Spoiler-free
The Bone Shard Emperor is book 2 in The Drowning Empire trilogy by Andrea Stewart. Now the formalities are outta the way I’ll probs just call it Boneshard 2 from now on because that’s exactly what it is in my mind. Book 1 was super fun and chaotic. It moved at a lightning pace and honestly, I was hooked from start to finish, so I was very excited to continue on with this sequel. But then…
Everything changed when the reading slump attacked…
Fortunately, in my review for The Bone Shard Daughter I claimed that it was a perfect book for anyone in a reading slump, so I guess it’s time to put my money where my mouth is and put it to the test! Unfortunately, This isn’t The Bone Shard Daughter, and instead the sequel and it is very much that - The middle book in a trilogy. Yes, this suffered slightly from book 2 syndrome. Oftentimes in trilogies I find that book 2 is much slower and tends to meander, with the main plot steadily plodding on in the background, until the end where we finally reach the point necessary to progress the story. This does come with its perks, as the slower pace allows us to breathe with these characters and let them develop much more than in the previous book. In that sense this sequel felt much more mature than its predecessor, but to be honest… I’m not sure I liked that.
If I were to guess I would say that Andrea Steward had a lot of difficulty writing this book, as a lot of sections felt forced as if we were almost pushing ourselves through a particular scene just so we can reach the next. The first book confidently moved from scene to scene almost to the point of rushing things as everything was so meticulously mapped out. This one kinda felt like we were making shit up along the way, which is also fun but in a different way.
So at the end of my review for book 1 I expressed how I was really dreading a certain romance forming… And that’s exactly what happened! Urgh… It was so cringe to read. Why can’t people just be friends? I’ve been buddy reading this series with Chad (stick around for Chad takes) and I feel like I was just constantly moaning about this romance, but hey, he didn’t mind it. In fact, I think he actually enjoyed it so it’s probably just a me issue, but I’ll discuss this more in spoiler chat.
But for those interested, here’s some snippets of times I wanted to gouge my eyes out.
"I don't really know who you are. There are so many secrets about you, so many locked rooms whose doors don't seem to have keys."
I seized his collar with mud-caked hands, pressing against him, knowing this could be the last time. The last kiss, the last embrace, the last time I ever saw him. It felt like drowning, but with no urge to come up for air. He caught me, one arm around my waist, the other lifting to cup my cheek, to dig fingers into the tangle of my hair. I wished I could live in this moment. I wished it never had to end. But for ever was a term for fools and poets. I was neither. I pulled away.
Her name on my tongue tasted too sweet. I hadn't realized how long I'd wanted to say it until it slipped from my lips, making itself into a real thing instead of just a thought. And now all I wanted to do was to speak her name; I hummed in my ears with each beat of my heart.
While the plot is much slower than the first book, It still isn’t that slow to be fair and plotlines do progress at a nice pace. There are still big reveals, but only a few compared to the batshit insanity of the first book, which is to be expected, but still… You gave me craziness the first time so now that’s what I want. This one did feel much more predictable and generic than the first but I was still quite invested and everything led to an epic climax. The ending was incredibly cinematic and just straight up bad ass!
A big win with this series so far has been the animal companions and we get much more in this sequel which is just fantastic. The more the merrier. Mephi continues to be adorable in this one. He’s in his sassy and sarcastic teenager phase and it's pretty great.
I can already feel myself going into spoiler territory so I’m gonna leave this spoiler-free section there. Basically though, I hate the romance, but like where the plot is heading and there are some very interesting things developing, which, if this ending is anything to go by, will be pretty damn epic for the final book. The writing still leaves a lot to be desired but honestly, I quite like that. I don't think the writing is bad because hey, I'm invested in this world and besides, it has been fun to come across the odd bad line that you can't help but laugh at. I'm enjoying this series. It's nothing ground-breaking but it does takes plot points and ideas in interesting directions and is just plain fun.
🌕🌕🌕🌗🌑 3.5 stars
Spoiler Chat
Right. Let me just get this romance rant out of the way quickly so we can all move on and be happy. I hate everything about it. It doesn't feel natural at all and very much just feels like a romance shoehorned in just to have one. Jovis and Lin make no sense in my head. Jovis is such a charismatic charmer type and I can't get my head around what he sees in Lin. She barely has a personality. And I know that's not her fault because there's the small thing of her not actually being real and just a literal construct of her 'father's' will, buuuuut.... Jovis doesn't know that (at first anyway). Maybe that's the turn on after all. All their intimate moments made me squirm and felt so cringe but luckily my boy Mephi was there to break things up when he could. I appreciate you buddy.
