Review: The Sins on Their Bones by Laura R. Samotin

Title: The Sins on Their Bones

Author: Laura R. Samotin

Length: 414 Pages

Category: Historical Fantasy

Rating: 4 Stars

At a Glance: The Sins on Their Bones is decidedly more character than action driven, but that doesn’t mean the story lacks urgency. It’s the very urgency of the threat, in fact, and what’s at stake if they should fail, that creates the tension in the story. It reads like catharsis; perhaps that’s exactly what it is.

Reviewed By: Lisa

Blurb: Dimitri Alexeyev used to be the Tzar of Novo-Svitsevo. Now, he is merely a broken man, languishing in exile after losing a devastating civil war instigated by his estranged husband, Alexey Balakin. In hiding with what remains of his court, Dimitri and his spymaster, Vasily Sokolov, engineer a dangerous ruse. Vasily will sneak into Alexey’s court under a false identity to gather information, paving the way for the usurper’s downfall, while Dimitri finds a way to kill him for good.

But stopping Alexey is not so easy as plotting to kill an ordinary man. Through a perversion of the Ludayzim religion that he terms the Holy Science, Alexey has died and resurrected himself in an immortal, indestructible body—and now claims he is guided by the voice of God Himself. Able to summon forth creatures from the realm of demons, he seeks to build an army, turning Novo-Svitsevo into the greatest empire that history has ever seen.

Dimitri is determined not to let Alexey corrupt his country, but saving Novo-Svitsevo and its people will mean forfeiting the soul of the husband he can’t bring himself to forsake—or the spymaster he’s come to love.

Review: A note of some importance about The Sins on Their Bones: This is not a romance, though it contains a love story—a love of country, a love of friends and found family, a love that is poison, and a love that becomes salvation. It’s a story of sacrifice with the purpose of vanquishing another’s story of avarice; it’s a lust story, for power, for control, for immortality. In accomplishing the telling, Laura R. Samotin confronts traumas such as memories of childhood sexual abuse and domestic violence. Forewarned is forearmed.

The Sins on Their Bones is a story woven in Jewish mysticism and mythology. It is foretold that Dimitri Alexeyev will suffer more than any living man has suffered, and that the pain will almost break him. When that prophecy is eventually fulfilled, it delivers Dimitri to a point of no return. What led him there, along with who and how, is unraveled through flashbacks as well as current events.

Dimitri’s betrayal at the hands of his own husband leads him to a life of exile, in hiding with those of his court who are still loyal to their tzar. Dimitri’s story is a slow reckoning of his perceived inadequacies and shortcomings, not as tzar but as a man, a husband who failed when it was time to take command. He was, however, facing impossible circumstances. How does one kill what cannot be killed, after all? It’s a burden under which Dimitri nearly crumbles and destroys himself, and readers witness his near-crippling guilt alongside him.

Alexey Balakin is a usurper. He broke his marriage vows and turned his back on Dimitri in the pursuit of a devil’s bargain cloaked in holy righteousness, and in gaining eternal power, Alexey lost the very thing that made him human and humane.

At the helm of Dimitri’s security is Vasily, the man who loves Dimitri most ardently but knows his love can never be returned. Of the three men, Vasily’s sacrifice felt greatest to me. In fact, I saw him as the hero of the story because he was willing to offer himself, even if it meant near-certain death, with the expectation of nothing in return. Whether the author intended me to see him so I can’t say, but there’s no question that Vasily places himself at the helm of an impossible mission, not because he wants glory but because he loves both Dimitri and his country so unselfishly.

Samotin delivers her characters to their final battle—a critical one for the heart and soul of the world—with painstaking clarity and careful interrogation of her characters’ interior lives, what they offer, what they refuse, and how far they are willing to go to achieve their objectives. This isn’t a fast paced, action packed novel. It’s a story that grows on you the deeper the author mines her characters’ emotions and struggles, especially in the ways they seek comfort. The Sins on Their Bones is decidedly more character than action driven, but that doesn’t mean the story lacks urgency. It’s the very urgency of the threat, in fact, and what’s at stake if they should fail, that creates the tension in the story. It reads like catharsis; perhaps that’s exactly what it is.