Reviews tagging 'Body horror'

The Bone Shard Daughter by Andrea Stewart

53 reviews

riverstrongblood's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective tense medium-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

5.0

This book was intriguing and captivating from cover to cover. Each character is so well written with unique qualities and a sense of narrative specific to them. The diversity, the depth of character, the personal growth, and the great questions this book forces one to ask relative to its plot make for a deeply dynamic and simply excellent book. 
I'm excited to read the next two books. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Body horror, Child death, Confinement, Death, Emotional abuse, Gore, Physical abuse, Toxic relationship, Violence, Blood, Trafficking, Kidnapping, Grief, Medical trauma, Death of parent, Murder, Gaslighting, Abandonment, War, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism

witcheep's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

There are multiple characters with their own POV chapters, and mainly three different plot lines to follow (the Emperor's daughter Lin, the smuggler Jovis, and the governor's daughter Phalue with her lover Ranami). In the beginning I was skeptical whether I'd manage to keep my interest in all these seemingly separate plot lines, but Jovis's smuggler affairs and boating takes him from island to island, entangling him into the other's plots little by little, which makes the whole book more interesting.

My absolute favorite character is Jovis, and I think the book is worth reading just to get to know him (and he is not the only good thing in the book!). Jovis has a good sense of humour, a good heart and a lot of common sense. Even in the middle of long-lasting grieving he doesn't hesitate to spring into action. And on top of that, he is humble. He insist he is not a hero, but he keeps doing heroic things even if he is tired of getting sucked up into other people's drama and is in it only for a pay or a means to his own ends. Here are some of my favorite quotes from Jovis's thoughts about him doing heroic deeds:

"I'm not a hero. I never set out to be a hero in the first place. Those children? Their parents paid me to rescue them."

So a habit was best to describe it. Habits were things done with little reason, over and over, until momentum made them more difficult to stop than to keep going.

Endless Sea, I was tired!

Jovis also has a companion animal, Mephi, who is a chimera-like magical creature in it's cub stage, and he grows throughout the book while learning more. Mephi can speak and has magical skills, most remarkable of them being that

Mephi somehow shares a connection with Jovis and because of that Jovis gets superhuman abilities himself. See the next spoiler for Ranami's summary of the abilitites. Besides those, Jovis also seems to have some magical awareness of water.

.

  "But you can do things others can't. Unless people exaggerate, you have the strength of ten men and can even make the ground tremble.

The worldbuilding is very intriquing with the unique magic system, and I couldn't wait to learn more about it throughout the book. The Emperor has bone shard magic and is very secretive about teaching it forward to his potential successors (his daughter Lin and his step son / Lin's rival Bayan). The bone shard magic has a resemblance to necromancy in the matter that the magic user builds a construct (a chimera-like body) from deceaced animal or human parts. What animates these constructs is a bone shard – or multiple of them –

from a living human's skull. When the bone shard is used for bone shard magic, it drains the human's life little by little until death to animate the construct. This necromantic and parasitic

bone shard magic is paired with a language system unique to the bone shard magic. The language system makes the magic user able to command these constructs through carving command symbols onto the bone shards. Towards the end there is a huge plot twist regarding this bone shard magic:

Lin and Bayan are both constructs made by the Emperor to be used by him in different ways

.

Besides this bone shard magic, the book references ancient foes, god-like creatures called Alanga, who had very powerful magic completely of their own. They were defeated by the Emperor's ancestors a long time ago, and the Emperors since have sweared to keep the people safe from them. The Alanga have been gone for so long though, that the people have reduced them to myths and begun to question if they are a threat at all anymore. It is teased that the Alanga might come back; their ancient artefacts of statues and murals have begun to open their eyes, indicating a possible end to their absence. This is what might be coming in the sequels, besides the political intrique of a possible revolution or at the very least a need for a political reform by the current ruler. As it has been so far, Jovis seems to keep being in the middle of all of this, connecting all the different plot lines of the different groups or sides in this Empire;

he is made into a cover agent

.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence and Grief

Moderate: Animal cruelty, Body horror, Death, Emotional abuse, Blood, and Gaslighting

