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jenno's review against another edition
2.0
Eh.. That was a waste. It's so cliché and a story I've so read before in many other ya fantasy novels. The world was kind of cool but really this wasn't good. And I will not continue on with the series.
novelinsights's review against another edition
5.0
I really enjoyed this foray into Fran Wilde's unique and fascinating Bone World series. In this world, humans' primary method of transportation is flight, using wings that seemed like more advanced and moveable hang gliders, and they live in towers grown of bone high above the clouds. The worldbuilding here was great, and though the plot was admittedly somewhat predictable, I didn't really mind as the writing propelled me along. I'm left with lots of questions about the world--what exists on the other side of the cloud layer? Is there some sort of animal connected to the live bone of the towers, and will it eventually die? Are there other cities out there like this one? I'm hoping the next books in the series will start to explore these questions more; I'll definitely be picking them up. (Also, can we make an open world Breath of the Wild style video game out of this?)
valjeanval's review against another edition
3.0
This book came with a YA label, which admittedly biases me against it slightly, but I will say I enjoyed it a lot more than I usually do YA. The setting is extremely unique and there's a great steampunk vibe without actually being steampunk. The characters live in towers made of living bone that grow with the city. They fly on manufactured wings to get from place to place, living under the traditions of a central Spire controlled by the mysterious Singers. The city is terrorized by monsters called Skymouths, tentacled horrors, invisible until their maws open way too close to you. I feel like the story would do very well as a Ran Murata style anime.
As a novel, it's quick and not terribly challenging. The characters are good or bad, the plot unfolds about as you would expect it, and our hero follows the typical journey. The beauty is all in the setting and culture Wilde creates, but not enough in the storytelling for it to be one of my favorites. It was a fun deviation from my usual comfort zone, though, and one I'd recommend to people who enjoy the YA structure.
As a novel, it's quick and not terribly challenging. The characters are good or bad, the plot unfolds about as you would expect it, and our hero follows the typical journey. The beauty is all in the setting and culture Wilde creates, but not enough in the storytelling for it to be one of my favorites. It was a fun deviation from my usual comfort zone, though, and one I'd recommend to people who enjoy the YA structure.
eefera's review against another edition
3.0
OVERALL:
- Interesting concept that needed more explanation and depth. I was intrigued by many of the worldbuilding elements, I just wish more attention had been paid to them.
- Characters were mostly lackluster, and I found it hard to connect with them.
- Plotline was laborious until the last 100-150 pages and the first 100 pages were painfully slow. The last section picked up in pace and excitement a bit, although I don’t know how much of my interest was created by the relief that things were finally moving at a faster pace.
CONCEPT:
- I think the concept has a lot of potential. Interesting environment with the bone towers and society structure. Definitely the presence of a upper vs. lower class uprising trope.
- The concept was interesting but not well explained, it was left vague and I would’ve liked to see a lot more richness to the world. It felt more like a skeleton (no pun intended) than a truly fleshed out world. Almost as if it were unfinished.
- I was intrigued by the idea of the skymouth monsters. Very interesting and terrifying concept, and again, I don’t believe that the sense of urgency was created around them in the beginning of the book. They were written less terrifying in the beginning and then later we were expected to be terrified by them.
- The world is exceptionally organic which I appreciated.
- I would consider this book a concept driven novel, and I wish it would have been explored more.
PLOTLINE:
- The first 100 pages are laboriously slow. I almost stopped reading it several times but decided to give it another 100 pages to make sure. I started getting more drawn in around page 210 although there were a few good moments before then.
- The plot itself is not complex and follows a “chosen one” trope mixed with the lower-class uprising trope. I’m not against these tropes when they are done well, I just didn’t feel like this one met the standard.
- The events of the story didn’t start becoming more dynamic until about 150 pages from the end.
CHARACTERS:
- As a character driven novel obsessed reader, this book really missed the mark for me here. The characters felt exceptionally lackluster through well over half of the book, and the relationships felt contrived and awkward.
- Sellis gave me whiplash with her back and forth behavior toward Kirit (MC) and it seemed like her character was there just to cause drama. The one brief mention of Sellis’ relationship with Rumul was completely unnecessary and seemed to just be thrown in for added effect.
- The relationship between Kirit and her mother Ezarit was very strange in the beginning and their conversations bordered on cringeworthy at several points.
