Soulstealer (The Soulflake Conspiracies, #1) by Miles Cameron
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Secondary World Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Sapphic (bisexual?) MCs, minor nonbinary character
Published on: 8th October 2026
ISBN: 1399632663
Goodreads
Bekka Trevelyan is an arcanist, and the first woman to be made a Gentleman Scholar of Arcany at the University of Kabakak. Her graduate work was in refining a device to measure the potency of the winds of magic. Over her Yule holidays from teaching, she travels east on a field trip to test her theory about the Winds in the true Wyld. Instead, she finds herself swept up in the investigation of a kidnapping of an indigenous woman and her child by a demon that has possessed the body of a tracker.
Tam Warden was a war hero, and then a sort of government enforcer. He gave up rank and fame to marry across class lines. But government isn't done with him yet. He's called back to action to investigate Bekka's claims - discreetly. This is delicate work, because the truth could unbalance the nation.
Essa Bateman is a mercenary spy, a hard woman with no attachments and very few ethics. Few, it turns out, is more than 'none.' She sees the ripples of unrest from the underbelly of society, but deciding what to do about them is a different beast entirely.
In a world where gunpowder is manufactured from the souls of executed criminals, and the ultra-rich seek immortality at any price, where children labour in factories and the desperate poor turn to vampirism, where slavery is rampant and gangs rule the streets...
A few people are about to be heroes. They just don't know it yet.
I received this book for free from the author in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
Highlights
~what if gunpowder was made out of human souls
~who needs combustion when you have NECROMANCY
~the competency porn is strong with this one
~yet again the rich capitalists are Up To Something
~one (1) Extremely Good doggo
I had so much fun with this book!
Imagine an Industrial Age that runs on steam instead of combustion – and where gunpowder is unspeakably precious and reluctantly used because it’s made from human souls. Where magic is studied at universities, and magic-users regularly boost the psychic equivalent of the telegraph when a message runs by them. Where the headlines are currently screaming about ‘the Soulstealer’, someone who is literally stealing the souls of the poor.
Welcome to New Anzand, where things are about to get complicated.
Soulstealer is a bit of an investigation story, a bit of a hunt for a criminal, a good bit of spycraft skulduggery, plenty of extremely high-tension fight scenes, and a lot of adventure. In some ways, it’s very different from any of his other Fantasy books; the setting is Industrial, there’s only three main PoV characters, and the arc of the book is relatively straightforward. (I stress, relatively. I think by most readers’ standards this is pleasingly complex without being over-complicated, but compared to Cameron’s Traitor Son series I had an easy time keeping track of all the threads in Soulstealer.) It’s also much shorter than his Fantasies typically are, a little under 400 pages, and with all of that combined I think that makes Soulstealer a really great place to start if you’re not familiar with this author’s work. This is by far his most accessible SFF novel to date!
The description on the back of the book tells you most of what you need to know, although there’s one pretty big discrepancy; Essa Bateman is a very minor character in Soulstealer (though it’s pretty obvious she’ll be much more important later on), not one of the leads. Our three protagonists are Bekka Trevelyan, Tam Warden, and Dais Ballard, who has for some reason been left out of the book description. Which is both baffling and a shame, because Ballard is WONDERFUL: she’s a ‘dagen’, aka a sword-person, someone who is great with a sword. Not all dagens are criminals, but she is, working for one of the gangs who basically rule the Lower Town of the city of Kabakak. But things get hairy for her in her first PoV chapter, and she has to cut and run, ending up employed by Warden to join him and Trevelyan on their manhunt. Ballard is…straightforward and rough around the edges and difficult to knock off-kilter, deeply unimpressed with the upper crust and confident in a way that somehow comes across as masculine. She can impersonate an Upper Town lady in a heartbeat and is much smarter than most people assume. She’s not the comic relief or anything, but she’s the…the person I think most readers will find easiest to understand, out of the main cast. In a lot of ways, she’s the Voice of Normal in the narrative, the one who isn’t interested in the philosophical implications or the politics of what’s going on, and will tell her companions to their faces when they’re being stupid. She’s practical, where Trevelyan and Warden are quite high-brow in their concerns, and it’s a very necessary, fun contrast.
Which is not to say that Trevelyan and Warden aren’t awesome, because they are. But Trevelyan is a time-mage who spends a good chunk of the book reeling about what their discoveries imply about the Nature of Reality, and Warden is a sort of super-spy, so they have a lot more layers and are juggling far more concerns than Ballard has or is. All three of them are hyper-competent in their areas of expertise, which is SUCH fun, and I loved how they all appreciated the skills the others had. They’re all fabulous, and they’re all deeply flawed: Warden is compartmentalising his psyche to a truly worrying degree (and is popping pills to stay awake and alert); Trevelyan has imperfect control of her temper; Ballard hides a great deal behind a devil-may-care persona. And all of that…weaves together in a wonderfully vivid way; it’s not just that the characters themselves feel real, but their interactions with each other, as well, are so believable and human! They make an excellent team, both in terms of being great characters to read about, and in the sense of being very well-suited to the missions they’ve been given (or taken on…)
Soulstealer opens with a prologue that’s basically its own novella, wherein Trevelyan has an unexpected adventure in the icy Wylds. The rest of the book is the fallout and reaction to that adventure, in a way. The short version is that Warden nabs Trevelyan and Ballard so the three of them can chase after a mage who’s made himself into an immortal, body-hopping monster, a hunt which quickly takes them to the Wylds – unurbanised wild land inhabited by the Indigenous peoples, the corporeal ghosts of ancient war-heroes, and other fun stuff like that. The long version…is that things aren’t nearly as simple as they look; there’s a lot of political intrigue happening just out of sight, strained international relations, technological development, some awful faction of rich capitalists trying to start a war (because industrialists do very well out of wars), and a conspiracy of terrible people (who may or may not overlap with the war-starters) trying to make themselves immortal through horrific means.
