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A review by kittyg
The Bone Shard Daughter by Andrea Stewart
4.0
I picked this one up at last, and I should have done so sooner. This book has been waiting for me for quite some time and I really enjoyed the magic of the world and the fact that this is a debut with so much promise. We follow a fair few characters, but the audiobook had multiple narrators so they were easy to distinguish and enjoy individually and I liked their plots and how they crossed.
This world is a very fun one with a lot of magic at the forefront. We have magical sea creatures, constructs made of magic, bone shard magic, magical islands and more. It’s like the whole of the world is infused and it’s very high fantasy and that’s exactly the sort of thing I love. Bone shard magic is probably the most unique and cool/horrible of all. The way it works is that everyone in the empire has a tiny shard of their skulls which gets taken to the emperor. He then can choose to use this shard in his constructs or magic to defend the empire, the problem is when your shard is used the person starts a gradual decay. They don’t know when it’s first used, but they will start to feel exhausted and drained over time and the ending comes pretty suddenly. This is quite a sacrifice and many of the citizens of the empire are fed up losing their loved ones suddenly so there’s rebellion brewing.
We follow a few characters but one of them is akin, daughter of the Emperor. Her life is hard as her father expects a lot from her in terms of learning the bone shard magic (a closely guarded family secret) and finding her memories. She has no memory from before 5 years ago, and he is constantly testing her to see if she’s gained anything back. In the end Lin takes matters into her own hands to find out her past as she sees the Emperor is deteriorating and she needs to learn more than he’s willing to share.
We also follow Jovi who is a smuggler famed across the land. He has posters everywhere of him but he manages to skirt by as the general populace tend to like him and he’s helpful in saving some of their children. He’s a rouge and a fun character to read about, and I loved his ‘pet’ too. I’m intrigued to find out much more of his story in the sequel as I feel like this one just sets him up.
We also follow Sand who is on the Isle of lost memories which is a scary place to be. Her story is merely hinted at in this book and there’s a lot more to come from it no doubt. I’m definitely intrigued.
Phalue and Ranami are girlfriends and they are a daughter of a noble and a commoner/rebel respectively. Their plot is more of a general background/context for the wider world but again I expect to see more of them as time goes on in the next book.
The plot was fun and super easy to get into. It goes at a good speed with a few twists and although I anticipated some of them, I definitely wasn’t disappointed and enjoyed seeing the way that the story played out. I liked the ending and I think we’ll have a new foundation for book 2 so I’m keen to dive into that soon :) 4*s overall.
This world is a very fun one with a lot of magic at the forefront. We have magical sea creatures, constructs made of magic, bone shard magic, magical islands and more. It’s like the whole of the world is infused and it’s very high fantasy and that’s exactly the sort of thing I love. Bone shard magic is probably the most unique and cool/horrible of all. The way it works is that everyone in the empire has a tiny shard of their skulls which gets taken to the emperor. He then can choose to use this shard in his constructs or magic to defend the empire, the problem is when your shard is used the person starts a gradual decay. They don’t know when it’s first used, but they will start to feel exhausted and drained over time and the ending comes pretty suddenly. This is quite a sacrifice and many of the citizens of the empire are fed up losing their loved ones suddenly so there’s rebellion brewing.
We follow a few characters but one of them is akin, daughter of the Emperor. Her life is hard as her father expects a lot from her in terms of learning the bone shard magic (a closely guarded family secret) and finding her memories. She has no memory from before 5 years ago, and he is constantly testing her to see if she’s gained anything back. In the end Lin takes matters into her own hands to find out her past as she sees the Emperor is deteriorating and she needs to learn more than he’s willing to share.
We also follow Jovi who is a smuggler famed across the land. He has posters everywhere of him but he manages to skirt by as the general populace tend to like him and he’s helpful in saving some of their children. He’s a rouge and a fun character to read about, and I loved his ‘pet’ too. I’m intrigued to find out much more of his story in the sequel as I feel like this one just sets him up.
We also follow Sand who is on the Isle of lost memories which is a scary place to be. Her story is merely hinted at in this book and there’s a lot more to come from it no doubt. I’m definitely intrigued.
Phalue and Ranami are girlfriends and they are a daughter of a noble and a commoner/rebel respectively. Their plot is more of a general background/context for the wider world but again I expect to see more of them as time goes on in the next book.
The plot was fun and super easy to get into. It goes at a good speed with a few twists and although I anticipated some of them, I definitely wasn’t disappointed and enjoyed seeing the way that the story played out. I liked the ending and I think we’ll have a new foundation for book 2 so I’m keen to dive into that soon :) 4*s overall.