The Sin in the Steel by Ryan Van Loan: A Book Review
Genre: Fantasy
Van Loan starts his writing journey with giving the ultimate story. Full of dangerous pirates, bloody sword fights, beautiful women (and men?), and magic, the world of Servenza will be a place the reader would wish to be able to survive. Following the story of Buc and Eld, a best friend crimefighting and solving duo, the reader travels across the seas to solve the mystery of all with the hope that the duo will finally be able to achieve their dream of ridding the world of the social ladder.
In the beginning, it was a fast-paced story, which was great. It felt like a real adventure as almost nothing was going as plan and the heroes refused to show weakness. However, somewhere towards the middle of the story, Van Loan turned the fantasy into more of an awkward love story. While it was not a full out romance (there was no kissing until the end), the use of the words man and woman were used in such a sense, it felt weird and unnatural. While in the beginning, the mention of how Eld feels about Buc seems natural and how everyone tends to act as if she were his can be kind of comical (mainly because Buc is the leader, so half the time they should be directing their questions/comments to here and she lets them know it), when in Buc’s point of view, her thinking of Eld that way does not seem natural. I am putting this off as Ryan Van Loan is not used to working in the mind of woman and when talking through her, he still uses his own eyes. This would describe why Buc’s description of some female pirates is so sexual whereas her description of Eld is mostly his hair and muscles.
The story could have been better regarding this. It would have been interesting to see the story solely from Eld’s point of view especially if Van Loan wanted to have the romantic storyline tie in well. The story would have also taken a more feminist approach as Eld clearly knows Buc is the leader and works to support her. Doing this, some parts would have to be in third person, but Van Loan seems to already hold a thread of Buc being seen as outside and it would have made the writing easier to go through as Buc is a very unreliable narrator.
That said, the story was not terrible, it just could have been better.
It appears other books will be continuing the story; however, the story’s end does not draw the reader in to want to figure out what happens next.
Plot: 08/10
Characters: 07/10
Writing: 06/10
Editor: 04/10 (the editor should have suggested to try different POVs)
Total: 25/40
Title: The Sin in the Steel
Author: Ryan Van Loan
Edition: First
Published: July 21, 2020
Publisher: Tor Books
ISBN: 9781250222589
If you want to get it: Amazon; Barnes&Noble
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