Book Review – The Bone Shard Daughter

Hello hello and welcome or welcome back to my little bookish corner of the internet. Today I’m sharing my review of The Bone Shard Daughter, one of my final reads of 2021, and one that found itself added to my Top Reads list very quickly!

Synopsis
The emperor’s reign has lasted for decades, his mastery of bone shard magic powering the animal-like constructs that maintain law and order. But now his rule is failing, and revolution is sweeping across the Empire’s many islands.

Lin is the emperor’s daughter and spends her days trapped in a palace of locked doors and dark secrets. When her father refuses to recognise her as heir to the throne, she vows to prove her worth by mastering the forbidden art of bone shard magic.

Yet such power carries a great cost, and when the revolution reaches the gates of the palace, Lin must decide how far she is willing to go to claim her birthright – and save her people.

Review
The Bone Shard Daughter utterly blew me away. It was sheer brilliance, and completely captivating. Through a series of characters who have different perspectives on the empire, we are able to see a bigger picture, one that becomes clearer and yet more conflicted as the story develops.

Epicy fantasy novels can feel like diving into deep waters, or like a breath of fresh air, depending on how they’re done. Neither is a bad option, but sometimes you have to be in the right mindset for such a book. However, Andrea Stewart has managed to find the balancing act between the two: it’s a strong, deep book, that wraps you up in an embrace as you work your way through. It’s a work of utter conviction and wonder.

Books that jump from different POVs are a great way of allowing the reader to be all knowing, or at least semi-all knowing; there’s still a lot a mystery to be uncovered here! The magic system is one I would now absolutely add to my unique magic systems; every child undergoes trepanation where a shard of bone is removed, to later be used to fuel and control beasts that the emporer has made. The rebellion that is boiling at the heart of the empire is fulled by those that somehow have managed to avoid this process, while the rest live in terror of the “bone sick”, the concequence of their shard being used.

Book two, The Bone Shard Emporer, is one of the books I bought with my Christmas vouchers, and I absolutely cannot wait to get lost in this wonderful world again.

Thanks for stopping by today for this review, of one of my books that absolutely ended up in my Top 20 Books of 2021. I’ll be back with my review of book two soon!