An Okay Magical Pirate Adventure

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Ryan Van Loan's debut adventure, The Sin in the Steel, centers around Buc and Eld - two teenage detectives with a rouge way of handling situations. They are sent out on a mission to find a pirate queen when a twist of events causes them to discover there is more to their mission than they originally planned.

I'm very much a huge fan of anything involving pirates, the supernatural, and female protagonists, and while Van Loan's book is filled with all these factors and more, I found the book as a whole was just okay. The set up of the female lead, Buc, I felt, was underwhelming and lacking much backstory and voice. Every other character like Eld, Chan Sha, and many others had more thorough descriptions and were easier to picture as opposed to Buc, which I found to be a challenge while reading.

After a bit of exposition contained in about the first 150 pages, I felt Van Loan's strength was in the writing of all the action scenes. I found myself hooked to every pirate battle moment, loving the way he describes the action, feeling I was on the boats themselves.

While I enjoyed the book, I was not blown away. Though, I would recommend it to any friend wanting a fun adventure and to be taken away to a fantasy land.