"Lin." I whispered in her ear. Her name on my tongue tasted too sweet. I hadn't realized how long I'd wanted to say it until it slipped from my lips, making itself into a real thing instead of just a thought. And now all I wanted to do was to speak her name; I hummed in my ears with each beat of my heart. Mephi coughed.
We broke apart
Even when Lin found out Jovis had been spying on her and feeding information to the Shardless Few she still wanted to fuck him.
I didn't trust him. But I couldn't bring myself to hate him.
Like girl... Have some self respect please. Honestly, It would have been kinda cool to have a lovers to enemies dynamic going on for once but no... She's just a little mad at him as if he forgot her birthday or something and not been feeding vital information to the organisation vowed to take down her entire empire. Urgh So dumb. They don't even have any chemistry together. It probably sounds like I hate Lin but that's not true. I'm neutral. I just don't like her with Jovis and vise versa.
I have a feeling Jovis is going to be forced to kill Lin in someway to save the Empire GoT style and it's gonna have zero emotional impact on me, but be a big moment for them. Yanno what, have it. As long as this relationship ends one way or another I'm good.
Honestly, the pair of them were annoying me so much that I actually found myself rooting for Nisong in the end. Why the fuck not? I mean, whilst they're playing kiss chase Nisong is charging forth, ready to attack with a giant ass sea serpent. Hell yeah! That's what I'm talking about. That was so epic.
The serpent lunged, snapping at the people below. It half-ran, half-slithered up the slope, its short webbed legs finding purchase in the mud, heaving more and more of its body up onto to the plateau. Everywhere, it knocked people to the side or trampled them, claws ripping torsos in two. Screams rose above the sound of clashing blades. The creature didn't even seem aware of most of the people it killed.
What in the Godzilla is going on xD This was the craziness from Book 1 I was craving and boy did it deliver. Thank you Nisong for your generous service. I pictured it as a mash up of the Great Serpent boss in Sekiro and The White Snake from Chinese mythology.
That whole climax fight was SICK! The way the serpent just yammed down on Tythus too. CHOMP. Amazing.
The serpent's head diverted to the side at the last moment, its jaws closing around Tythus' torso. Phalue's world stopped. She was screaming something, she wasn't even sure the words. All she could hear was her voice - a wrenching, wailing sound. The serpent's head lifted away, leaving a broken body behind on the gravel path.
We also get the many reveals of Ragan being a prick (which is a shame because I was actually quite liking him) and Gio being the most powerful of Alanga (?) - Dionne. Honestly, I can't quite figure out what this means for Lin and the Empire, other than that it's going to be much harder to rule now. I can't see them working together, but I also just don't really understand what Gio/Dionne's whole deal is. He says he wants no leadership and instead a council on equal footing yet he is giving tyrannical dictator. I think we still have much to learn about him and the Alanga in general. It's cool to see all the element bending stuff going on and I hope we get some more information on how this Alanga magic system works because the Avatar vibes are strong, which I, of course, love.
Speaking of magic system let's talk about the bone shard magic. This magic system is undeniably cool and unique and the idea of programming constructs and giving commands is interesting. I just can't help but feel that the potential of the idea is wasted a little. It's very much a hard magic system, which is written as a soft one and to me, that comes across as lazy. Now, I have nothing against soft magic systems, in fact, I actually prefer them. But this particular one is filled with so much nuance and intricacies which aren't developed nearly enough. The thing that bothered me in the first book was how I struggled to imagine what it physically looked like to reach into a construct and rewrite their commands. Fairly early on in this one we get an explanation.
Without even thinking, Nisong pressed her hand into the dead body's chest. Flesh became incorporeal.
Since I obviously already knew what the word incorporeal meant, I began to understood that it was as if reaching into thin air. This is as I suspected but still doesn't seem right in some way because that would make constructs hollow? In that case are they all really light? Is Lin herself just empty air and skin? Do you understand my confusion? I just feel as though as soon as one thing is eventually explained it opens the door to so many more rooms which I don't have the key for ;).
The other thing that bugs me to do with the bone shard magic is what language is being used to engrave onto the shards. Lin is often rewriting commands already engrained onto the shards which is a really cool concept to quickly change an entire command by altering one word. In book one I distinctly remember Lin saying how she added a stroke or two to change the meaning which suggests that the writing is in characters. As someone who studies languages, including Chinese, this is freaking awesome. With Chinese characters you really can change an entire meaning with just one line and that's freaking awesome to include in a magic system. However, in this book I very much got the impression that we were dealing with the English language, or at least the Latin alphabet.
... and carved with one simple command: Vu minyet kras. You cannot Kill.
This is disappointing to me as a language nerd as instead of adding a stroke or two Lin would literally write a whole wordy sentence at the end like - "If attacked, instead of attacking people, attack other constructs". Which just seems dumb and much more convenient and contrived than cleverly altering a command with just a stroke or two. I think this lack of puzzling out is why I feel as thought this magic system has wasted potential. It's cool don't get me wrong, but it could be something really smart and unique.