Minor: Bullying, Child death, Confinement, Physical abuse, Racism, Medical content, Trafficking, Kidnapping, Death of parent, and Deportation

abby_can_read's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious medium-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

3.0

📖
This was good. I liked the worldbuilding and the lore. I struggle to care about any of the characters and their plot lines. While I liked parts of this book, I did struggle to stay focused and engaged at times.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Violence, and Blood

Moderate: Body horror, Child abuse, and Murder

Minor: Child death, Confinement, and Racism

dragongirl271's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Child death, Death, and Murder

Minor: Torture and Sexual harassment

bree_h_reads's review against another edition

I was a little iffy about this book but the MOMENT it started to imply a romance between Lin and the foster brother she was raised with I was done.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Classism

Moderate: Animal death, Body horror, Child abuse, Physical abuse, Violence, and Death of parent

Minor: Sexual assault and Sexual violence

thenexthing's review against another edition

adventurous emotional medium-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? No

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Body horror, Gore, Violence, Blood, and Classism

Moderate: Animal death, Body horror, Child abuse, Confinement, Death, Mental illness, Slavery, Violence, Gaslighting, Abandonment, War, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Confinement, Emotional abuse, Suicidal thoughts, and Medical content

weareinheritors's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

A slow start the quickly picked up about a quarter through. By the halfway mark I was downing the story as it progressed. And by the final quarter, I was burning through pages to figure out where the story was going 

Definitely recommend this book to anybody looking for a darker, non-romance fantasy story with lots of twists and turns.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Death, Blood, and Murder

Moderate: Kidnapping and Death of parent

nova_lilias's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense medium-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

4.25

I love Jovis and Mephi.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Child death, Death, and Blood

thoseoldcrows23's review against another edition

adventurous emotional mysterious fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

 I really enjoyed this! I will say it feels like a first book. I can tell that Stewart has some big ideas for the story, and a lot of this book's time is spent trying to hurriedly get piece into place. As a result, the pacing is a little off, and some of the relationship dynamics between characters feel rushed; however, Stewarts writing is super engaging, the world/magic is cool and unique, and the story is playing with some of my favorite tropes. I think there's room for this series to be something really special, and I'm looking forward to continuing. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Child death, Confinement, Death, Emotional abuse, Physical abuse, Violence, Blood, Kidnapping, Grief, Death of parent, Murder, War, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Body horror and Gore

I'm not sure how to label it (I went ahead and tagged gore and body horror, but that's not exactly it), but the magic system here is bone magic so there's a lot of death-adjacent stuff going on with that. I didn't find it to be particularly graphic or icky, but you know...it's bone magic.

anilourengo's review against another edition

adventurous mysterious tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.0

Con 5 puntos de vista diferentes: Lin, la hija del emperador, Jovis, un contrabandista, Phalue, la hija de un gobernador, Ranami, novia de Phalue y Arena, "prisionera" en una isla, es un libro que se va desarrollando lentamente. En la primera mitad del libro vamos conociendo a cada personaje, su entorno y como funciona el mundo en el que se encuentran, donde ya pueden encontrarse algunas pistas de como los 5 personajes se van relacionando entre sí. 

A los 3/4 del libro ya están presentes los distintos desafíos a los que se enfrentan 4 de los 5 personajes y como los enfrentan. Dejando el último 25% para que podamos hacernos una idea de cual es la nueva estructura del mundo y en el último capítulo presentando el problema al que se enfrentaran en el segundo libro de la trilogía.

En mi caso particular, la sinopsis del libro no tiene nada que ver con la historia que se desarrolla después, puede que sea una buena sinopsis para la trilogía pero no para la historia en sí, ya que presenta únicamente a Lin como protagonista, cuando para mi el conductor de la historia en este caso, es Jovis. Esta situación llevó a que me costara conectar con el libro y los distintos personajes desde un principio y no encontrar el conflicto que me imaginaba hasta el último capítulo. 

En resumen, el 50% inicial del libro sería contexto, 25% central la trama en sí, y el 25% restante.. contexto para continuar la saga.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Body horror, Death, and Blood

Minor: Bullying and Violence