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A review by shaun_trinh
Bonesmith by Nicki Pau Preto
5.0
Love love love love looooooove this book. Took me a long ass time to read it because of classes and i'm lazy but it was worth the time committed!
Concept - love
characters- love
setting - love
I really enjoy fantasy books that have houses or divisions with all different or unique abilities (unlike how in a lot of fae stories many houses have the same powers), and this story does a good job at developing an entire world with a multitude of different houses and divisions with idfferent specialities that. Many of them while not relevant to the story, do emerse the world building.
I love the concept of the dead, revenants, the breach, the different sides of the war and how the past is driving the actions of the present.
I really liked both of the main characters as well, Wren and Julien were extremely fun foils of each other and had really smooth and funny dialouge with each other that felt like it was naturally building up their relationship to one another and didn't seem to come out of no where. I liked how their conversations naturally built up our and their understanding (and misunderstanding) of the world and their motivations. Nothing about them felt shoehorned in which made their friendship and romantic plot all the more sweet and compelling.
While I got a general idea lof the setting and a much better feel for the aesthetic, there wasa fair bit of times where I just didn't know what to picture and what I was told to picture didn't make sense in my head. Like when Wren fell off the bridge into that hotspring that lead to the underground city, I was confused on where both sides of the shore was, where these apprent stairs and doors were, and how the ghosts/revenants weren't able to find away around the water to get to her and Julien. This didn't really ruin anything for me as I still got the general vibe of what I should have been picturing, I just didn't always get the specifics.
There are a few mostly relatively minor things that I wish were different in the book. Firstly could we not have done anything better then "corpse queen" for the name of one of our lead antagonists? She sounds like a monster high reject and I really think we could brain storm better.
Secondly there was this GIANT info dump near the end of the sotry that just felt so clunky, especially when it was between middle-aged war veterans discussing their previous cover ups and greivances. This is also where we learn more about the evils of the past and present and it just all felt so juvinile for who these characters should be and didn't line up with how the rest of the book was. Also one of the twist antagonist really did just come off as too cartoonish when revealed.
Lastly one of my biggest pet peeves is when very specific powers get made needlesly OP. Having a power that has a specific set of abilities/areas of control is so much more interesting then powers that can do it all or are so vastly strong that it takes away the tension of the story because of how broken it is. Wren at the end of the book get amplified by an item to be able to physically toss 6 guards around because the item is boosting her power to affect/control bones. So basically telekenesis for anything that has bones. While she's shown to be able to summon bones from deceased bodies in the earth using exhausting techniques, this just feels too much. She already got a very powerful ability earlier in the story, and if we wanted to increase her abilities as a bonesmith, I think different avenues should have been taken. I'm just afraid that the story and the bonesmith powers will be a lot less compelling with such an uninteresting decision to increase Wrens power.
With that said I adored this book in its entirety, I adore the endpaper art on this edition, and am looking forward to read the next installment whenever it comes out.
Oh also I don't know if the twist about Wren being a ghostsmith is supposed to be a surprise, but it definetly wasn't.
Concept - love
characters- love
setting - love
I really enjoy fantasy books that have houses or divisions with all different or unique abilities (unlike how in a lot of fae stories many houses have the same powers), and this story does a good job at developing an entire world with a multitude of different houses and divisions with idfferent specialities that. Many of them while not relevant to the story, do emerse the world building.
I love the concept of the dead, revenants, the breach, the different sides of the war and how the past is driving the actions of the present.
I really liked both of the main characters as well, Wren and Julien were extremely fun foils of each other and had really smooth and funny dialouge with each other that felt like it was naturally building up their relationship to one another and didn't seem to come out of no where. I liked how their conversations naturally built up our and their understanding (and misunderstanding) of the world and their motivations. Nothing about them felt shoehorned in which made their friendship and romantic plot all the more sweet and compelling.
While I got a general idea lof the setting and a much better feel for the aesthetic, there wasa fair bit of times where I just didn't know what to picture and what I was told to picture didn't make sense in my head. Like when Wren fell off the bridge into that hotspring that lead to the underground city, I was confused on where both sides of the shore was, where these apprent stairs and doors were, and how the ghosts/revenants weren't able to find away around the water to get to her and Julien. This didn't really ruin anything for me as I still got the general vibe of what I should have been picturing, I just didn't always get the specifics.
There are a few mostly relatively minor things that I wish were different in the book. Firstly could we not have done anything better then "corpse queen" for the name of one of our lead antagonists? She sounds like a monster high reject and I really think we could brain storm better.
Secondly there was this GIANT info dump near the end of the sotry that just felt so clunky, especially when it was between middle-aged war veterans discussing their previous cover ups and greivances. This is also where we learn more about the evils of the past and present and it just all felt so juvinile for who these characters should be and didn't line up with how the rest of the book was. Also one of the twist antagonist really did just come off as too cartoonish when revealed.
Lastly one of my biggest pet peeves is when very specific powers get made needlesly OP. Having a power that has a specific set of abilities/areas of control is so much more interesting then powers that can do it all or are so vastly strong that it takes away the tension of the story because of how broken it is. Wren at the end of the book get amplified by an item to be able to physically toss 6 guards around because the item is boosting her power to affect/control bones. So basically telekenesis for anything that has bones. While she's shown to be able to summon bones from deceased bodies in the earth using exhausting techniques, this just feels too much. She already got a very powerful ability earlier in the story, and if we wanted to increase her abilities as a bonesmith, I think different avenues should have been taken. I'm just afraid that the story and the bonesmith powers will be a lot less compelling with such an uninteresting decision to increase Wrens power.
With that said I adored this book in its entirety, I adore the endpaper art on this edition, and am looking forward to read the next installment whenever it comes out.
Oh also I don't know if the twist about Wren being a ghostsmith is supposed to be a surprise, but it definetly wasn't.