I dunno lads, it's just not workin for me. Can't connect with the characters, don't feel drawn into the socialite plot. Maybe one day. 

I don't know if it's me or the book (I haven't finished anything on my own in months now, so probably me). I sensed some magic here, but it's not capturing my attention. 

This was fine, but I only have 3 days left on my Libby loan period and I'm neither deep enough nor invested enough to finish that quickly. Might try again one day. 

Temporary DNF - I think I'd like to return after reading her novels (which I've been meaning to do anyway). The first essay was riveting, but I felt like I would be getting more from it having read the works Roy discusses. 

I wrote a long review for this, and then my child closed all my apps when I got up to get them a water... so here are my basic thoughts instead:

If you're just looking for a basic read to give you the spooky vibes and atmosphere of the season, or you're more of a plot reader than a character-driven reader, this might work fine for you. 

I think if you enjoy seafaring fantasy and interesting worldbuilding, and care less about the writing style, The Bone Ships might work for you. But for a reader who pays attention to the writing, this felt sloppy. 

I really thought I would be able to get into it after the first few pages, but the clunky sentences, grammatical errors, and the way Barker would tell us what was happening rather depicting something and allowing us to draw conclusions, wore on me pretty fast. 

Most egregious, in the 80 pages that I read, were these two examples:

It reads like it's straight out of a picture book, or a poem for children (there was an old lady who swallowed a fly, anyone?), and would have taken an editor mere moments to rework. There were many sentences like this that just needed extra attention, and if the book had recieved that attention the text would have flowed better. The prose wasn't unbearably bad overall, but that almost made it worse because I could see the potential.

Oof, but also it comes after MANY repetitions of the fact that the crew is pathetically untrained and lazy. It's fine that Barker explicitly told us this more than once, especially given we're situated in Joron's perspective. But it felt exhausting to read this reminder once again, and I couln't help but imagine how tense the scene would have been if Barker had instead taken the time to SHOW us how an untrained and lazy crew would have reacted to Meas' battle commands. It could have been stressful and frantic, but was just another opportunity for Barker to make sure we understood how much Joron had failed as Shipwife, and I think that disappointment finally gave me the push I needed to set this book aside. 

(Stopped at 90 pages, but skim-read through later sections).

Not for me. The beginning was compelling but it fell flat from there. It all felt a little MFA to me, like someone writing the way they have been taught to write by other people taught to write in this same style (prose polished within an inch of its life, but with enough blood, sex, and heaviness to be realistic, provocative, or raw). NOT that everyone who has an MFA writes this way, but it's an identifiable style that I don't enjoy. It felt like all of the extraneous details meant to flesh the characters out were little more than padding, or flavour added to make things feel grittier/queerer/darker. These things rarely felt like meaningful or valuable additions to the story, which made it harder to connect with anything I was reading. There were moments of insightful writing about grief, and those moments were powerful, but heavily overshadowed. And, probably most egregious for a book listed as "horror", it wasn't remotely scary. Not even a little bit. No building tension, no stress, no dread. Just some gore, really. 

I've gleaned from the ratings that when this book connects with people, it connects hard, and I love that! But if you're in the minority on this one, just know you're not alone. 

Ultimately I think this book, and likely the entire series, has the capacity to tackle some big themes (colonialism, "civilization", discrimination, duty) etc. in a satisfyingly Hobb-y way. But it doesn't have the spark that I felt reading the Elderlings series, and I don't have the space in my life for plodding through a 600 page book that I'm not connecting with right now. I feel completely uninvested in the plot and the world and the characters. I'd rather just re-read RotE. 

I have a decent background on the history of Black Panthers, so it might be a better book for those looking for an introduction, but I also had an issue with the writing. On a sentence-by-sentence level it was perfectly fine, but the structure was all over the place and needlessly confusing. I wanted it to be more cohesive, and with a stronger storytelling element. 

It did spark an interest in reading more about Afeni Shakur, so I look forward to that! 

I was prepared for this book to be bleak, I'm comfortable with the occasionally bleak read. But it has to have some payoff to keep me invested - interesting commentary, a unique writing style, a dark sense of humour, something new or experimental or just executed so well that I can't help but admire the craft. There were a few lines that made me laugh, and I enjoyed how despicable the main character was, but the payoff wasn't there for me. I think I was expecting something more in the vein of Morvern Callar (bleak but so compelling I couldn't look away) and I did not find that here. I dreaded picking it up every time I sat down to read. Ultimately not for me.