Much of this is happening around the edges, visible in the corner of your eye; scattered puzzle pieces all adding up to a picture we’re still missing at least half of. Soulstealer has plenty of forward momentum, but most of it is concerned with what is right in front of our protagonists, and all three of them have good reasons for missing some of the clues. So it’s mostly a kind of adventure story, trying to track down the body-jumper and trekking through the icy Wylds to hunt him down and stop him, and I admit, I was a bit taken aback that that was ‘all’ this was, because Cameron’s Fantasies tend to have a lot more threads than this! But the ‘all’ is so much fun, so incredibly compelling – mostly because Cameron’s skill with characters is on full display here, and if anything the cast being so much smaller than his usual just gives each protagonist more room to shine. Cameron tends to write self-aware characters who question their own beliefs and prejudices enough to be interesting, while still being human enough to lose their tempers at bad moments or sulk over something that no one can be blamed for, and that’s very much the case with Trevelyan, Warden and Ballard. They each bring different experiences and perspectives to the table, they each have their own hang-ups and habits, they’re each powerfully vital – and sometimes they’re dumb, because they’re grieving or scared or in pain or don’t know how to do something. Even when I wanted to shake one of them for being a twit, I loved how incredibly real they felt!
If you’ve read Cameron’s Fantasies before, you must have noticed his attention to practical detail, and the realism that brings to his stories. He has a degree in Medieval history and is a big-time reenactor, both of which are very obvious in stories about knights in armour. But given that civilisation in Soulstealer has reached the Industrial Age, I was worried that core of realism would be missing here, given that his Medieval knowledge wouldn’t apply. Right? NOPE! Cameron goes into detail on what he learned for this book and how in the Acknowledgements, but all you need to know is that, while there are no siege engines or war-horses here, the attention to detail is still superb and brings everything the characters get up to to life, particularly when they’re in the wilderness! (I’m still fascinated by the boats and why they’re designed like they are!)
Of course, if you have read ALL of Cameron’s Fantasies before…then you must have been picking up clues that all of his Fantasy novels exist in the same multiverse. (Cameron’s actually called it the ‘hermetical multiverse‘ in interviews.) What does Soulstealer add to that? QUITE A BIT, ACTUALLY? My copy is covered in highlights because of all the blink-and-miss-’em clues that are dropped; Soulstealer is DEFINITELY set in the hermetical multiverse, and my current theory is View Spoiler » (Which isn’t really a spoiler, but it seemed rude not to hide it?) I need everyone else to read this already so I can debate the evidence with someone! (I also need to figure out how to enlarge the maps in the different books and get them up on my wall for comparison…)
But you definitely don’t need to have read anything else in the hermetical multiverse to appreciate Soulstealer – at this point in the Soulflake Conspiracies, these clues are basically easter eggs for fans aware of the multiverse; I spotted nothing actually plot-relevant. I stand by what I said, that Soulstealer is an excellent introduction to that multiverse and/or Cameron’s SFF, and part of that is because no knowledge of the multiverse is required. (As opposed to the Age of Bronze trilogy – the final page of Breaking Hel can’t possibly land properly unless you’ve already read the Traitor Son series!)
Because of the constantly-moving plot, we don’t get tonnes of worldbuilding – there’s no time. But what we do get is fascinating. At the centre of everything is soulflake, this world’s gunpowder, and I can’t get over how sneakily brilliant this is from a writing perspective – because it’s made from human souls, no one wants to waste it, which means guns are uncommon and even people who have them will hesitate to fire. That gives Cameron the perfect excuse to make Ballard a sword-wielder, to make swords and bows and so on still immensely present and important even in a setting with motorcars and trains! Which, you know, is fun for aesthetic reasons and great because that’s Cameron’s wheelhouse. Other things are more subtle: both Trevelyan and Ballard are queer, and unafraid of Warden finding out about that – does that mean homosexuality isn’t demonised in this world, or at least in the country of New Anzand? Sex work is legal, although you do need a licence; unions, on the other hand, are very forbidden. Imperial officers like Warden are at odds with the Colonial Police, and the dynamic between them is…pretty bad. There’s at least one, and possibly several, long-gone ancient races who’ve left varying marks on the world; still around are the Quoire, who most ‘civilised’ folk consider animals (they’re clearly not, and there are hints they have interesting-to-me approaches to gender). Some types of humans have claws. There are three moons. I could go on! I’m absolutely PINING for the next book already, because I want to learn all about this setting! Especially after what we learned over the course of this book, all the discoveries that rocked the characters’ understanding of their world.
Particularly everything to do with its magic, but I’m not going to talk about that because SPOILERS.
Look, it’s not like I’ve been subtle: I love this book. I really like the cast, I want to explore so much more of this world Cameron’s created, and I’m always good with rich industrialists being the bad guys. What Cameron says at the end, about the next book, has me VERY EXCITED. I can’t wait to see where this series goes, but I know I’ll be along for the entire ride.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a lot more string to add to my board of hermetical multiverse theories!!!
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