The title of James Logan’s The Silverblood Promise refers to a moment early in the novel that triggers the story’s main string of events. But Logan leaves a gap in his narrative. While he depicts his protagonist, Lukan Gardova, as pursuing an epic quest which supposedly brings inherent meaning and purpose to his life, Logan does so without bothering to examine the nature of that meaning and purpose, or his protagonist’s experience of it.
As the novel begins, Lukan is living what he views as a life of poverty. Having once been a low-ranking aristocrat in the nation of Parva, Lukan has been disowned by his father, Conrad Gardova, after being expelled from the academy where he’d been studying. His offense had been to kill his opponent during a state-sanctioned duel. Outraged that his son had tarnished the Gardova family’s reputation, Lukan’s father cut all ties with his son, pointedly ignoring the fact that many witnesses to the duel reported that Lukan’s opponent—a much wealthier classmate—had actually attacked him after the match had officially ended, and that Lukan had therefore acted in self-defense. Now residing in the secluded village of Torlaine on the edge of the ruins of the ancient Phaeron Empire, Lukan subsists in the midst of his gambling and drinking habits, financing what he sees as an aimless and meaningless existence by spotting when someone is cheating him at cards.
It’s in this context that Lukan is visited by his family’s steward, Shafia, who brings news that his estranged father has recently been murdered by a mysterious group of assassins. The only clue Shafia has found as to the identity of Conrad’s killers is a slip of paper onto which the murdered man scrawled three dying words: Lukan, Saphrona, and Zandrusa. The first word is obviously Lukan’s name, and the second a distant port city which neither Lukan nor Shafia have ever visited. The third word, however, is a complete mystery.
Shafia has come, of course, to give Lukan the quest of traveling to the city of Saphrona in order to learn the meaning of the word Zandrusa, and in so doing (presumably) bring his father’s killers to justice. Here, Shafia asks Lukan to make the silverblood promise of the novel’s title and cut his palm with a dagger while vowing over his own blood to hunt down his father’s killers. Initially reluctant to make this pledge due to a lingering anger which he still harbors against his father, Lukan is finally convinced when Shafia explains that her own life was once just as aimless as his is now. It was, she claims, by devoting herself to a single purpose that she found a new meaning in her existence.
“When your father took me into his service, I was lost. I’d dedicated my entire life to the Parvan Crown. Spycraft was all I knew. So when that ended ... I didn’t know what to do. I had nothing. No friends, no family. No future. I was left wondering if the sacrifices I’d made had been worth it. But then your father made me his steward and invited me into his family. He gave me fresh purpose and for that I will always be grateful. Now that Conrad—now that your father’s gone, I can no longer help him.” Her jaw tightened. “But I can help his son.” (p. 26)
Persuaded by Shafia’s words, Lukan accepts her quest, and immediately discovers that the feeling of meaninglessness that has marred his existence these past seven years has vanished. In its place is a conviction that he now has something to live for, with even the fraught emotions which he still harbors towards his father fading away in the face of this singular task.
Lukan took the blade, placed the tip against his palm. He hesitated, feeling suddenly dizzy, light-headed from the rush of emotions that still coursed through him. Anger, regret, both wrapped around a thorny knot of grief whose barbs he was only now starting to feel. My father’s dead and I don’t know who killed him, or why. He sucked in a breath, feeling a sudden pressure settling over him. But I need to find out. I have to. With that admission, the pressure eased, to be replaced with something he hadn’t felt in years.
Purpose. (p.28)
It’s this sense of purpose that The Silverblood Promise is, ostensibly, about. The silverblood promise is a ritual implied to hold an ambiguous importance for Lukan. Is it really (as Shafia claims) an intrinsically virtuous act by which Lukan can fulfill his final duty to his father, or is the purpose that Lukan finds in this ritual just a way in which he can ignore the conflicted emotions of anger, regret, and grief which he still holds towards a parent who abandoned him?
