We all love stories about heroes and their amazing and dangerous adventures. They way they triumph over evil. The Bone Maker explores what has happened to a group of those heroes 25 years after they saved the world. How they've changed and moved on with their lives. And how they haven't.

Lots of interesting characters and an intriguing storyline make this a book worth reading.

I received a copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley. My thoughts and opinions are my own and without bias or favor.

Sarah Beth Durst's latest stand-alone fantasy novel offers a unique magic system, some quirky characters, and a fantasy-take on the "getting the band back together" story.

Years ago, five heroes defeated the evil Elkor and went their separate ways, becoming the stuff of legend. Twenty-five years later, Kreya's legend has become a bit darker -- she lives alone in a tower, keeping alive her husband (who died in the battle) through the use of dark and illegal magics. Increasingly desperate to find a source of human bones to cast the spells and give her just a few more hours with the love of her life, Kreya hatches on a plot that will eventually involve her old crew getting back together.

Of course, there's a reason some bands break up. And as the band gets back together in The Bone Maker, Kreya come to realize that maybe they didn't defeat Elkor as utterly as the legends say.

There aren't many times when it comes to fantasy novels that I wish the author had extended a series. That isn't necessarily the case with The Bone Maker. While Kreya gets solid character work, the rest of the crew doesn't feel as deep or as well realized. I kept wondering if Durst might have been better served by making this a duology, allowing us to have a bit more of an investment in the characters.

It would also give us a chance to enjoy her well-realized magical system. I enjoy fantasy where there are limits or consequences to using the magical system and that's the case with what Durst has realized here.

The Bone Maker offers an intriguing magical system, some dark character takes and is a stand-alone fantasy that left me wanting just a bit more. An overall success and one that has me intrigued to give some of Durst's other fantastic worlds a try.

I received a digital ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

What happens after the story ends? What happens to heroes after they defeat their enemy, and everyone heralds them for their deeds, and then the people they saved move on? What then?

In the case of this book, a couple of them find a way to build new lives, but the others can’t. One because he is consumed by mental trauma, and the other, their leader Kreya, because she is mired in grief and guilt for choices she made that led to the death of her husband on the battlefield. She’s barely living herself, having become obsessed by finding a way to use magic to resurrect him. She ignores everything and everyone else, including her old comrades, until Kreya needs help to finally bring her husband back. In doing so, they discover that the declarations of victory were premature, and their story isn’t over after all.

I was thoroughly entertained by the adventures of this middle-aged band of heroes. The narrative consists of a series of attempts by Kreya and the others to finally end the story by truly defeating their enemy. Over and over, they think that they’ve figured out what to do to make it happen and that maybe they will finally be done. Then it goes wrong, and they have to try something else. Obviously they do finally succeed, but they have to work for it. But even then, that doesn't mean that their story really ends, does it?

The worldbuilding is sketchy but fun, and I particularly liked the bone magic. Sometimes Kreya and the others use magic-infused bone shards to give themselves superhero-like abilities, leading to some really great action scenes, but they are always constrained by the bones running out of power. Bones can also be used to animate constructs, which is Kreya’s specialty. The things she creates are nifty, if a sometimes a little creepy, like the rag dolls that run around doing her bidding.

I liked the camaraderie between the five heroes, too. Even though they haven’t been together in twenty-five years, they are still bound by ties of love and friendship that allow them to act almost as if they’ve never been separated. However, the time that has passed has left them with a lot of emotions that they have to work through. There’s also a lot of humor, with friendly insults and quippy banter. (If you have superhero powers, there has to be quipping. I think it's a rule.)

I think most readers who are looking for a light, fun fantasy read will enjoy this book. Recommended!

A copy of this novel was provided for review through NetGalley; all opinions expressed are my own.

The Bone Maker was another exciting read from Sarah Beth Durst. It's an interesting, though perhaps growingly popular premise, wherein a group of heroes who defeated a great evil are called on to step up and save the world once again. What makes this unique is we see our leader, Kreya, start in a morally questionable and desperate situation. It is because of her own struggles that she is pulled into a large battle and reunites with her former team. One thing I really liked was that we saw Kreya learn from her mistakes and grow as a person. I also think the author did a great job making you question if the (alleged) villain truly had evil intentions. There's an overall question of morality in the story - what would you sacrifice for your loved ones, what should be scarified, how far should you go, etc. that made it an engaging, interesting read.

