The Bone Ships: 1 (Tide Child Trilogy)

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Loyalty. That is what makes a ship work – ties of loyalty. To each other, to the ship. And every time we fight together, we are bound closer together. It is your nature, Joron, to like people and to be kind. Do not think I have not seen the leeway you give.”

Still as great on a reread, and it's making me even more excited to know what's next now that the last book of the trilogy, The Bone Ship's Wake, has just been released. The story itself is completely unique to anything I have ever read before, and very dark as well. The entire war at this point is based on stealing children from the other side to sacrifice their souls as corpse lights on their ships. Additionally, each healthy first born of the Hundred Isles' women is sacrificed in the same regard. These souls seem to make the ships literally alive, as when the ships take damage, the corpse lights go out. This doesn't seem like an intelligent way of life to some people, which may or may not be one of the many sources of intrigue, treason, and subplotting within the empire. I will start by saying that the cover and internal map are both really awesome designs, and I think the map adds a lot to the story. It is helpful to be able to visualize the ship's route and have some sense of scale to the journey they are on. Joron Twiner is Meas' second in command and he has a bond with the guillame. This story has Joron featured just as much as Meas as they come upon the strangest ship they'd ever seen with the strangest cargo ever beheld. Desperation has birthed evil. The Hundred Isles has a matriarchal society in which citizens are valued for fertility and beauty. Women who survive childbirth and bear healthy children are elevated to Bern class. Healthy men may become Kept concubines by the Bern, but those with birth defects or other undesirable traits are relegated to lower castes. The firstborn healthy child from each family is sacrificed, and their soul is used to make a “corpse light” to light a white ship.

There is plenty of action spread throughout Call of the Bone Ships both on the land and the sea. With his action scenes, Barker doesn’t shy away from depicting the visceral nature of the battle and the fights have a weight to them, a heft to the blows dealt where you can feel the bite of the blade into flesh. There are some absolutely stunning cinematic and large-scale set pieces throughout Call of the Bone Ships, dramatic moments too, but there are also smaller and more personal moments, ripples in the water that are weighted and have a huge impact. The settings are all vividly realised and Barker manages to easily evoke images of the locations allowing you to picture them in your mind. With his writing, Barker’s words are able to convey the emotions that the characters feel and there are moments that rend your heart. In Call of the Bone Ships, you find yourself cursing Barker for what he puts both his characters and his readers through as he breaks them in the name of the story. The character writing in this book is top notch, with all of the characters providing such vivid life to the story and intricately well crafted. The main character in particular is an extremely well written character was a convincing arc and character growth, who matures as a man and works to earn the respect of his fellow shipmates. The cast that surrounds him is colorful, and exactly what you would expect to see on a fantasy pirate ship. I love the way these characters interact with each other and each have unique traits that don't just make them names, they feel like real people. The Bone Ships is book one of a new fantasy series. Don’t be thrown about by the concept of a handful of warriors chasing after the world’s last sea dragon. This is not a children’s book. It is a bold, exciting, adventure that is dark, gritty, and ruthless. At first, it may be difficult to enter this world because the prose - the incredible prose - is filled to the brim with terminology that is unfamiliar and customs and history that are often only hinted at. Nevertheless, this is a book with a great payoff. It is well worth the time to dig into this. The Bone Ships has already built up plenty of anticipation - and with good reason ... Barker's previous series, the acclaimed The Wounded Kingdom Trilogy, was a powerhouse of gritty fantasy, and The Bone Ships promises to launch one of this season's greatest, grandest dragon sagas' A vividly realised high-seas epic that pulls you deep into its world and keeps you tangled there until the very last word'

Worry only about tomorrow, and the day after. Think not on the day after that for we fly a ship of the dead, and the Hag calls us all. To plan far ahead is to ask for the Maiden to thwart all you are. We live in the now. We fight for what we believe is right. We can do nothing else.” The words, concepts and sayings of the original world are well woven into the dialogues of the characters. They have beautiful and suitable places for the situation, conveying the necessary pathos, tragedy and self-sacrifice. Dialogues with antagonists are also well done. One year later, Joron leads a fleet of pirate ships allied with the Gaunt Isles. He allows ships from the Hundred Isles to escape with the rotting carcass of an arakeesian. This sparks a plague, devastating the population of Bernshulme. Tide Child is pursued by Hundred Isles ships. Joron sails his ship into a fog bank filled with icebergs. An arakeesian arrives, saving the ship. Rumors that Joron summoned the arakeesian begin to circulate, putting Meas’s life in danger. Un romanzo promettente che intrattiene ma non riesce a convincermi del tutto lasciando al termine un senso di carenza su alcuni elementi narrativi. Unfortunately, this culture of constant war has also affected the ways people lived. Society favored the strong, and it was decreed that anyone with a physical defect or disability—and even those who were born from a mother who died in childbirth—is automatically relegated to the lower classes, denied a chance to ever amount to anything. That said, it wasn’t all peachy for the healthy and able either. Many are sacrificed to the dangers of the sea, sent to win glory and treasures or die in brutal conflict. In this society where birthrate is low and whose survival depends on raising the next generation, women who have proven their ability to bear and deliver many children are also in places of authority, but as a result, everything else about what makes her a person is diminished. It didn’t matter who you were, it seemed life on the Hundred Isles had relatively little meaning beyond your ability to breed or to fight.

Fantasy Series We Recommend

One of the things that I have been most impressed with for this series is the author’s ability to create a gripping and consistently well-written maritime story. Narratives that are primarily set aboard boats are notoriously hard to write, but Barker has risen to the challenge, writing a novel rich in naval and maritime detail, with a major fantasy fiction edge to it. Call of the Bone Ships contains an intense amount of intriguing detail about the coming and goings aboard the ship out at sea and Barker does an amazing job highlighting the various day-to-day actions a crew are expected to undertake, as well as all the unique features that makes a ship in this fantasy universe different from real-world ships. This impressive attention to detail translates extremely well into several naval battles and combat sequences, and it was cool to see the Tide Child engage in battle with other ships in some outstanding and beautifully written sequences. In addition, Barker ensures that every major character in this novel had a real nautical feel to them. Everything about these characters, from the way they spoke to how they act or think aboard the ship made you think of old sea-salts who had spent a lifetime on the waves, which helps to bring an interesting ring of realism to the story. I also really love the intense and encapsulating atmospheres that Barker creates with his excellent writing ability, and you get a real sense of the moods of the entire ship throughout the novel, whether it be despair at something bad that has befallen the ship, or the sense of repetitive boredom that arrives from the ship doing the same action day after day with no break in routine. All of this helps to produce a truly exceptional narrative, and I cannot emphasise how impressive the author’s various nautical inclusions are. We also have some magical creatures such as a giant sea dragon and a mysterious bird like being who play a big part in the story. Personally I think the animals/creatures may have been more interesting than the actual characters which is a bit of a shame really as there was good scope to develop both. The biggest problem is that the sequel is not due out till Fall 2020. It’s going to be a long wait.