Bone Maker

“I’m not him.”
“But you’ve crossed the same line he did. You’ve become the very horror we all fought against. The very horror that Jentt died to defeat.”
“For very different reasons.”

There's a specific type of stories I can never get enough of: the ones that happen after The End. The big battle has been won, the ultimate villain lies defeated, the victory celebrations are over, but life still goes on, and I'm always interested in *those* fictional lives. What happens to the veteran heroes? What do they do with their baggage? Give me more books about that!

Anyway, *The Bone Maker* sounded like it was written for me. I did enjoy it a great deal. I did, however, feel like it was... two separate books slapped together? The first half had a big *Kings of the Wyld* vibe: getting the band back together for one last impossible mission/unfinished job, that kind of thing. I got really invested in it, and then the second half switched quite abruptly to more, "When we were young, we just stabbed bad things until they bled, but now the villain's armor is made of political corruption and we've gotta delve into politics" with a dash of "Maybe we should all just let the past go... or should we?" and a heavily present theme of second chances and who deserves them. I kind of liked both stories, for different reasons. What I didn't like was how separate they felt.

My opinion on the characters is similarly halved. I really loved all the women in the cast: Kreya's struggle to stay on the line that separates her from the villain she's been pitted against since teenagehood, Zera's combination of flamboyance and loyal courage, Amurra's kindness and quiet courage. But all the males were like... "tortured prophet who's somewhat out of his mind," "valiant warrior turned family man," "resurrected husband/plot device who sometimes remembers he used to be a dashing youth." That's it, those are their personalities. I mean, in a way it's kind of refreshing to see the male characters get the short end of the sticks when it comes to unequal development between genders, but these guys are characters, too, and it's kind of hard to root for cardboard cutouts.

Oh, and one thing that confused me to no end: why did everyone act like the war against Eglor was a thing of the past, something shrouded in history, when plenty of people who witnessed it, fought in it, and lost loved ones to it still live? It was only 25 years ago. I was born more than 40 years after World War II ended, and I still grew up in the shadow of it. My grandfathers were war vets, my grandmothers survived the Nazi occupation. Victory Day was always a day of celebration and grief in my household, and the households of my friends of the same age. We grew up to our grandparents' tales of their experiences. For our parents, the shadow of the war had been even thicker: they'd been born in cities that still bore scars from the war, raised by people for whom the trauma was still fresh. 25 years is nothing when it comes to these things. So that made it kind of hard to get fully invested in the story, when the numbers just... didn't compute.

What I did unequivocally enjoy was the magic system with its three branches and the heavy prices baked in. I would have loved for the story to dig even more into the amulet-making Zera did—I love supportive casting, it needs more love. But I do see how the focus needed to be kept on the more plot-relevant spells and divination, and it was just all so interesting. 

I did, as usual, enjoy Sarah Beth Durst's writing and dialogue, and as a whole, the book was more of a good experience. Just... a flawed one.