Thursday, June 10, 2021

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Bone Maker by Sarah Beth Durst

 




The Bone Maker is the most recent adult novel by prolific author Sarah Beth Durst, known for both kid's and adult (and YA as well) SF/F novels.  I've really enjoyed Durst's adult (and sort of borderline YA-ish at times) work (Queen of Blood, Race the Sands, etc.), which has often taken some classic fantasy tropes and turns them on their heads in really dark ways.  Durst's prose is also the type that - for whatever reason - seems really readable to me, so I was excited to try this newest novel and reserved it from the library immediately upon release.

And The Bone Maker is a very enjoyable kind of take on an interesting fantasy subgenre - the story that begins well after the epic fantasy adventure has concluded and deals largely with its former heroes dealing with the aftermath.  The Bone Maker features a quintet of heroes who at great cost defeated a big evil, and who fell apart afterwards as they dealt with the results of those cost.  It's a strong story with strong lead characters - including one side character I really enjoyed - dealing with themes of grief, of the power of life and death, of the difference between good and evil, and more.  Like other Durst novels I've read, it takes a few shortcuts in the ending to wrap things up with a neat bow, but other than that this is another strong novel from her.  

----------------------------------------------------Plot Summary-------------------------------------------------------
25 years ago, a team of heroes faced off against Eklor, a mad Bone Maker, as he attempted to raise an army of bone constructs to conquer the world and commit mass murder.  The team consisted of Kreya, a bone maker herself who could use animal bone to create her own constructs from the inanimate; Zera, a bone wizard who could create magic talismans that provide short term boosts to physical attributes; Marso, a bone reader who could see the future in the bones; Stran, a warrior who could use Zera's talisman to do incredible physical feats, and Jentt, Kreya's husband and "reformed" thief.  In the end, Kreya confronted and killed Eklor alone, while the other four heroes distracted his constructs in battle...but Jentt was killed in the process.  

Kreya hasn't seen the other 3 surviving members of the group in 25 years, having seemingly become a hermit with a big secret: reading Eklor's books, she's found a way to bring Jentt back at the cost of some of her own lifespan.  But the technique uses human bones, which is forbidden (and punishable by death), and the only way for Kreya to get the bones she needs may be to revisit the battlefield where they made their last stand.  But to pull that off, she'll need to get help from her former comrades, who might all still be alive....but might not be in the best way 25 years later. 

And when Kreya's new quest finds hints that their old one may not have been as complete as they once thought, Kreya and her former party-mates are left with a serious question: Can they, 25 years later and damaged as they are, step up and be heroes once again?  And is it even necessary, or is it just them having delusions of grandeur?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Bone Maker is a story that begins by dealing with the aftermath of a heroic adventure and then eventually dives into whether the same heroes can, years later, or should even have to save the world again when things fail to stay "happily ever after."  Not that it's a happily ever after for the heroes - of the five, only one is truly happy at the start of the story, with the other four in states of death (Jentt), maddening grief (Kreya), loneliness despite immense wealth (Zera), or some combination of the grief, loneliness and madness (Marso).  And so when confronted with the past once again, and when the power that gave rise to the evil they fought also can give rise to restoring Jentt, the book asks the question: how far is too far to go to try and make things better for oneself?  

Most of the book is written from Kreya's perspective, which really puts these themes in a strong light.  Kreya is a powerful bone maker but is desperate to have time left with her husband, even if it breaks taboos and costs her part of her own lifespan.  Her grief for him has consumed her at the start of the book, and it's only when she is forced to seek help from Zera that she realizes that it has resulted in her doing wrong by her friends by keeping them out as well.  And with that realization, as well as the realization that Kreya is still a born leader who people - particularly her friends - will follow almost without question, makes her wonder how far is too far to go, whether her actions have crossed the line from good to evil, and whether forgiveness is possible even for the evilest of deeds.  

But these themes are harped on by more than Kreya's perspective - Zera's perspective also gets shown from time to time, and she's great in her own rights - a woman who has used her talents in the last 25 years to gain great wealth and fame, but who is lonely without her friends...even if she has a loyal subordinate at her side she might not quite recognize for his own worth.  And while his perspective is a bit part, Marso also shows that without the support of his friends, it's easy for grief and loneliness to break a person as he's literally become a homeless man driven mad by his visions or what he thinks he sees without the support of his friends.  

And then there's the exception in Stran the warrior for contrast - who in the 25 years separation has gotten married to a wonderful woman in Amurra, and is actually living a happily ever after as a result.  He's the only one of the group to have an honest pillar in his corner as support, as his relationship is based upon always telling the other partner the truth, and Amurra is more than worthy of his trust - she's a terrific character in her own right for how she balances her fear for Stran getting himself in trouble and her need to lend him her support, and I love her a lot even as a less important character.  

It's a great cast, which together with a fun magic system and world sets things up for a plot that works really well, as evil seems to have resurfaced, but in a way that makes the heroes really question whether that's the case or just them being unable to let go of the past.  And it does so in a way that makes them question whether their own actions are really good.  Hell, the book even manages to maybe be the first piece of fantasy that uses the "cast magic at the cost of one's own lifespan getting shorter" gimmick in a way that works well, where you actually see its impact in a very bittersweet way.  Like I hinted above the jump, the book's ending requires one leap of logic to solve everything that didn't quite fit the character of the villain as I read him, so seemed a bit unlikely, but everything else is really strong, with the heroes departing once more on a more happily, if very bittersweet, conclusion now that they have the support of one another.  Recommended.

Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)