The Bone Maker is an adult fantasy about five former heroes who are called back into duty when evil rises again...25 years later.

The Bone Maker opens with Kreya who has left her friends and fellow soldiers behind and is living in isolation with the body of her husband who was killed in battle. With her unique skills she can bring him back to life for hours or years depending on access to human bones and she happens to know where she can find a lot of bones...the battlefield where he fell 25 years prior. But returning there will require a lot of help and Kreya will need to reach out to the old team. But what they discover on the field is not only the bones she requires but proof that an old enemy is rising again and they are forced to fight.

The Bone Maker has both wit and snappy dialogue paired with excellent world and magic building. Durst shows a canny ability to lead the reader through a world we are unfamiliar with without an amateurish info dump nor leaving us fumbling in the dark. She also explores the themes of friendship, marriage, forgiveness and what we are willing to sacrifice for the people and land that we love.

I highly recommend The Bone Maker for readers of all ages. The visuals of how they use bones in their world can be dark sometimes but the beauty of the relationships and humor in their interactions puts this one miles above many fantasy novels in the same category.

5 solid stars

My copy of The Bone Maker by Sarah Beth Durst was provided by NetGalley and the publisher for review purposes

There’s a point almost exactly halfway through Sarah Beth Durst’s novel, The Bone Maker (2021), where the author teases us that the book we’ve been reading just might go in a completely different direction, prompting me to write in my notes, “Love this.” And then, well, it didn’t. Instead, as if the inertia were too great, we’re shortly steered back into a well-worn fantasy story, which despite being mostly satisfying — with some moments that rose above that level and a few that pulled it below — had me wishing I could have gone back to that moment fifty-three percent of the way in and chosen the plot less traveled.

Twenty-five years ago, Kreya led her crew of magic-users (husband Jentt, friends Zera, Stran, and Marso) to victory in the Bone War, when an evil bone maker illegally used human bones to create an army of nearly unkillable constructs. Jentt died in that victory, and the others scattered, mostly losing touch with one another. Unbeknownst to her friends, though, Kreya has been using Elkor’s spells to resurrect her husband periodically for limited time. Having run out of bones, though, Kreya looks up her old friend Zera and convinces her to return to the battlefield (now a Forbidden Zone) to recover more. There, they discover that Elkor may in fact not be dead, leading them to gather the team once more to try and save the world yet again.

The premise is a positive beginning for a few reasons. One, I like the morally grey area Durst places us in from the very beginning, and that grey permeates the novel, with Durst never letting us forget just how questionable some of the characters’ choices are. She even offers up a backstory for the “dark wizard” that draws a line, if even a crooked one, between Elkor and Kreya, one that neither Kreya nor the reader none too comfortable. The idea of a job unfinished, if not wholly original, is still more fresh than the usual plucky-band-of-heroes-facing-evil storyline. Here, the execution is a bit more mixed, with Durst sometimes doing a nice job of showing how these characters aren’t the same as their younger selves, within themselves or in their relationships to each other and the wider world. On the other hand, this aspect didn’t seem fully mined for its potential, and outside of a few throwaway lines, I never really had a sense of the true weight of age/experience on these characters.

The characters themselves vary in their depth. Kreya and Zera are fully fleshed out, both as individuals and in terms of their relationship. The others, though, are relatively two-dimensional, more types than people: strong family man, tortured soul, etc. And the antagonist, who as noted is given a complicating background, is pretty off-the-shelf bad guy.

This same issue extends to other aspects of the book. Bone magic is an interesting concept, but is simplistically portrayed, conveniently useful or not depending on plot and with little detailed sense of limitation or craft. Worldbuilding is sufficient to the story but bare bones. And there is an ease to events and possible traumatic events that doesn’t feel fully earned, or feels as if we’re just skimming along a safe surface. At one point, given the slight nature of many of the elements, I checked to see if it was a YA book, as it had that sort of overall feel to it (I don’t believe it is, but I can’t swear to that). Other aspects were more problematic than simply being thin: a number of times logistics of time, distance, or action were somewhat muddy or questionable enough to pull me out of the story; several moments were implausible in their action or inaction, and the ending was more than a little anti-climactic.

