A review by tasharobinson
The Bone Maker by Sarah Beth Durst

4.0

I picked this up on a whim because Race the Sands was so impressive and surprising to me. And here the author's done it again — an honest-to-gawd standalone fantasy novel that isn't part of a sprawling series, but at the same time, a book that invents an entire world with its own unique form of magic and type of culture, then drops a surprising adventure into the middle of it. This time it's a group of heroes — more or less an epic-level D&D party who've already saved the world at great personal cost — finding out they still have battles to fight, which means reuniting after long years apart and a great deal of emotional damage endured. The magic system in this book is odd — no idea why bones have so much magic, or seem to be the only kind of magic there is — but there's so much flavor to the system that it brings across its own conviction and reality. And I liked these tired, battered ex-heroes who've each come to their own form of retirement and have to get hauled out for One Last Job. Or do they? There's a big central mystery to all of this about whether what they're doing is even necessary, which just adds another thick layer on top of what's already a pretty ambitious plot. There's a lot going on here, and I found it all pretty intriguing.