Phalue and Ranami take more of a backseat in this one, which was annoying because I actually found myself more invested in what was going on over there. This is weird because nothing important was happening and again, it felt very middle book where they didn't have any story line so these plot lines were just added in to keep them as POV characters. Anyway, I still was invested. They're married now which we sorta glossed over completely but I'm fine with that. They even quasi adopt an orphan child called Ayesh from the street. Ayesh was sketch from the get go and the foreshadowing of her eventually betraying both Phalue and Ranami was so heavy handed. I caught on to the fact that she was Alanga fairly early on, but to have her not actually turn on them and for them to instead grow closer together in the end as a family was really unexpected and adorable. I'm rooting for Ayesh, it really seems like her heart's in the right place, with how she was too scared to tell Phalue about her osselen just in case anything bad would happen. She's got her head screwed on right. If only Lin would have the same amount of hesitation when trusting new people... Anyway, it will be interesting to see what role Ayesh will play as she becomes more powerful. I imagine she will work with Lin, as Phalue and Lin seem to be forming a decent bond but we shall see.
Oh, I mentioned how I was liking Ragan. Now I'm thinking about it I think a large part of that was just because he acted as a cockblock between Lin and Jovis... But at the time, I was liking him because he arrived outta no where and we finally got some answers about who the Alanga were and what their potential was. Also he was kinda funny. I liked how he wasn't afraid to cuss them both out.
Ragan put a hand on my shoulder. "You're good with the earth shaking," he said, "but I have notes for your technique."
Ultimately, he is a prick though and basically force bonded himself with an ossalen through abuse... Disgusting. I felt so bad for that creature, especially when Mephi was chomping down on him, but what choice did they have really? Sad.
Speaking of Mephi, I mentioned how he was in his sassy era, so want to include this quote that made me smile.
You don't seem to like him," Mephi whispered to me. "Who? Ragan? He's a perfectly lovely fellow."
Mephi looked so startled that I couldn't help but to laugh. "I suppose I should teach you a little about sarcasm. It's when you say the opposite of what you mean."
He regarded me for a moment as we strode through the city streets. "His ossalen is very brave," he said in a fair approximation of my tone.
"Not bad," I said.
Now that we have more and more ossalen it's quite exciting isn't it? I wonder how they are all gonna interact. It gives me the same vibes of a dragon rider book, but still feels quite fresh and unique? It's cool and I enjoy discovering more about then. Such as when Thrana evolved like a fucking Pokémon lmao.
My original plan was to jump straight into book 3 BUT the new Fonda Lee book has just dropped so it will have to wait. Priorities. I am excited to see where this series ends up though, as I feel as though it still has the potential to go any which way. I hope that the final book goes full ball to the wall crazy like the first one and that this was just a classic case of a bloated middle. It wasn't even that slow, just much slower than I expected it to be, but I imagine my reading slump played a role in that too. I'm blabbering, thanks for reading though! As with the first book Chad takes are below!
Chad Takes
This one takes the pace down a little bit which I think is to its benefit. A few more interesting reveals which we’ve been waiting for i.e. whitstone holds the islands up which explains the sinking (but we’re not sure why?). Also no idea if I missed this in the first book but the reason they keep bollocking on about Caro nuts is cause they’re used to cure the bog cough. This makes more sense I guess cause I was I think reasonably doubtful of the Shardless Few plan to disrupt the stability of the empire by withholding pub snacks.
Gio is by far the best reveal in this because I was really wondering what the third book was even gonna be about it considering the construct threat has been sort of mostly quashed? Gio being Dione really caught me off guard, partly because I’m not always very observant but also because he’s spent the last two books wanging on about elected representatives and now his motives for that seem to be more clearly questionable. I like the idea of him being the ‘big bad’ of all this, I initially twitched that it could be Ragan but he’s just kind of a gross person.
Lin and Jovis and their odd relationship has been something I’ve felt mixed feelings about. I don’t really mind their blossoming love, especially in Lin’s case being that prior to this she’d not really had any form of romantic attachment. I did spend most of this book just waiting for them both to confess to each other about all of their shit. I say go and be happy. She needs to totally vet people more before she takes them into her service though. Like a lot of this was avoidable with a robust screening process.
I’ve had some very very cynical and probably stupid thoughts that I’ll share here…but I’m wondering honestly how much different this book would be without having Phalue and Ranami as pov characters. This could be a dumb suggestion but whenever it’d go to a Phalue or Ranami chapter it always kind of felt…less crucial? I think I’m being mean there though and they do add a decent bit of texture to the Shardless and the state of other islands.
Bring on the next one.
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