- The relationship between Kirit and her childhood friend Nat was a disappointment to me as well, since the author spent most of the time telling us how close they were while the actions of the two characters seemed anything but.
- I will say that I appreciated the fact that romance was not a core element of this book. I had several expectations based on common tropes and neither one of them came to fruition, which I found to be a relief, especially since I didn’t connect enough with the characters to want them to be in a relationship.
- Kirit (MC) herself was painfully robotic most of the time. She was a headstrong, chosen one archetype, but being headstrong alone isn’t enough to create a deep character. It seemed as if she existed solely to do all the things that none of the other characters were willing to.
- Interesting concept that needed more explanation and depth. I was intrigued by many of the worldbuilding elements, I just wish more attention had been paid to them.
- Characters were mostly lackluster, and I found it hard to connect with them.
- Plotline was laborious until the last 100-150 pages and the first 100 pages were painfully slow. The last section picked up in pace and excitement a bit, although I don’t know how much of my interest was created by the relief that things were finally moving at a faster pace.
CONCEPT:
- I think the concept has a lot of potential. Interesting environment with the bone towers and society structure. Definitely the presence of a upper vs. lower class uprising trope.
- The concept was interesting but not well explained, it was left vague and I would’ve liked to see a lot more richness to the world. It felt more like a skeleton (no pun intended) than a truly fleshed out world. Almost as if it were unfinished.
- I was intrigued by the idea of the skymouth monsters. Very interesting and terrifying concept, and again, I don’t believe that the sense of urgency was created around them in the beginning of the book. They were written less terrifying in the beginning and then later we were expected to be terrified by them.
- The world is exceptionally organic which I appreciated.
- I would consider this book a concept driven novel, and I wish it would have been explored more.
PLOTLINE:
- The first 100 pages are laboriously slow. I almost stopped reading it several times but decided to give it another 100 pages to make sure. I started getting more drawn in around page 210 although there were a few good moments before then.
- The plot itself is not complex and follows a “chosen one” trope mixed with the lower-class uprising trope. I’m not against these tropes when they are done well, I just didn’t feel like this one met the standard.
- The events of the story didn’t start becoming more dynamic until about 150 pages from the end.
CHARACTERS:
- As a character driven novel obsessed reader, this book really missed the mark for me here. The characters felt exceptionally lackluster through well over half of the book, and the relationships felt contrived and awkward.
- Sellis gave me whiplash with her back and forth behavior toward Kirit (MC) and it seemed like her character was there just to cause drama. The one brief mention of Sellis’ relationship with Rumul was completely unnecessary and seemed to just be thrown in for added effect.
- The relationship between Kirit and her mother Ezarit was very strange in the beginning and their conversations bordered on cringeworthy at several points.
- The relationship between Kirit and her childhood friend Nat was a disappointment to me as well, since the author spent most of the time telling us how close they were while the actions of the two characters seemed anything but.
- I will say that I appreciated the fact that romance was not a core element of this book. I had several expectations based on common tropes and neither one of them came to fruition, which I found to be a relief, especially since I didn’t connect enough with the characters to want them to be in a relationship.
- Kirit (MC) herself was painfully robotic most of the time. She was a headstrong, chosen one archetype, but being headstrong alone isn’t enough to create a deep character. It seemed as if she existed solely to do all the things that none of the other characters were willing to.
majkia's review against another edition
4.0
Imaginative complex worldbuilding, with characters well drawn. The plot swirled through the ups and downs of a city and people weighed down by secret even as they needed to soar on the winds.
majkia's review
4.0
Imaginative complex worldbuilding, with characters well drawn. The plot swirled through the ups and downs of a city and people weighed down by secret even as they needed to soar on the winds.
linalintu's review against another edition
4.0
4 Sterne für die Story an sich, 5 Sterne für das Worldbuilding.
Die Geschichte verläuft teilweise schleppend und ich bin mit der Protagonistin nicht ganz warm geworden, aber die Welt ist unglaublich faszinierend. Eine lebendige Stadt aus Knochentürmen, sehr begrenzete Ressourcen, Fliegen als wichtigste Fortbewegung, unsichtbare Monster, Sänger als Elite... Kreativ und gut durchdacht.