Unfortunately, as the book continues, these questions are ignored in favor of a story that is much less interesting to follow. After voyaging to the city of Saphrona, Lukan stumbles across a plot to replace the city’s openly corrupt government with an even more corrupt military regime. In response, he gathers together a small but eclectic group of allies to face off against a would-be dictator who has entered into a mystical pact with a group of extra-dimensional beings. In the process, Lukan not only single-handedly saves all of Saphrona from certain destruction, but also gains a vital clue as to the identity of his father’s killers.
This sequence obscures the emotional realism with which the book began, and in similar vein the novel’s increasingly complicated plot becomes a meaningless sequence of events. At its worst moments, The Silverblood Promise begins to resemble a vaguely toxic narrative, with Lukan facing one life-or-death scenario after another, all with nothing other than a wry smile, an increasingly abrasive humor, and a smug conviction in his infinite ability to overcome any obstacle, thanks to the superior meaning and purpose with which Shafia’s quest has endowed his life.
One example of this is how The Silverblood Promise portrays the character who eventually becomes its secondary protagonist. After arriving in Saphrona, Lukan meets a young pickpocket who goes by the name of “Flea.” Initially threatening to turn this child over to Saphrona’s brutal guards, Lukan instead offers to hire Flea as his personal guide. She then assumes the role of a helpful sidekick, leading Lukan around Saphrona while offering important plot details as the story requires. At first, Flea seems set up to represent a true secondary protagonist—a character whose personal story will unfold alongside Lukan’s. In practice, however, Flea’s importance to this novel is defined exclusively by her link to Lukan, and by the function she serves in the plot. While we eventually learn Flea’s backstory (how her brother vanished under what are obviously supernatural circumstances), as well as her future ambitions (she wants to one day become a master thief like her idol, the mythic Lady Midnight), these remain abstract signifiers rather than dynamic elements of her character. Ultimately, Flea’s driving motivation is less a real investment in the events of this story, and more her desire to continue following Lukan around Saphrona, curious as to what this stranger will do next.
A similar issue exists with The Silverblood Promise’s plot itself, which frequently warps its narrative artificially to center the action on Lukan to the exclusion of everyone else. After arriving in Saphrona, Lukan almost instantly learns that the word Zandrusa is in fact the secret birth name of a prominent member of Saphrona’s Council of Merchant Princes—a woman more commonly known as Lady Jelassi. Moreover, in an exceedingly unlikely coincidence, Lukan also discovers that Jelassi has recently been found guilty of murder, and as such is scheduled to be executed some time the following day. As is the custom in Saphrona, criminals are executed by being sacrificed to a giant worm, Gargantua, which is allowed once every ten days to choose one of three prisoners to eat. After witnessing Jelassi survive her first encounter with this creature, Lukan vows to break into her prison cell and speak with her, hoping to learn why his father died writing this woman’s name.
The improbability of all of this—with Lukan’s lengthy voyage from Torlaine to Saphrona concluding just one day before the woman he didn’t realize he was searching for was scheduled to be executed—might have been easier to accept had there not been yet another coincidence that followed it. This, of course, is a coincidence that again artificially focuses the story’s action on Lukan. Deciding that he should break into Jelassi’s cell within the next ten days before she is scheduled to next face the worm again, Lukan enlists the aid of the only person capable of infiltrating this heavily guarded facility—a shadowy figure called the Scrivener. Despite running a secretive criminal organization, the Scrivener is not only perfectly willing to work with a total stranger whom she has never met, but also explains to Lukan that she, too, is interested in breaking into Jelassi’s cell, and has been waiting for someone just like Lukan to show up and volunteer for such a mission.
Coincidences like these are liabilities not because they strain believability, but because they function to restrict the focus of the novel. Had we been given some reason why the Scrivener hadn’t yet sought to break into Jelassi’s cell despite her imminent (and now reoccurring) danger of being eaten, then this would have established a breadth in the novel’s world that extended beyond Lukan and his immediate needs. Instead, it’s hard to read these sequences and avoid imagining that both Flea and the Scrivener exist in a state of narrative stasis whenever Lukan is not around, staring blankly ahead into space as they wait for the novel’s main character to show up and interact with them.
