A review by chloefrizzle
Bone Dance by Emma Bull
5.0
THIS BOOK IS HARD TO PITCH, FOR SEVERAL REASONS:
1) It defies genre boundaries. It's fantasy/scifi/post-apocalyptic/noir/cyberpunk. It will bounce from tarot reading to nuclear war to voodoo goddess to bioengineering and back again.
2) The plot is not straightforward enough to easily synopsize.
3) Part of the fun of this novel is figuring out what's going on. The book does not easily give you the premise or the plot; you get to work for it.
I CAN SAY THIS:
4) This book follows Sparrow, who sells black market VHS tapes in a post-apocalyptic city. The horsemen who brought the apocalypse are coming again, and Sparrow gets caught up in it.
5) This book has powerful themes of identity and bodily autonomy.
6) When I first read this book (at age 15), it was a little too strange and heavy for me. I didn't fully appreciate it then, tho I did enjoy it. Some of the marketing for this book says it's YA, but I would never put it there. Our main character is a teenager, but the themes/content-warnings/worldbuilding/out-of-this-world-Weirdness put the book firmly in the Adult category.
Now, I completely loved it. It's even better on a reread.
1) It defies genre boundaries. It's fantasy/scifi/post-apocalyptic/noir/cyberpunk. It will bounce from tarot reading to nuclear war to voodoo goddess to bioengineering and back again.
2) The plot is not straightforward enough to easily synopsize.
3) Part of the fun of this novel is figuring out what's going on. The book does not easily give you the premise or the plot; you get to work for it.
I CAN SAY THIS:
4) This book follows Sparrow, who sells black market VHS tapes in a post-apocalyptic city. The horsemen who brought the apocalypse are coming again, and Sparrow gets caught up in it.
5) This book has powerful themes of identity and bodily autonomy.
6) When I first read this book (at age 15), it was a little too strange and heavy for me. I didn't fully appreciate it then, tho I did enjoy it. Some of the marketing for this book says it's YA, but I would never put it there. Our main character is a teenager, but the themes/content-warnings/worldbuilding/out-of-this-world-Weirdness put the book firmly in the Adult category.
Now, I completely loved it. It's even better on a reread.