booksthatburn's Reviews (1.46k)

I dislike the main character and am bothered by a bunch of little things about the worldbuilding.

As the middle book of a trilogy, THE BONE SHARD EMPEROR moves several things to new stages but doesn't completely close off anything. Mephi and Jovis's bond is getting stronger. Phalue and Ranami are newly married and figuring out what kind of governor Phalue will be. Sand now calls herself Nisong and has begun invading the other islands with her fellow constructs. Lin is traveling to several of the islands in order to obtain promises of aid and loyalty from the various governors. The Shardless Few are more of a threat, with their leader pulling strings to destabilize Lin's reign. Lin now has a companion of her own, and a Cloud Tree monk has appeared to help her learn about the Alanga. There's a much stronger focus on information about the Alanga, since it appears they're coming back. I like the reveal of what they are, and I'm very intrigued by some late-book answers about their reemergence and connection to shard magic. 

Nisong's conquest of the nearby islands is introduced and resolved. Technically she appeared in the first book, but the actual invasion and her tactics don't show up until this one. This isn't the last book, and it leaves open a bunch of interesting things. This include but are not limited to Jovis and Lin's relationship, further steps from the leader of the Shardless Few, the orphan girl Phalue and Ranami are helping, and Lin's next moves as emperor. The narrators are the same as the first book and (with the major exception of Nisong/Sand) are generally consistent with their earlier appearances. I highly recommend the audiobook. Having three narrators helped me keep track of the story and characters more easily, even though there are slightly more than three point-of-view characters.

Early on, Lin is exploring the rooms and items her father left behind by his death, trying to find a balance between getting information and holding on to herself. Later, Lin and Jovis begin moving around the islands on a tour of governors. This is in keeping with Jovis's wanderings in the first book, but it does make it feel a bit unmoored. The various plot threads are woven together expertly, with the common threat that more islands may sink. The romance between Jovis and Lin is a bit strange. There are the obvious issues, like how he entered her service as a spy and isn't sure yet where his loyalties lie. There's also a bit of fridge horror associated with Lin's identity which seems like it ought to trouble Jovis personally, but even once he figures it out he isn't dissuaded. I think I would have been more distressed in the same position, but I guess I'm not very much like Jovis. 

A solid continuation of what's shaping up to be an amazing trilogy, don't miss this one if you like betrayal, fridge horror, and multilayered politics of an empire in crisis.

Jess has returned to Malaysia, adjusting to life with her extended family rather than only having her parents around. She frequently doesn't know what the social expectations are, and feels overwhelmed by the weight of all the unsaid things she "should" have just grown up knowing if she and her parents had never left for America when she was a child. When she starts dealing with spirits and gods after Ah Ma possesses her, she's even more out of her depth. The worldbuilding and characterization blend together, as most of what Jess is learning deals with a person or being and how to act around them. The first half was fine, but the second half is where this really shines. In the first part Jess gets a basic idea of what's going on, but then things start to go very badly and she has to adapt quickly with incomplete information. One of my favorite things is how Ah Ma's motivations seem simple but strange early one, then turn into this complex tangle, only to be completely understandable by the end as Jess uncovers long-buried or never acknowledged secrets in her quest to get her life back to normal and the god out of her life.

Jess is gay, with a (newly) long-distance girlfriend. Their relationship gets strained by the distance, suddenly reduced contact, and Jess's decision to not tell her any of the very weird things that have started happening to her. When she first heard Ah Ma she thought she was going crazy. Once it became clear that the voice was an actual ghost trying to get her to do something to help a god, Jess felt like she was too far in to start saying something now. An additional issue is that her girlfriend is out as gay but Jess isn't out to anyone who might get the information to her family. Now that she's surrounded by her family and her head is filled with Ah Ma, the slices of the day where Jess feels safe to be herself are getting smaller and smaller. It's a very relatable portrayal of a fracturing relationship, frequently on Jess's mind but not taking over the narrative. 

