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mayazahara 's review for:
The Boneless Mercies
by April Genevieve Tucholke
"They called us the Mercies, or sometimes the Boneless Mercies. They said we were shadows, ghosts, and if you touched our skin, we dissolved into smoke."
I picked this book up after seeing the beautiful cover and interesting blurb, along with the fact that it's a female retelling of Beowulf set in a magical echo of Scandinavia, but it still really surprised me, being a lot more engaging than I expected! 🙈 Before this I'd never heard of April Genevieve Tucholke, but I do want to read her other books - her writing is AMAZING.
Quick synopsis: Frey and her companions are known as Mercies, and their job is to perform 'mercy-kills' - they are paid to kill the old, sick, or injured, but it's a quiet profession and Frey wants more. She wants sagas to be sung about her, she wants glory and adventure, so when she hears of a beast that is burning towns and murdering entire communities, she and her band of mercies set off on a quest to slay the monster.
The book's main characters are Frey (the narrator), Ovie, Juniper and Runa and Trigve. At first I did mix up the characters a bit because they were all introduced quite quickly, but as the book goes on you do get to know them better. However, I didn't think the character development wasn't the strongest point of the book - I was sometimes confused about who was saying what, which maybe shows that the characters didn't all have different/clear voices all the time.
The pacing was perfect for me, although it might feel a little slow for some readers - there's a lot of the characters trekking through snowy forests and sharing stories while sitting around campfires. However, I didn't mind this because the scenes that didn't have action in them were still engaging; it was a chance to learn about the characters' backstories.
The world-building was the main reason I gave this four stars instead of five. The actual setting and atmosphere were amazing, but the fact that the country is called 'Vorseland', the people speak 'Vorse' and other places mentioned include Finmark' (and there are 'Dennish' people - from 'Denland'?) is kind of cringeworthy.
There's not much I can say about the writing of this book except that it was sooooo incredible! It's poetic but not too flowery, it's emotive and atmospheric, and really makes you feel like you're there. It's also about 350 pages, which I felt was a short but refreshing length for a fantasy book.
The plot itself was relatively simple but it doesn't seem that way at all; the story as a whole is heroic and beautifully fierce. The only thing missing from this story compared to other YA fantasy books is a romance - it does feature romantic scenes/elements, but it's certainly not the centre of the story and not even really a subplot, but it didn't take anything away from the story. The main relationships that the book focused on was the sisterhood between the girls and their friendship with Trigve, and I loved it.
Overall, wow. I'm in love with the atmosphere, the lyrical writing, the ruthlessness and whimsicalness of the story. It is a pretty dark story, so maybe not for everyone, but I just loved it - the style of writing and the general feeling reminded me slightly of The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender, which is another incredible dark/twisted/lyrical fantasy book. There is a companion book to The Boneless Mercies which came out earlier this year, called Seven Endless Forests, which is a retelling of the King Arthur legend! I can't wait to read it and dive back into this world!
I picked this book up after seeing the beautiful cover and interesting blurb, along with the fact that it's a female retelling of Beowulf set in a magical echo of Scandinavia, but it still really surprised me, being a lot more engaging than I expected! 🙈 Before this I'd never heard of April Genevieve Tucholke, but I do want to read her other books - her writing is AMAZING.
Quick synopsis: Frey and her companions are known as Mercies, and their job is to perform 'mercy-kills' - they are paid to kill the old, sick, or injured, but it's a quiet profession and Frey wants more. She wants sagas to be sung about her, she wants glory and adventure, so when she hears of a beast that is burning towns and murdering entire communities, she and her band of mercies set off on a quest to slay the monster.
The book's main characters are Frey (the narrator), Ovie, Juniper and Runa and Trigve. At first I did mix up the characters a bit because they were all introduced quite quickly, but as the book goes on you do get to know them better. However, I didn't think the character development wasn't the strongest point of the book - I was sometimes confused about who was saying what, which maybe shows that the characters didn't all have different/clear voices all the time.
The pacing was perfect for me, although it might feel a little slow for some readers - there's a lot of the characters trekking through snowy forests and sharing stories while sitting around campfires. However, I didn't mind this because the scenes that didn't have action in them were still engaging; it was a chance to learn about the characters' backstories.
The world-building was the main reason I gave this four stars instead of five. The actual setting and atmosphere were amazing, but the fact that the country is called 'Vorseland', the people speak 'Vorse' and other places mentioned include Finmark' (and there are 'Dennish' people - from 'Denland'?) is kind of cringeworthy.
There's not much I can say about the writing of this book except that it was sooooo incredible! It's poetic but not too flowery, it's emotive and atmospheric, and really makes you feel like you're there. It's also about 350 pages, which I felt was a short but refreshing length for a fantasy book.
The plot itself was relatively simple but it doesn't seem that way at all; the story as a whole is heroic and beautifully fierce. The only thing missing from this story compared to other YA fantasy books is a romance - it does feature romantic scenes/elements, but it's certainly not the centre of the story and not even really a subplot, but it didn't take anything away from the story. The main relationships that the book focused on was the sisterhood between the girls and their friendship with Trigve, and I loved it.
Overall, wow. I'm in love with the atmosphere, the lyrical writing, the ruthlessness and whimsicalness of the story. It is a pretty dark story, so maybe not for everyone, but I just loved it - the style of writing and the general feeling reminded me slightly of The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender, which is another incredible dark/twisted/lyrical fantasy book. There is a companion book to The Boneless Mercies which came out earlier this year, called Seven Endless Forests, which is a retelling of the King Arthur legend! I can't wait to read it and dive back into this world!