Bonesmith

"Best female heroine I’ve read in a while! A fantastic adventure and solid world building"

"I liked how this book was a medium to high fantasy and had a lot of the supernatural. In this world, there are special people with abilities called Smiths. Our main character Wren is a valkyr of the Bonesmith variety (the other kind of Bonesmith is a reapyr, or someone who puts the ghosts to rest permanently), or someone who can control/wrangle spirits. While being sabotaged, she fights off a ghost, and finds a strange ring. When her big test is sabotaged, Wren is stationed at the borderwall, an undesirable spot. Upon arrival, she meets the third in line for the throne, a Goldsmith named Leopold. Leo and she become fast friends, but right as they become friends, a band of kidnappers attacks and takes Leo. Wren helps to fight them off. The other two kidnappers turn on one of the others, and he ends up dragging Wren down a crevasse or a mine, and they survive the fall and begin a shaky alliance to retrieve the prince. The backstory of this world is the borderwall was built after an epic battle with the Ironsmiths and the Ghostsmiths. Wren's uncle Locke Graven is said to be the hero of the battle and Wren believes her mother died in the borderlands beyond the wall, but she grew up in the Dominions, which is the rest of the world. The ghosts in this world are attached to a single bone in their skeletons under their tissues and that's where they are anchored. That's the magical bone and ghosts are attached to it. Other bones are ground into powder and used for valkyr magic and protection from the ghosts. If you touch a ghost, you'll suffer from deathrot, which is basically deadly and chilling. so you never want to do that. What Wren does is contain and control the ghosts while her reapyr puts them to rest. There are several tiers to ghosts, tier one being a shapeless light form, and tier five being reanimated corpses that aren't finished rotting off all the skin and muscle tissue. Very creepy."

"{4.5/5}<br/><br/>Shout out to Simon Teen for hosting this one on their December Free Reads; it wasn’t on my radar before, but I’m so glad I got the chance to read such an excellent story!<br/><br/>Ready your blade. Defeat the undead. Wren Graven has been training her entire life to become a Valkyr, a bonesmith warrior. But a betrayal during her final trial has her exiled to an almost-forgotten outpost along the defensive wall guarding the country. An unexpected turn of events grants Wren the chance to prove herself once more, but she’ll have to push past her limits, in more ways than one, to do so.<br/><br/>YA dark fantasy is not a genre that I knew I was missing out on before this book, but I have now seen the error of my ways. This book has so many amazing, unexpected layers to it, and yet it somehow maintained its excellent pacing and heaps of adventure at the same time. From page one, the action was non-stop, and for a book clocking in at almost 500 pages, that’s pretty impressive. Not only that, it also managed to keep said action interesting. At no point did I find myself getting bored or losing focus, which I think we’ve all had happen a time or two with books that stay intense. It wasn’t just the same issue over and over again; the reasons for the action were constantly changing, which meant you never knew what was coming next.<br/><br/>Combining with a deliciously twisty plot, the detailed and in-depth world building added to that incredible feeling of immersion in the story. We get the settings themselves, we get backstory on the world and how it got there, and we get the magic. The magic system in this world is easily my favorite part of the story, and it feels solid. Magic won’t solve all of our characters’ problems, but it certainly does help when wielded by the right parties. <br/><br/>Oh, and those parties? The characters? Amazing. Flawed, and fun, and strong. Wren’s constant need to impress her father and earn his affection is executed in such a way that she doesn’t come across as whiny, or weak, or pathetic. Julian, one of our MMCs, is just trying to do his best, despite everything working against him. And Leo, our other MMC, is a marvelous embodiment of a golden retriever (pun not intended) without being asinine or useless. I love them all.<br/><br/>“Bonesmith” is book 1 in the House of the Dead duology. Much to my dismay, the current release date for book 2 is…August 2024. So I’m going to have to wait way too long to know what happens next. This has not stopped me from adding “Bonesmith” to my ‘go buy a physical copy ASAP’ list, and it shouldn’t stop you, either. If you like ghost-fighting, rule-breaking, leap-before-you-look FMCs, hidden surprises around every corner, and a heaping dose of ‘uhh….that’s not good; we’re in deep’ moments, this is definitely the book for you."