The audiobook performer is excellent. I love the ending, it gets things to a new status quo without attempting to fix absolutely everything that's wrong, keeping some of the messiness of life. 

Keeps bringing up a topic that's triggering to me. Also I'm not enjoying the premise.

Violet loves Burleigh House. Unabashedly, unreservedly, and to the point that she’s in a toxic/codependent relationship with Burleigh as it will take everything she has to give and hurt her in return. I kept waiting for it to do something for her, something beyond occasional flowers. Violet has to figure out whether she wants to live for more than Burleigh, if she can be more than a Caretaker. She's ready to give everything for it and it's waiting to take everything she'll offer.

The worldbuilding is more repetitive than it is deep. There's a lot of wordplay involving magical definitions to otherwise normal phrases, and little historical details (such as Pompeii having been a Great House before the disaster). It shows rather than tells most aspects of House magic, especially early on. I read this in a single day, due in no small part to the audiobook narrator’s excellent performance. She brought Violet to life and elevated repetitive sections into an absorbing litany. 

The eventual romance with Wyn doesn't precisely come out of nowhere, but he's drawn to her because they've been through something so fucked up that literally no one else he knows would understand, could feel it in their bones. That means the bond can feel very deep, as bonds of shared trauma often are, but if I try to outline exactly why they'd be good as a couple going forward I come up short. Wyn begins the story with no illusions about what Vi's connection to Burleigh means for her and her ability to prioritize anything else. 

For those who have read THE LIGHT BETWEEN WORLDS, this feels like a more obsessive version of Evelyn's desire to return to the Woodlands. Except, I can believe the Woodlands love Ev, and I have trouble believing Burleigh loves Vi in a way that's healthy or has anything to do with her, specifically. If you read THE LIGHT BETWEEN WORLDS and wanted there to be more longing and obsession, then you'll probably love A TREASON OF THORNS. If you didn't like that aspect, this doubles down in a way that likely won't be appealing.

Ultimately, this is a book which goes deep on a very specific atmosphere and stays in the head of a narrator whose obsession fills every moment. If you like that vibe there's a lot to love, but if you're having trouble getting into it there's no moment to push past in order to reach a different kind of story. I love it and don't wish it were anything else.

Don't like it, not sure why. I don't know why I'm supposed to care about what's happening, feels like too many perspective characters too soon.

There's a pretty large cast of narrators, listening via audiobook helped enormously with keeping track of them since there are three audiobook narrators to handle all the perspectives. Those performances are great, making helping keep the characters distinct even when the same performed voiced multiple characters. 

The plot has several threads, following each of the main characters. The blurb implies that Lin is the only main character, but Jovis plays an enormous role (meeting all but one of the other main characters at various points), and the romance between Phalue and Ranami felt complex and real. Lin is the daughter of the emperor, trying to get her father's approval by getting back memories she lost in a sickness several years ago. Jovis is a smuggler who is trying to find his wife who was kidnapped five years ago. He ends up rescuing children from having their shards taken. Phalue is the daughter of a governor on one of the islands, and Ranami is her girlfriend who keeps turning down Phalue's marriage proposals because Phalue doesn't seem to understand the enormity of her privilege in comparison to everyone on the island. There's a woman called Sand who is trying to escape her current situation, I don't want to spoil anything about her but she seems set up to do much more in the sequel.

Lin has spent years trying to get her father's approval, and is frustrated by his ableist insistence that she's not whole unless she can get back the memories she lost. Desperate to get him to pay attention to her as she is and not as she was, Lin starts copying his keys to get access to rooms that might hold knowledge of the magic he should be teaching her. She's in competition with her foster brother Bayan since he regained more of his memories and seems to continually be one step ahead of her in getting the emperor's attention.

The relationship between Phalue and Ranami briefly dips into some toxic territory as Phalue doesn't seem to understand or know how to take seriously Ranami's concerns. It definitely helps that both of them are narrators, so their perspectives are shown directly at various points. 

