I’ve positively changed my mind more positively!




5. What’s one book, which you read as a child or a young adult, that has had a lasting influence on your writing?

A lot of the books I read as a child and young adult have had lasting influences on me, but as far as my writing goes I think it would have to be The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley. It’s a story about a royal outcast who sets out to prove her worth along with a put-out-to-pasture, lame, war stallion by fighting dragons. But it’s also a story about living with depression and finding ways to continue to make a difference even when you’re not sure that you matter at all, let alone your actions. It’s about finding your way through that fog in your soul. I am not a believer in AP English capital ‘T’ theme, but I am a believer in writing stories that matter. The Hero and the Crown does what I strive to do with every book: entertain with heart.


6. And speaking of that, what’s your latest book, and why is it awesome? 

Why is my latest book awesome? In a word? Buc.

The Sin in the Steel is the story of Sambuciña ‘Buc’ Alhurra, the compellingly chaotic heroine who is part Sherlock Holmes, part young Indiana Jones and ALL herself. Buc shares a sisterhood with Arya Stark and Lila Bard of V.E. Schwab’s Shades of Magic. The first private investigator in her world, Buc’s too smart for her own good with a razor-sharp blade hidden up her sleeve and an even sharper tongue. She’s finally landed the case that will set her and her partner-in-crime solving, Eld, up for life...if they survive. With her wit and Eld’s sword they’ll have to best pirate queens, mages, and uncharted seas to solve a mystery empires have failed to uncover.

Unfortunately for Buc, the gods have other plans.

Unfortunately for the gods, so does Buc.

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POSTED BY: Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I’m just this guy, you know? @princejvstin.