Die Geschichte verläuft teilweise schleppend und ich bin mit der Protagonistin nicht ganz warm geworden, aber die Welt ist unglaublich faszinierend. Eine lebendige Stadt aus Knochentürmen, sehr begrenzete Ressourcen, Fliegen als wichtigste Fortbewegung, unsichtbare Monster, Sänger als Elite... Kreativ und gut durchdacht.
trike's review against another edition
2.0
In one of the book group discussions someone mentioned that this felt like a first draft rather than a finished novel. That's pretty accurate.
The writing is competent, so for not being actively terrible and because she doesn't have the heroine become romantically entangled with the Supporting Boy, aka Flying Samwise Gamgee, I'll give it 2 stars.
Worldbuilding - People are raving about the worldbuilding here, which I don't understand. It's easily one of the weakest parts of the book. I suppose if you've never read the works of people like John Varley, Philip Jose Farmer or Anne McCaffrey this might be intriguing, but it pales in comparison to the great examples out there.
I never got a real sense of the city's size. Wilde says some of the bone towers are far away, but they feel clustered together. Bridges can easily be built between many of them using the sinew of flying monsters called "skymouths." (We'll get to those.) Honestly, this feels more like a high school in scope rather than a city. Only the top few tiers of the bone towers are habitable because as the towers grow the walls close in, crowding out the residents.
The towers extend above the clouds, so where does their water come from? Where does their food grow? They have honey but no bees. They have clothes and wings, but there's no evidence of the industry required to make these things. At one point the heroine, Kirit, mentions that she has silk spiders, so presumably the fabrics are made from their webs, but it feels like she's basically keeping a terrarium of arachnids, not the warehouses full of them which would be needed for making so much stuff.
It's also hard to tell how many people there are. It feels like dozens, but it must be thousands.
I'm guessing the answer to these questions is meant to be "because magic," but if a reader is asking these fundamental questions about how your society functions, then you've done a poor job at worldbuilding.
Flying - Specifically, how? Based on the original cover and the description, it looks like they're using some sort of hang glider, except with finer control. Maybe it's meant to look more like Da Vinci's bat-winged glider than a modern hang glider in our world, but that doesn't explain how they can do the various things they do, such as fold their wings back to dive or lock them into position to right.
Now this is one aspect where I would normally go,"Yeah, it's magic, fine," the way I do with Iron Man's suit. That suit could neither protect Tony nor fly the way it's depicted. But the reason I buy into the utter implausibility of Iron Man's armor is because the rest of his world doesn't make me ask fundamental questions.
If you want people to buy into your big impossibility, you need to make the little details believable.
Kirit - The main character is too competent. She's the Chosen One in all but name. She passes her wingtest (a final exam that is half oral exam and half advanced driver's test except with flying) with flying colors (hoho!) yet she is failed due to politics. Then she's forced to go toHogwarts The Spire, where she's so good she learns everything she needs to know in days or weeks (it's kind of unclear), things that have taken other, very skilled students months or years to learn.
In one sequence she learns to use echolocation in an afternoon, while the student she's paired with took more than a year to master the skill. Despite the fact Kirit's older and the other girl, Stellis, was raised in the Spire. A bit of the Mary Sue, here.
Skymouths - Invisible sky monsters! See-through air dragons! Based on the descriptions of skymouths, they seem to be flying squidsharks. Meaning that they have tentacles like a squid but the tooth-filled maws of sharks. Their teeth are glass-like, but their skins seem to be more like a squid's chromatophores, except magically more so, rendering them completely invisible.
Again, this is another area where I'd have no problem writing these fanciful beasts off as magical critters, except their abilities change according to the needs of the story. At the end, Kirit faces a skymouth that is gigantic, which basically swallowed up another person whole, but the tiny vegetarian skymouth Kirit is carrying is somehow able to choke it to death from inside the big one's mouth. This little skymouth is a scavenger that her platonic pal had in his hideaway, and he is able to hold it in his cupped hands. Which means that it is the size of a kitten. Even if you add the length of its tentacles at full extension, it's hard to believe that something that small could somehow close the throat of a monster big enough to gulp down an adult human being.
That'd be like some dinner calamari taking out Bruce the shark from Jaws.
The book just didn't sell me on this world. [b:Windhaven|67957|Windhaven|George R.R. Martin|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1388467654s/67957.jpg|2960816] by Lisa Tuttle and George R.R. Martin is a more plausible version of this story. Even the fundamentally-broken [b:Archangel|97961|Archangel (Samaria, #1)|Sharon Shinn|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1388606676s/97961.jpg|3102308] series by Sharon Shinn makes more sense. (Although there she basically just combined McCaffrey's dragons and riders from Pern into a single winged person and kept the exact same plot and characters.)