In the end, these issues were, if not outweighed, at least balanced by the fluid nature of Durst’s prose, the easy, often humorous banter/dialog amongst the crew, some moving emotional moments, by Zera’s vibrant character, and by the aforementioned moral complexity lying at the core of the story. A solid novel, then, but I sure would have liked to read that other one Durst hinted at partway through.

4.5 STARS

Heroes don't just disappear after they save the world.

They still have a story, albeit sometimes not an exciting one. For the last twenty-five years, Kreya has kept to herself, avoiding all the other people of Vos in search of a way to bring her husband back from the dead, even at the cost of years off her own life. He fell in the very same battle that made their team heroes, and it has haunted Kreya ever since.

But a journey to resurrect her husband leads to a deadly discovery, and before long, Kreya must bring her team back together in the face of impossible evil. Apparently, being a hero is a lifelong occupation, even when it's been a quarter of a century and at least one of you ought to be dead, strictly speaking.


"Patience, she decided, is for people unaware of their own mortality."

The shining star of The Bone Maker is, naturally, the cast. The core five characters are a bone maker (who uses bones to animate constructs), a bone wizard (who enchants talismans with different powers), a bone reader (who can see the past, present, and future in the bones), a reformed thief, and a strongman with a heart of gold. Individually, they're interesting in their goals and flaws, but together, they make up a legendary team, one that once protected the nation of Vos from certain doom.

Most importantly, though, they're friends.

I absolutely loved the banter between them all, especially Kreya and Zera, because you could always tell when it was loving banter, or when it was sharp to cover up fear or insecurity. And when there wasn't banter, there was sometimes a state of flow between these characters, a familiarity born form years spent together, from trusting each other with their lives. And when there wasn't flow, it was because twenty-five years sometimes leaves a divide that needs a little extra effort to heal.

In short, the characters make this book. You don't care about Vos being saved primarily because it's the right thing to do. You care about it because the team cares about it. They're making the hard decisions so no one else has to. They're carrying the pain and suffering so future generations of Vos won't. At heart, every last one of them is a good person seeking to do what's right, and it makes a nice change of pace from doom and gloom stories where there is no right way forward, no way to avoid becoming like the villain in the end.


You can't spell necromancer without romance!

Strictly speaking, The Bone Maker is not a romance novel. In fact, the romantic elements mostly boil down to deep love and devotion, some cute kissing, and a couple implied sex scenes that don't actually go down on the page.

But can I just say how delightful it was to have these characters hit the page with established relationships that held up? No major drama about whether they'd stay together, no big fights and refusals to communicate. Sure, there was some friction now and again for very sensible reasons (namely love and concern for a partner's wellbeing), but they were in love! And happy! And taking on the world together!

Basically, if you're not going to give me slow-burn enemies to lovers, then I hope you give me something like this: established lovers supporting each other in the face of the end of the world. They know the costs, the risks, but they're standing by each other to the end to do the right thing, and it makes me turn to emotionally mushy jelly in the best way! 🥰


The Bone Maker is out now, and ready to charm its way into your heart!

If you've ever enjoyed Gideon the Ninth or any story with a hopeful, happy ending (or if you like both, both is good), then The Bone Maker might be for you! Between its fascinating applications of necromancy, its charming and full-hearted characters, and a big bad worth the big showdown, I can't recommend it enough. Plus, it's a standalone! There's no waiting to see how the team's story continues, because this is the continuation of their story, the result of their heroic efforts.

But honestly, if you were just in it for the bone magic, I wouldn't blame you. It's pretty sweet. 💀


CW: loss of a loved one, child death, nudity, gore, animal death, self-harm, graphic injury, violence

[This review will go live on Hail & Well Read at 10am EST on 3/9/21.]

First thing, this genre isn't really my cup of tea. That being said, I found the story captivating and I did like it. What I enjoyed most was the story picking up with the characters in their middle-age as opposed to young teens.

Five young heroes 25 yrs ago fought evil and saved the world. This story picks up 25 years later which I found an intriguing spin on the typical story in the fantasy/sci-fi/dystopian genre.
Verity is illegally collecting human bones in order to bring her dead husband back to life. Yeah..it wasn't as bad as it sounded. There was some creepiness/yuck factor in the descriptions but it was okay. She eventually succeeds and meets up with the other 3 warriors who made up her team.
You find out what happened to them after the final battle, how they continued living their lives as celebrated heroes in songs/myths, and if they would be able to again fight to save their world knowing they're not only out of practice but older.

