Picking up not long after The Sin in Steel, Ryan Van Loan’s The Justice in Revenge, the second book in his Fall of the Gods saga, once again features the Holmsian duo of Buc & Eld, but they aren’t mercenaries any more. They are part of Society, having gained important seats on the board of the Kanados Trading Company as a result of the events of the debut novel. Loan doesn’t waste time throwing chaos at his protagonists, with Buc still having rebellious thoughts and being drawn into multiple political plots.
The island nation of Servenza is a land of flint and steel, sail and gearwork, of gods both Dead and sleeping. It is a society where the wealthy few rule the impoverished many.
Determined to change that, former street-rat Buc, along with Eld, the ex-soldier who has been her partner in crime-solving, have claimed seats on the board of the powerful Kanados Trading Company. Buc plans to destroy the nobility from within—which is much harder than she expected.
Stymied by boardroom politics and dodging mages at every turn, Buc and Eld find a potential patron in the Doga, ruler of Servenza. The deal: by the night of the Masquerade, unmask whoever has been attempting to assassinate the Doga, thereby earning her support in the halls of power. Blow the deadline and she’ll have them deported to opposite ends of the world.
Armed with Eld’s razor-sharp sword and Buc’s even sharper intellect, the dynamic duo hit the streets just as the shadow religious conflict between the Gods begins to break into open warfare. Those closest to Buc and Eld begin turning up with their throats slit amid rumors that a hidden mastermind is behind everything that’s going wrong in Servenza.
Facing wrathful gods, hostile nobles, and a secret enemy bent on revenge, Buc and Eld will need every trick in their arsenal to survive. Luckily, extra blades aren’t the only things Buc has hidden up her sleeves.
Life as an executive is quite different from life as an adventurer seeking revenge and powerful magical objects, Buc soon learns. It can be a more divisive life, especially when you share headspace with a magical creature known as a Sin Eater. Even more difficult is when you experience major lapses in memory. Further difficulties ensue when the romantic feelings for your partner make you feel as if you need to push him away. A fire at a nearby factory that could have helped the Trading Company had devastating effects, not to just the people working there, but to Buc because the factory was something she pushed as a great money-making opportunity. If not for the fire, she would have been correct. Floating over a lot of the human conflict is the enmity between the Dead Gods and the Sin Eaters, the source of much of the magical power in the world.
Parallel to the politics of the Kanados Trading Company, Buc and Eld are roped into helping the Doga (the ruler of the island nation of Servenza where the action of the novel takes place) determine who is trying to murder her. Of course, there is a time limit (by the night of the big Masquerade party) on the clandestine assignment, but if the mission is completed, the Doga will be yet another powerful person who Buc will find supporting her.
Conflicts among conflicts, to put it mildly!
As Buc and Eld investigate the shadows, people begin dying. Meanwhile, Buc’s less than humble attitude and forbearing come into conflict with the Chair (head of the board of the Trading Company) as well as other members of the Board, so she’s feeling pressure on many ends. Those aforementioned memory lapses don’t help either.
Laced throughout these two stressful plots is the romantic thread connecting Buc and Eld. They’ve always been friends and partners, but their feelings for each other are intensifying, which makes them act dumber…as is often the case when two people realize they have deeper feelings for each other. In this regard, Van Loan handles what could be a standard romantic plot quite realistically, even if the situations the characters find themselves in is exacerbated by magic and political conflict.
One thing that Van Loan’s story does is make it easy to forget our protagonists are under 20 years old, they are both extremely capable, smart, and have lived a relatively full life. Another thing that Van Loan does quite well in his second outing with this duo is to both maintain their characters, while also showing some evolution for them. Along those lines, he brings the action back to a more confined local radius rather than the open seas, but this island of Servenza is extremely robust.
Despite all of the different conflicts fueling the plot, Van Loan has it all reined in and manages to connect what could be disparate plot threads together in a logical fashion. He’s proven a more than capable writer and storyteller with these two novels and has set the foundation for a fantastic series.
Recommended
© 2021 Rob H. Bedford
Trade Paperback | Tor Books
The Fall of the Gods (Volume 2)
July 2021 | 400 Pages (includes glossary)
Excerpt: https://www.tor.com/2021/06/23/excerpts-ryan-van-loan-the-justice-in-revenge/
http://www.ryanvanloan.com/
