I am not a boat person. Or a ship person for that matter. My gut doesn’t agree with the waves other than to paint them with some technicolour. I am irrationally rational about my fear of the beasties that live in the deep. But I would walk the fucking slate with Joron Twiner and Lucky Meas.
The worldbuilding in The Bone Ships is spectacular, and those that inhabit not just the cruel seas but Tide Child are a cut above… a cut above a jib (take that seafaring lingo!). The bone ships in The Bone Ships are literal ships made of bone – sea dragon bone. And while most are of glorious white, lit by corpselights, and the pride of The Hundred Isles, we sail with Joron and Meas on a black ship. A death ship where all onboard have been condemned, they just await the Hag’s justice, their fate as black as the bones that make up Tide Child.
I’ve decided that all my book reviews will be short this year, because time and poor and all that jazz. But I can’t go past making special mention of the gullaime, the bird-like creature who commands the winds. It was a stand-out for me, but more so the friendship it develops with Joron. The characters make this book, and they are as different as they are wonderful and awful and sad and hopeful. The battles are hard and desperate, but the characters who walk the slate of Tide Child, truly do make this book. From Farys to Solemn Maffaz, Mevans and the Courser, the gullaime and Garriya.
I loved this story, and cannot wait for the next in the series. RJ Barker has created a vivid, atmospheric world and peoples that are rich in their layering and resonate in their being. There’s a little bit of us in all of them.
Special shout out for that cover, too. Swanky AF.
(Small mention re the language and created words in the book; I’ve seen some people balk at this, but I had no trouble with it at all — they were close enough in spelling, and context really is everything, ey?)
Author, editor, caffeine-addict, wannabe ninja 