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chalkletters's review against another edition
adventurous
hopeful
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
I was excited about The Bone Ships from the moment our book club organiser mentioned it. I love books set on ships — The Liveship Tradersseries, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, I even have a whole shelf on my Goodreads for books with boats. A tweet placing The Bone Ships on a ‘Robin Hobb’ scale made me anticipate it even more, since she’s one of my favourite authors in fantasy. While I wouldn’t put The Bone Ships quite on that level myself, I did really enjoy it!
R J Barker’s writing made me wish I were better at visualising things; the imagery he presents is clearly well thought out, and very different from standard fantasy. The woods are pink, purple and blue; the clothes are flamboyantly adorned with feathers; the dragon swims under water, the ships are literally made of bone. I’d love to see some colour illustrations, or an adaption to a visual medium. For those who feel fantasy sometimes overuses a medieval European setting, I’d say The Bone Ships is a must-read!
It did take me a little while to get swept up in the plot, though that may just have been that I was having a bad day when I started reading. The use of fantasy words probably didn’t help, as there are quite a lot of them. Some, obviously, feel necessary: these ships are different to real-world ships, and so naturally use different terms. It was pointed out in book club that the power structures of R J Barker’s world are structured with a lot of careful consideration, and so, again, it makes sense that words for authority figures would be different. What I’m not sure of is why there needed to be a different word for 'sister’ (but not 'brother’) and 'sun’. It doesn’t detract from the book as a whole, but perhaps contributes to it taking a little while for the story to get flowing.
Once Joron starts to learn people’s names, and there’s more going on than just him feeling sorry for himself and clashing with Meas, though, things really pick up. Who doesn’t love a story of a gang of misfits coming together, providing a semi-safe space for one another and learning to overcome their differences? Not only that, but Joron was growing as a person at the same time, slowly realising how hasty his prejudices against the Gaunt Islanders and the guiilame were. The Bone Ships delivered character development on multiple fronts and I loved it! It’s not all plain sailing, though. There’s conflict right up until the end, leaving me with delicious questions about how interpersonal relationships are going to resolve and change in future books.
RJ Barker clearly knows how to use repetition of phrasings to powerful effect. It reminded me of sea shanties and the poetry of John Masefield, both very appropriate cultural contexts. That said, I found the actual songs/poems included to be underwhelming. There were also points where weird mistakes had slipped through the editorial net — a character called Jion in one chapter, and Rion in another, for example. Again, it didn’t detract from the overall work, but it did pull me out of the book just a little.
Nonetheless, this was an excellent book! I’m going to mark it down very slightly for the slow beginning, but it still ranks as one of my favourite books that I’ve discovered through book club, and I definitely intend to read the rest of the series.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Death of parent
Minor: Ableism, Alcohol, Child death, Death, Fire/Fire injury, Grief, Homophobia, Injury/Injury detail, Violence, Vomit, War, and Xenophobia
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