Jovis ends up with an animal companion after he saves it from the water during a disaster early one. Mephi is pretty cool and not annoying, which is a relief because sometimes I end up detesting animal sidekicks. 

The magic system is based on using bone taken from the empire's citizens as children. The shards can be used to power constructs, and once in use they slowly drain the life force of their original owner. The emperor uses an elaborate array of constructs to do all the imperial bureaucracy which could be done by people, but he doesn't trust anyone else to do it right. This setup means that the way the lower classes are exploited is more than just cruelty and resource hoarding by the rich, but that their very lives can be taken, slowly, by an emperor they'll never see, if he happens to pick their shard from a drawer and use it to fuel a construct. I love the way the magic system is inseparable from the political structure and brewing uprising. 

THE BONE WEAVER explores grief, otherness, and reconnection in a second-world fantasy. Toma was raised by undead but is forced to find connections with the living when her sister is stolen by soldiers as a curious specimen. She travels with Mikhail, the displaced Tsar, and Vanya, a commoner with magic. 

Because Toma was raised by undead for a large portion of her life, there are a lot of things where her reasoning gets her to a workable solution by a very strange route. Her traveling companions don’t usually try to correct her, as her worldview is so fundamentally different from theirs they might not even know where to begin. In matters of the undead, she eventually gets them more comfortable. In matters of society, war, and prejudice, the tsar and the commoner tend to vehemently disagree while Toma listens to them both and makes up her own mind. Vanya is part of a persecuted minority, his situation made more precarious because he has magic. This would be fine if he were noble, but commoners with magic are thought of as unclean or cursed, somehow fundamentally different than nobles with the same powers. 

I enjoyed the array of undead types who appear late in the book. The timing means that the worldbuilding as far as human society and the current conflict are well established before the differences between types of undead begin to matter in the story.

Toma and Mikhail travel for a while before meeting Vanya, which helps with balancing the interactions between them. Toma and Mikhail establish a rapport, then Vanya finds his place in their trio. Toma is the only point-of-view character, but in at least one instance she overhears a discussion between Vanya and Mikhail which makes it clear they have built a friendship separate from and in parallel with their friendships with her. It never feels like an infodump because the three main characters have legitimate reasons to explain things to each other. For each of them it might be some very fundamental aspect, but their experiences have been so disparate as to feel like a different world.

SONS OF DESTINY is the final showdown between Steve and Darren, as they both learn who set them in the other's path. 

This wraps up Darren and Steve's conflict with a final confrontation. It addresses some of what happens to the other characters afterward, but only in brief detail. It kind of has a new storyline about what happens to Darren after the conflict, but that's so much of a continuation/redo that I'm not sure whether it counts as a new storyline. It introduces and resolves Darren's transformation. As the final book in the series it wraps up Darren's personal storyline as well as a smattering of other plot threads. Darren is still the narrator, as he has been for the whole series. 

It would not make sense to start here, not only is this the final book but it revisits some early events from an altered perspective. To read this without having read any of the others would be a pile of massive spoilers which would be in danger of feeling anticlimactic because they lacked context. The book starts with a concise and useful summation of the series so far, but that's more useful for those who waited a while between reading the other books and this one, and would most likely be insufficient context for anyone who tried skipping the others and just reading this.

The plot picks up where LORD OF THE SHADOWS left off, with Darren and Vancha figuring out what to do with Darius and dealing with Steve's actions at the end of that book. It packs an incredible amount of incredibly spoilery worldbuilding and character work into a very small space, with a villain speech which ties things together with brutal clarity, all the way back to the start of the series. The second part of the book is devoted to the aftermath of the violent clash. The ending is the reason I wanted to re-read this series. I loved it as a kid and I'm so glad it mostly held up now that I'm an adult. It's not the only series that has this kind of finale, but it does it very well and it was the first such ending I'd read.