The writer does a good job of descriptions to paint a picture of this world as well as fully developing the characters. There was even some light humor.
She uses great alliteration.
Exs:
"If the fourth tier was known to be decadent as sugar cake, then the fifth tier was like sugar cake drizzled with honey and soaked in chocolate sauce. Kreya stepped onto a disc of white stone carved to resemble a cloud, and it lifted her up the slope of the street. 'No one told them this was absurd?' "


The author wrote this afterword to explain her inspiration for the book:
"We all know how the stories go: There's a great evil. Someone saves the day. The end. Someone rides off into the sunset. The end. Someone kisses the love of their life. The end. But our stories—our real stories—don’t end after a Great Moment. We keep living, day after day, until our last day. And sometimes our story doesn’t go the way we thought it would, for better or for worse. Sometimes it’s terrifying how much of our future is unknown and out of our control. We never know how much time we will have or if we’ve made the right choices on the way. That’s why I wrote The Bone Maker. This book is about life after “the end.” It’s about second chances. It’s me saying to you, “Keep living your story.” "

I believe the writer nailed her objective.

Sarah BethDurst's The Bone Maker is an awesome standalone epic fantasy. She flips the script by writing about characters 25 years after the big battle. This seamlessly leads into a let's get the band together trope. I loved the main characters being women, I loved it even more that they're aging, even broken. Yay for mature main characters. This a great fantasy about the story after the story with found family and love and lovely worldbuilding..

Overall: If you can get past a somewhat slower start, this is a standalone urban fantasy that I absolutely recommend.


Pros:
Standalone. This story is absolutely perfectly self-contained and does not leave anything unanswered by the end.
Necromancy-vibes. Okay, yall know I love a good necromancy book and this one fits the bill in all the right ways. Plus, it makes for the story to not be black-and-white when it came to the moral grounds.
The characters. I love when it’s a group who has worked together before getting back together and you can see their past shining in. The author does a good job of showing and not telling in this regard.

Cons:
Slower start. This one had a bit of a slower start for me due to all the things that need introducing.

The Bone Maker by Sarah Beth Durst is a stand-alone novel diving into what happens after the young heroes save the day. We meet our heroes twenty-five years later. Kreya is a hermit except when she resurrects her husband, Jentt who died in the original battle. To fully resurrect her husband, she needs to go back to the field for some bones. Too bad going back leads to a terrible discovery, that her husband is not the only one resurrected.

Pick this book up. Seriously Durst creates intriguing and new worlds. The world was pretty fleshed out for being one book. Yes, the beginning is confusing, but that comes with building a new world. The heroes all had flaws and were still endearing. The plot was slightly predictable but when you’re reading this it is not about the plot, it’s about the characters and their relationships to each other. I had a hard time putting this book down because it was mostly fast pace and a still fun.

4.5 stars for an intriguing new world, I would have like a little bit of a twist, but I just enjoyed this book. Round up for just making me happy. Thank you to NetGalley, Avon and Harper Voyage, and Sarah Beth Durst for an ARC. This was an honest review.

“Knowledge isn’t itself evil. It’s how you use it.”

Kreya Odi Altriana is a legendary bone maker who’s been in hiding for over a decade after the loss of her husband in battle. We jumped right into the darkness with this one, but I do love a dark fantasy. This story was morbidly depressing from the start. I was immediately interested enough to not want to put it down. The talisman magic system was fascinating! The world building was exceptionally thorough while still being relatively easy to keep up with. I’d definitely classify this as high fantasy.

Kreya is forced to reunite with her old team that she hasn’t seen or spoken to in 25 years. I enjoyed the extra initial time with her old best friend, Zera. Their banter together was so relatable and enjoyable! I appreciated the mental health and healing journey we got to experience. The multiple POVs for the different characters really rounded out the story. It didn’t leave me feeling like I was missing anything. The writing style made it so that it never felt complicated.

The plot kept me surprised all the way through. It was action-packed and that made it all the more exciting! It was an all-around emotional journey witnessing loss, grief, love, selflessness, and friendships through found-family. I greatly enjoyed this story from beginning to end. This is an absolute must read!

