16 May 2023

#Review - The Bone Shard War by Andrea Stewart

Cover for book The Bone Shard War by Andrea Stewart. Purple background. At the top, a stylised crown, carved of bone. On left and right, also carved in bone, representations of serpentine dragons, curling waves, and ships.
The Bone Shard War  (Drowning Empire, 3)
Andrea Stewart
Orbit, 20 April 2023 
Available as: HB, 614pp, audio, e  
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(HB): 9780356515038


I'm grateful to Orbit for sending me a copy of The Bone Shard War to consider for review. I have taken a little longer than I would have liked to review this cracking book, due mainly to some unforeseen life events.

The Bone Shard War gives us the endgame to the struggle between Lin, last survivor of the Sukai dynasty, Empress of the Phoenix Empire, bone magician, and her enemies. These include Shardless Few rebels, the resurgent Alanga magicians, and numerous restive island governors. Wild cards in this contest include Jovis, Lin's onetime Captain of the Guard and lover, who has disappeared, the fanatic Alanga Ragan, and Nisong (surely one of the most hateful characters in fiction?) More welcome for me were Phalue and her wife Ranami who typify the contradictions and changing allegiances in these books. Phalue is the daughter of an island governor. She worked with the Shardles Few and overthrew her father. Ranami is a former gutter urchin who fell for Phalue and supports her in trying to make her island a better, more just place but rejects the bloodthirsty cast the Shardless Few have taken under it "new" leader, Dione.

If you've been reading this series - and actually there's no excuse for you if you haven't - you'll be familiar with this cast of characters and keen to see how things turn out. I can promise that The Bone Shard War is fully up to the standards of the previous parts, that some mysteries which have been there from the start - such as why islands keep sinking - are resolved and that the ending was for me both exciting and fitting.

If you haven't been reading the series, then to persuade you to go back and do it, I will say that you have a treat waiting in The Bone Shard War. The book has everything. Lin is an Empress trapped by tradition and society, wanting reform but tramelled by the powers of the magnates under her, and also faced with numerous challenges and potential crises - sinking islands, an outbreak of disease, rebellious dignitaries who don't respect her, and uprisings everywhere. Also, her friend and lover seems to have taken up arms against her.

These are complex books, pitting duty against love, revenge against justice, order and tradition against reform and renewal, and turning on the power of secrets and lies to shape events. Part of Lin's problem is simply not knowing enough - about the Alanga magic, about her own ancestors, the Sukais, and how they came to power, about the bone shard magic that she has learned to use and about the intentions of Ragan, Diana and Nisong. The problem these three antagonists, each of them powerful, have is that they don't trust each other. They are right not to. Each has quite different motives and intentions and while they move in and out of alliances with one another - always keeping an eye on the clamour of a confused mob of supporters - none ever has the advantage for long.

Aside from being an excellent and well-written character study, then, The Bone Shard War is an extremely strategic book, one in which nobody has very much time or the whole picture and we see everyone here having to make hurried decisions and live with the consequences against a murky and shifting backdrop. Sometimes those decisions are hard to bear - there is a lot of sacrifice here - and, as I have said, sometimes duty weighs against personal desires. It makes for a heady ending to the trilogy and it all feels very, well, real.

Written with great verve, this is a flowing and powerful story that absorbs from the first page to the last. I'd strongly recommend.

For more information about The Bone Shard War, see the publisher's website here

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