Even in the moments when The Silverblood Promise comes close to rectifying these failures, it turns away from solutions. For example, after Lukan has broken into Jelassi’s cell (with the Scrivener disguising him as a member of Saphrona’s secret police), he encounters the captain of the prison, Varga, who immediately calls Lukan into his office. Thinking that Varga suspects him of being an imposter, Lukan is instead faced with an unexpected request: after offering Lukan tea, Varga nervously explains that his nephew, Perras, was recently expelled from Saphrona’s Collegium, and as a result has lost all hope of pursuing the career he had been striving for. Varga then asks Lukan to carry a letter of recommendation he’s written on Perras’s behalf to the city’s authorities, explaining to Lukan that he believes his nephew was innocent of his crimes.
This story initially seems significant due to how closely it mirrors Lukan’s past. Just as how Lukan was unjustly expelled from the Academy of Parva, so too has Varga’s nephew had his future destroyed in what outwardly seems a very similar context. Yet while this parallel is something that Lukan does make note of, he immediately dismisses the line of thought by assuring himself that Perras is too “dim-witted” to be worthy of his sympathy. Lukan does this while, bizarrely, also providing a series of italicized side comments to the reader in which he ridicules Varga for his assumed lack of intelligence. These comments seem intended as comic relief, but the end effect just feels needlessly cruel.
“A few books went missing from the library,” Varga scoffed, waving a hand. “Several rare first editions, or some such. Apparently they’re quite valuable, though why anyone would waste good coin on some dusty old books is beyond me.”
I’ll bet a lot of things are beyond you, Captain. “And Perras was blamed for this theft?”
“The books were found in a sack under his bed. The poor boy swore he had no idea how they got there, but of course the old fools at the Collegium expelled him anyway.” Varga shook his head in disgust. “I’m sure you’ll agree, Inquisitor, that the evidence is circumstantial at best, and that it’s—well, it’s practically a crime in itself to ruin a young man’s academic career and reputation in such a fashion.”
Sounds like the boy made a mistake and got himself kicked out of the Collegium. And isn’t that a story I know only too well. “And what do you want from me, Captain?”
“Well, I’ve had a rather good idea.”
I’ll bet that doesn’t happen often. “Go on.”
“Perras has a sharp intellect, and would make an excellent inquisitor.” Varga beamed and spread his hands. “The Collegium’s loss can be the Inquisition’s gain!”
Yes, no doubt a dim-witted book thief will make for a fine, upstanding enforcer of the law. “I’ll ask again, Captain, what do you want from me?” (p. 206)
To be clear, the problem here is not that Lukan chooses not to help Perras (Perras is heavily implied to be guilty). Instead, the problem is that even when Lukan notes the similarities which he shares with Perras, he immediately dismisses their import. This could have been a moment in which Lukan’s sarcastic confidence faltered, with Logan tying to the present moment the anger and regret which Lukan harbors over his past. It’s worth noting that, even if Perras is guilty, Varga is for better or worse doing for his nephew exactly the thing that Lukan has repeatedly wished his own father had done for him: standing by Perras in a moment of need. Yet, rather than allowing Lukan to reflect on this fact, and become a character who engages dynamically with the world around him, the book instead glosses over all of these complexities with Lukan’s smug humor.
The Silverblood Promise is the first book in The Last Legacy trilogy, and by its ending there is some indication that future books in this series could improve on this novel’s faults. Specifically, very late in this book, Lukan is joined in his quest to find his father’s killers by two additional characters, and for this reason it seems possible that future novels will be less singularly focused on Lukan to the exclusion of the story’s broader world. Yet, at least when judged in isolation, The Silverblood Promise is marred by a critical gap in its story which it refuses to acknowledge. When Lukan embarks on his quest to avenge his father’s death, he does so because he felt this quest endowed his life with meaning. But, because the nature of this meaning is never explored, the resulting story is just a dry list of events devoid of weight.
As the protagonist of his own epic, Lukan seems to feel that his quest to avenge his father is significant because it began with a promise made over his own blood, but what is that promise really worth? Based on what Logan has so far written, I’d say not that much.