Wow. Just wow. This is a slow boil of a book that ends with a bang.
We enter a world where bone magicians are the norm and they make it possible to do extraordinary things. We enter 25 years after one of them went crazy and tried to destroy everyone. We enter with the group of heroes that defeated him broken and separated. We enter with their leader buried in grief and willing to do anything to save the one she loves.
It's a hard job to set up all the emotional depth of those that survive a war like the one the Five Heroes of Vos did, but Durst does it brilliantly within a couple of paragraphs of introducing each one and proceeds to weave a tale of tired but honorable warriors taking up arms once again to defend the lives of the people. Durst truly does excel at character development and making you care for even the lowliest of constructs within the story.
The fact that there's also politics, studies on relationships, expertly-crafted magical lore, necromancy, and even a little bit of romance only adds to the impressiveness of this story. It has depth. It has action. It has humanity. It begs to be read and enjoyed.

Many very happy thanks to NetGalley and Harper Voyager for the early read.

3.5 stars

The tagline for this book should be: "Aging, washed up superheroes come together for one last ride when an old foe reappears."

Of course, they're not superheroes in the literal sense but a group of very skilled magic users that have saved the world previously. I absolutely loved how Durst showed the struggle many of them had dealing with the aftermath of what they did. This is the "what happens after the happily ever after?" question that arises for many stories.

I've read almost the entirety of what Durst has written and this book has all the key points of what I love about her works. The thread of hope in all of her stories. Things may seem bleak but there is always the hope of happiness which runs through her characters.

Her plot ideas are always so different and I love the fact that she tries to challenge herself with each one. In her adult books we run the gamut of character ages and I'm so happy we get to see not only vibrant youths in the prime of their life but also older and mature characters who have experience and wisdom at their side. This is no different in this story where the main cast of characters are well into their middle ages.

The magic system is really cool, there are rules and boundaries, and people are not overly powerful just adept at using them. There's a whole variety of monsters, spell weavers, and individuals that make up this world.

Another awesome thing is the organic friendship she's built with this group and how they come to life on the page. You get to see how they understand each other, support each other, and find out what makes the other tic. Their interactions are lovely and run the whole range of what you might expect when you interact with yours. I always say characters should have friends in books, or at least a confidant or someone they tolerate.

The Bone Maker is lacking in action as compared to some of her other adult titles, so some of the scenes may feel like filler or fluff, and the middle of the book is especially an area of this. The plot is also not very complex and very straightforward so there isn't much to surprise you but the story is still very engaging.

Sarah Beth Durst's adult fantasy works are perfect for those who don't want to read something too grim and dark with an excess of violence. But also a great introduction before stepping into denser epic/high fantasies. For fans of her work, you'll enjoy this new addition as well. I can never go wrong when I read her stuff!

In The Bone Maker, Sarah Beth Durst asks the question: What happens after “The End”? What does happily ever after look like? How do the heroes move on? Can they move on? For Kreya, one of the Bone War’s legendary heroes, it’s not possible. The war with the corrupt bone maker Elkor cost her her husband, Jentt. Consumed by grief, Kreya eventually turns to the same forbidden magic that Elkor once used to fuel his spells and raise his army of monsters to bring Jentt back from the dead. Not only is the magic illegal and unethical, but using it takes days and years off her own life. Not that Kreya cares. The only thing that matters is gathering enough human bones to bring Jentt back for good and live their happily ever after—no matter how long that may be. It’s decisions like these where the moral grayness of Durst’s characters truly shines. And while at times it feels like Durst leans a lot on the legendary reputation of Kreya and her team, seeing the people they used to be only further emphasizes how each of these heroes is a shadow of their former self, allowing for themes like grief, trauma, and PTSD to be explored. Though the plot has a slower pace, it has a good, natural build that will keep readers hooked. The magic system Durst has created is also a delight and the real gem of this standalone fantasy. The system is complex but easy to grasp and the consequences of using magic are also clear, which is refreshing.

Got an arc copy from the author Sarah Beth Durst with NetGalley so I can give an honest review, here we go…

From award-winning Sarah Beth Durst, best known for her works such as the Queens of Renthia series, comes a new epic fantasy with a band of aging heroes and dark magic...but wait, it's a standalone?!

Five heroes have defeated the powerful but corrupt necromancer Elkor but it came at a terrible cost when they lost one of their own and since then people have told their stories through song or story. The team broke up and it has been like that for twenty-five years. One is broken, one should be dead, one is stuck in the past, one trying to pursue a simple life, and one has gone soft. Their stories should have ended but it seems fate had other plans for these aged heroes. 