The writing is competent, so for not being actively terrible and because she doesn't have the heroine become romantically entangled with the Supporting Boy, aka Flying Samwise Gamgee, I'll give it 2 stars.
Worldbuilding - People are raving about the worldbuilding here, which I don't understand. It's easily one of the weakest parts of the book. I suppose if you've never read the works of people like John Varley, Philip Jose Farmer or Anne McCaffrey this might be intriguing, but it pales in comparison to the great examples out there.
I never got a real sense of the city's size. Wilde says some of the bone towers are far away, but they feel clustered together. Bridges can easily be built between many of them using the sinew of flying monsters called "skymouths." (We'll get to those.) Honestly, this feels more like a high school in scope rather than a city. Only the top few tiers of the bone towers are habitable because as the towers grow the walls close in, crowding out the residents.
The towers extend above the clouds, so where does their water come from? Where does their food grow? They have honey but no bees. They have clothes and wings, but there's no evidence of the industry required to make these things. At one point the heroine, Kirit, mentions that she has silk spiders, so presumably the fabrics are made from their webs, but it feels like she's basically keeping a terrarium of arachnids, not the warehouses full of them which would be needed for making so much stuff.
It's also hard to tell how many people there are. It feels like dozens, but it must be thousands.
I'm guessing the answer to these questions is meant to be "because magic," but if a reader is asking these fundamental questions about how your society functions, then you've done a poor job at worldbuilding.
Flying - Specifically, how? Based on the original cover and the description, it looks like they're using some sort of hang glider, except with finer control. Maybe it's meant to look more like Da Vinci's bat-winged glider than a modern hang glider in our world, but that doesn't explain how they can do the various things they do, such as fold their wings back to dive or lock them into position to right.
Now this is one aspect where I would normally go,"Yeah, it's magic, fine," the way I do with Iron Man's suit. That suit could neither protect Tony nor fly the way it's depicted. But the reason I buy into the utter implausibility of Iron Man's armor is because the rest of his world doesn't make me ask fundamental questions.
If you want people to buy into your big impossibility, you need to make the little details believable.
Kirit - The main character is too competent. She's the Chosen One in all but name. She passes her wingtest (a final exam that is half oral exam and half advanced driver's test except with flying) with flying colors (hoho!) yet she is failed due to politics. Then she's forced to go to
In one sequence she learns to use echolocation in an afternoon, while the student she's paired with took more than a year to master the skill. Despite the fact Kirit's older and the other girl, Stellis, was raised in the Spire. A bit of the Mary Sue, here.
Skymouths - Invisible sky monsters! See-through air dragons! Based on the descriptions of skymouths, they seem to be flying squidsharks. Meaning that they have tentacles like a squid but the tooth-filled maws of sharks. Their teeth are glass-like, but their skins seem to be more like a squid's chromatophores, except magically more so, rendering them completely invisible.
Again, this is another area where I'd have no problem writing these fanciful beasts off as magical critters, except their abilities change according to the needs of the story. At the end, Kirit faces a skymouth that is gigantic, which basically swallowed up another person whole, but the tiny vegetarian skymouth Kirit is carrying is somehow able to choke it to death from inside the big one's mouth. This little skymouth is a scavenger that her platonic pal had in his hideaway, and he is able to hold it in his cupped hands. Which means that it is the size of a kitten. Even if you add the length of its tentacles at full extension, it's hard to believe that something that small could somehow close the throat of a monster big enough to gulp down an adult human being.
That'd be like some dinner calamari taking out Bruce the shark from Jaws.
The book just didn't sell me on this world. [b:Windhaven|67957|Windhaven|George R.R. Martin|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1388467654s/67957.jpg|2960816] by Lisa Tuttle and George R.R. Martin is a more plausible version of this story. Even the fundamentally-broken [b:Archangel|97961|Archangel (Samaria, #1)|Sharon Shinn|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1388606676s/97961.jpg|3102308] series by Sharon Shinn makes more sense. (Although there she basically just combined McCaffrey's dragons and riders from Pern into a single winged person and kept the exact same plot and characters.)
kyrri's review
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5