The Bone Shard War (The Drowning Empire)

Product Information

I received this book for free from Orbit Books in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

I'd told myself so many times I wasn't a hero. I lifted my staff to the side, opening my arms, inviting the Despite my issues, I was still emotionally invested enough that my heart was shredded to pieces during some of the final chapters. I love it when stories make me feel truly devastated, and the heartbreaking parts of this bittersweet ending absolutely succeeded in that regard. (And after all the bitterness, it did end on an optimistic note.) But still there were a few obligatory eyerolls. A big conflict between protagonists rests on miscommunication. Decisions only appropriate for young teenagers are made by adults. The scale of the large Empire somehow seems more appropriate to that of a few villages. Romance that was not necessary when friendship would have sufficed. Thin motivation for the villain barely rooted in revenge. Feudalism still relied upon — but as much as we know Lin is one of the good guys, that’s still not a good reason to support absolute monarchy. Nils: Definitely, but I guess it was a natural and inevitable progression given the weight of the Empire on her shoulders? Yet I couldn’t help but miss the Lin we were presented with in the first book, the one who wanted to help everyone without manipulating them in the way her father did. Un cobarde no es aquel que no tiene miedo, sino el que propone a otros para que soporten un sufrimiento que no quiere soportar él”.My review of the first book in the series, The Bone Shard Daughter is here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

stars. I seem to be in the minority on this one, so I thought I'd briefly explain why I didn't love it as much as the first (even though I still liked it—I am, as always, reminding everyone that 3.5 stars is a good rating) : While many of the conflicts in the series find sympathetic figures on both sides, the clash between the well-intentioned Lin and the Shardless Few being the prime example— The Bone Shard War also introduced Ragan, who stands revealed by the end of the volume as one of the trilogy’s only outright villains. Like Lin and Jovis, he also possesses the skills of an Alanga, which involves bonding with sentient beings known as ossalen. (It’s probably worth mentioning here that Jovis’s ossalen companion Mephi is one of the most endearing characters in the entire series.) And unlike Lin or Jovis—or even Nisong, who has eminently good reasons for her anger with the Empire—he seems far more fixated on power and destruction for their own sake.In contrast to Nisong, we have Ragan who grew up as a Cloudtree Monk along with their harsh discipline. The strict regime and beatings never subdued him, it only made him more bitter, more cruel. Like the ancient Alanga Dione and the Ioph Carn leader Kaphra, Ragan too wanted power, but for completely different reasons. I was surprised to see Ragan as the biggest threat by the end—he was a character who just wanted to watch the world burn. As with Book One, the plot moves along incrementally. But the pacing doesn’t suffer because the characters are so compelling. Whether you are rooting for them or not, they are all well-developed. The Bone Shard War, however, was not as absorbing or fun to read as the previous books, making it my least favorite installment. I enjoyed the bittersweet-yet-hopeful ending and was glad I finished the series, but this novel had some issues in its execution, particularly with pacing. The first half had parts so dull that I often ended up setting the book down after reading just one chapter, and though the second half was harder to put down, it also rushed through its far more compelling events. Watching my father and reading and listening to you … if there’s one thing it’s all taught me it’s that if I try too hard to hold on to power at the expense of everything else, in the end that’s all I’ll have: power.” Beth: It was very cool, and we absolutely loved this, didn’t we! There’s a beautiful notion there, of having bonded on such a deep level with what becomes your home.