I’d enjoyed this story, here are my PROS and CONS with the book.

THE PROS:
•A retired group of Chosen Ones ("King of the Wild" vibe)
•The world-building, especially the bone-based magic (necromancy of sorts)
•Great characters, from Kreya to even Eklor.
•The numerous twists and turns made me question characters.
•Lastly, that freakingly good book cover 

THE CONS:
•A ton of dialogue that seemed too much at the time reading this.
•Although marked as an adult fantasy, a few times I found the book to be hovering towards young adult in genre.
~~~~~~~~~~
Sarah Beth Durst’s “The Bone Maker” is one of the few great novels that I’d read in 2021. Due to a few cons with the book, the overall score I would give it (out of five stars) would be 4.8 stars. Out of a scoring system of ten, I give this book a 9.4

Five heroes went to kill the corrupt bone maker Eklor, and when he was defeated only four returned. Jentt, the quick and nimble thief, died to save another. His wife Kreya, the leader of their heroic party, has hidden herself away in a remote tower for decades following his death where she has been learning how to resurrect him. The only hitch in her plan is finding the human bones required to bring Jentt back to life and to do that she must cross the wall, to the field of the last battle. Of course, all of this is illegal and if Kreya were caught she would be summarily burned, just as the dead traditionally are treated… good thing she’s resourceful and has old friends that can be called upon!
Fair warning, the paragraph above is only the smallest fraction of The Bone Maker’s plot which I thought was pretty damn delightful. This book absolutely did not go in the direction I expected it to which kept me turning pages late into the night. How could I put it down when the evil guy might not actually be dead!? And then, the characters were absolutely fascinating. The whole gang reunited once again, proving how massively surviving such a harrowing ordeal can screw up a person’s psyche. I got unexpected Kings of the Wyld vibes from this book but with less humor. The whole “reuniting the gang of retired heroes to fight the big evil” schtick is absolutely one of my favorite things in fantasy.
Let’s talk a bit about the characters now. Kreya, of course, has been an unkempt hermit for at least a decade and she has her husband’s corpse in a spare bedroom at the start of the book. She’s also got creepy constructs doing tasks about her dilapidated wizard tower. Very mad scientist/magician vibe. Jentt has been a corpse on and off for a while now, but once he’s revived he’s definitely the more stable of the two. Zera, Kreya’s best friend, has become an obscenely wealthy bone maker, creating talismans that grant abilities like speed, flight, stealth and so forth. She’s excellent, and doesn’t hold back on how she feels about Kreya abandoning her after the battle ended. Marso was the bone reader of the group and he’s practically raving mad when they find him naked in a fountain. He was seeing things he thought for sure couldn’t be true. Stran, the muscle of the group, has turned into a doting father and loving husband who assists his terrifying competent wife Amurra in running their farm. I love the variety we get with the characters and their chemistry when they reunite is amazing.
This was a brilliant book and Sarah Beth Durst is cementing her place as one of my favorite fantasy authors. She writes epic standalones that leave you completely satisfied at the end. I’m considering returning to the Queens of Renthia series to complete it, despite my lackluster feelings about the first book in that series because everything else I’ve read is SO GOOD.
As I mentioned previously, I think this book would be perfect for fans of Kings of the Wyld or anyone searching for a fantasy focusing on the aftermath of victory. I can’t recommend this enough!

Considering that the book opens with the main character trying to steal a dead girl's body, I liked the main character.

Twenty-five years ago, Kreya led four heroes to stop a mad man bent on destroying their world with his undead army. During the fight, Kreya's husband is killed, and she goes into seclusion, learning how to bring him back to life. After seeking help from one of her old companions, Zera, they discover that their enemy might not be so dead after all.

Kreya was a fine main character, but Zera was much more interesting. Fortunately, there are chapters seen through her eyes. Zera is smart and hurting from Kreya abandoning her to mourn her husband. Their relationship is beautifully written and unique. Kreya cares about Zera and goes about mending their relationship.

It's a welcome change to read about battle-worn characters who have learned from their past to save the world while fully knowing the repercussions.

This review is based on an advanced reader copy provided through Netgalley for an honest review.

𝕻𝖊𝖔𝖕𝖑𝖊 𝖈𝖆𝖓 𝖈𝖍𝖆𝖓𝖌𝖊. 𝕳𝖊𝖗𝖔𝖊𝖘 𝖈𝖆𝖓 𝖘𝖙𝖔𝖕 𝖇𝖊𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝖍𝖊𝖗𝖔𝖊𝖘. 𝖁𝖎𝖑𝖑𝖆𝖎𝖓𝖘 𝖈𝖆𝖓 𝖘𝖙𝖔𝖕 𝖇𝖊𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝖛𝖎𝖑𝖑𝖆𝖎𝖓𝖘.

