The Bone Shard Daughter: The Drowning Empire Book One

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The openly and transparently gay element is handled with welcome subtlety; some characters are gay; many of the soldiers are women, though, crucially, this is never offered as an overriding issue. Maybe it’s because I’ve grown in the year or maybe now that I have a better understanding of the world I’m about to enter into that I can confidently read and enjoy it rather than gather the necessary bits and pieces I need to comprehend the story.

The plot is split among the points of view of the various characters, winding from one to the next, and eventually connecting.I liked the POV switches and the alternating first- and third-person narration (I tend to get easily tired of the first-person voice that seems to be increasingly common), and thank all the deities it did NOT have the ever-popular present-tense narration either. The ending of The Bone Shard Daughter definitely leaves the door open to more volumes set in this world.

Jovis’s and Phalue’s chapters are full of action as the former is trying to evade the law and the criminal gang he owes money to, and the latter gets pulled into a rebellious group because of the woman she loves. We welcome respectful dialogue related to speculative fiction in literature, games, film, and the wider world. Very highly recommended if you like dark magic systems with complicated characters set in a kingdom that is falling apart.The Bone Shard Daughter begins with a spark of intrigue that ignites into a thrilling adventure you cannot miss-with a unique (and painful! This book is told in multiple points of views—Lin and Jovis in first person, and the others in third. Revolution, justice, identity, love, and family are some of the main themes in this book, and Stewart executed these themes magnificently through her wonderful cast of diverse characters. And the Emperor just needed to use a bit of logic to win the fateful confrontation — all he needed to do was to seriously - major spoiler! One thing I could live without though would be Mephi, the mysterious maybe-animal companion (familiar?

This also came as a surprise to me, because as you could tell from my tagline, a list of what Bone Shard Daughter isn’t is quite short. The bone shard magic actually reminded me of scriving—inserting commands to inanimate objects—from another series I loved: The Founders Trilogy by Robert Jackson Bennett.Jovis is a smuggler, who is on a mission to find and rescue his wife, Emahla, who was taken some years prior by a mysterious figure captaining a fast ship with blue sails. He rescues a young boy from the tithing ceremony along the way, and once upon the water, brings onto his boat a creature he mistakes for a kitten, whom the boy names Mephi. I greatly appreciated that the author was able to create some elements that were very low stakes and pleasant while also choosing to not pull punches with some gut-wrenching deaths or concepts.

Jovis quickly gains a reputation as a rescuer of children, and is in much demand by desperate parents.She commends the worldbuilding, themes, and characters, though she also observes that the language is not as compelling as it could be, and some characters and plot points are not fully in focus. Excluding Lin’s POV that has a large focus on these bone shard magic and constructs, things are moderately light on the high-fantasy world-building scale—for now anyway—but it’s undoubtedly is one.