For the Five Heroes of Vos, 25 years have passed. They have lost touched with one another and have gone their separate ways. But when one of them needs help, and they stumble upon an old enemy, they reunite to save the world (again!). And despite those 25 years they are able to do just that because they are together, they are heroes, but above all they are family.

I absolutely love the message of The Bone Maker. “Keep living your story”. Stories don’t just end, in real life we keep on living, day after day, until our last. The future is unknown and out of our control, but our stories continue for better or for worse. This is a beautiful story of second chances written by a brilliant author.

I loved Kreya and Zera and their strong female relationship. They are both tough as nails, sarcastically funny, loyal, and brave. My only complaint is that I wanted to get to know the boys a little better too. Honestly I think I just want more of all these characters and this world. I knew this was a stand-alone novel and I knew I was going to get emotionally invested but I would absolutely LOVEEEEE a prequel to see the original battle that took place 25 years earlier.

This is a true master class in fantasy storytelling. I highly recommend you get your hands on this book when it comes out next week, March 9th!!

This book was not for me. I'm not convinced it was a bad book, it just was never one that I was going to enjoy. I thought it was a dark fantasy featuring traumatized characters with dark pasts and troubled minds, reuniting to complete their unfinished business. I was expecting necromancy, violence and emotional conflict, while Kreya deals with the death of her husband. This story featured those elements by the thimbleful and spent most of its' pages telling a story that felt like it was about two teenage girls rather than two fifty year women who had been through the hell of war together.

Even though I didn't love The Bone Maker, I do have some positive things to say about it. The ensemble cast was made up of well written characters. The bulk of the story revolves around Kreya and Zera. They were best friends and fought together in the Bone War twenty-five years ago. They have since fallen out of touch with each other and are reuniting after twenty-five years apart. They have distinct personalities, strengths and weaknesses, and each has their own trauma that they're dealing with from the Bone War. Then there's Jentt, Kreya's deceased husband, Stran, their muscle, and Marso, their psychic fortune-teller. They each have their own voice and their own stories, and it's a testement to Sarah Beth Durst's character-craft that I remembered each of their names and personalities even though I didn't really like the book.

Although the characters are each individuals with their own stories, strengths, and weaknesses, none of them felt like adults to me. They all made overly emotional decisions at every step. No one ever stepped up and made the hard choice. None of them ever came to grips with their trauma of the Bone War. All of them incessantly bicker and banter, even the pairs of lovers, like teenagers; not like grown men and women who are united in a task. Their dialogue is written the way young people speak, like literally (a word that literally clocks in nine times). All of this makes the characters themselves feel like teenagers, and I had a really hard time finding any of the emotional depth or wisdom that comes with age in any of them. It gives the book a very YA feel, despite the frequent use of swearing and sex.

Kreya is far too sentimental to be a necromancer. The book opens with her playing with bone construct pets that she's created. A skeleton bird with a wonky wing, a host of rag dolls that she cuddles with and chitter in their own language, and a cleaning construct that is stuck scrubbing the same stair. This is a ridiculous use of the powers of necromancy. If you want to snuggle cute baby animals become a bard or a forest monk, or any other tropey fantasy class other than a necromancer. I get that she's trying to resurrect her dead husband, but damn... I knew from the first chapter she was going to be a terrible necro.

The whole bone magic thing going on in this book feels off to me. The only type or source of magic featured in this book is bone and blood magic. It is used for everything from talismans to enhance one's strength or speed or stealth, to elevators and cleaning bots, and things modern people might use machines for. Bone magic is prevalent and everywhere. This is why I have trouble buying the outrage over using human bones for magical purposes. If everyone knows they hold such power, why has no one ever put together an ethical system for the use of human bones? Even in the real world where bones contain no magical elements there are cultures that have harvested human bones for hundreds of years. But not in Durst's world? I don't get it.

This book had some cool ideas in it, the dialogue was witty and the characters were well written. It wasn't terrible, but at the end of the day it just wasn't for me.