The Bone Ships, then. A story of found family, of ships
crafted from bones and magic skimming over icy waves. A story of honour and
blood. A story of heroism, if not of heroes. Of sacrifices, hard truths, and a
song of salt winds and dark waters.
Sorry to wax lyrical, but in more prosaic terms: this is a
very, very good book.
As the title suggests, rather a lot of the story takes place
on the sea. Specifically, on ships. More specifically, on ships crafted
from the bones of dragons. Lets just take a moment to appreciate how cool that
idea is. The dragonboats of this world are literally dragon-boats. The ships
are crewed by reavers, hard men and women who go out into the world in search
of battles and treasure. Well, mostly. The crew of our story are a little
different. But I’ll come back to that. For now, it’s enough to imagine a ship
crafted from the bones of a dead leviathan crashing through frigid deeps. The
society these people come from is driven by scarcity and conflict. It sits in
an ocean seemingly at the edge of nothingness – a cold, hard place. Farming is
difficult. Keeping children alive, more so. The land is poisoned and poisonous –
and as a result, the society that clings to these rocks is led by those with a
proven ability to bear living children. And the women with that power, they are
no less surgical, no less vicious, no less ruthless than anyone else would be.
They keep a court of fertile men, and send the rest out to fight and die and
live, however they can – seizing victory and glory on the tides. It’s a fragile
world, one underpinned by loss and sacrifice. This is a stark, often brutal
world, sure enough – but it’s one where you can feel the wind knife across your
face on the spired isles, just as much as feel the blade in your back from the
political manoeuvrings of the political elite. It’s a vividly imagined,
detailed and entirely believable culture, one you can live and breathe while
turning the pages.
Alongside this culture, one which is wrapped in constant war
with its neighbours, we have the smaller, more intimate world of a ship and its
crew. Here the personalities are important, the Captain, of course, but also
those who manage the decks, the navigator, the lookouts, the brawlers. There’s
a vitality to a good crew, and a febrile fragility to one that isn’t holding together.
In both cases, the emotional tenor is here, and it comes out of the page in
dialogue, in sarcastic asides, in banter, in orders given and obeyed (or not).
The power dynamics of the enclosed space are implicit and complex, and here, in
this story, you can live and breathe those dynamics, and see them play out. If
the wider society is twisted upon itself, dependent on the ships and reliant on
conflict – the ships themselves are something else. Even the worst are, if not
families, the worst because they don’t have the bonds accepted by the best.
Really what I’m saying is, this is a really well-drawn,
sharply observed world. It may not always be a very pleasant one, but you’ll
find yourself lost in its intricacies, nonetheless.
Onto this stage step the crew of the Tide Child. When
we first meet our interlocutor, Joron, he’s the captain of the ship. Of course,
he’s also constantly drunk, scared of his own crew, and determined to drink
himself to death on a beach before ever getting back on the ship. And the crew
are disparate, cruel, lost. It doesn’t help, of course, that they’re on a so
called “black ship”, all sentenced to death, with service taken as an
alternative to execution. They are not, it must be said, a happy bunch. As the
narrative moves, Joron’s relationship with the crew evolves, as does the man
himself. As our eyes on this world, Joron is reflective, thoughtful, aware of
his own fragilities and weaknesses – perhaps too much so. But that fragility
also gives him a much needed humanity, when matched with the other central
force of the story, Lucky Meas.
In another version of this story, Meas is the centre of
attention. She’s smart, funny, lethal. She inspires courage, she inspires
friendship she inspires her crews as heroes. A disgraced leader of fleets, a
woman who would happily kick down the door to perdition if her goals lay beyond
it. And don’t get me wrong, watching her stride across the page, taking
absolutely no crap, is an absolute delight. But living it via Joron gives us a
perspective, a detachment, a more grounded understanding. Meas is a force of
nature, that’s true. But if she understands herself and her purposes, Joron
does not – at least, not entirely. This helps maintain the narrative mystery,
and also helps in keeping Meas human; Joron is not always entirely happy with
the appearance of such a force of nature into his life, and his opinions help
shape the way we see things.
The two of them, the phlegmatic Joron and the fiery Meas,
will take the broken crew of the Tide Child into the path of matters of
great portent. I won’t spoil those, but will say this – they do have a tendency
to get bloody. But there are also startling moments of grace scattered through
the pages, where a well-turned word or an indrawn breath can pierce the heart
of the reader as sharply as any blade. Suffice to say that somewhere between the
two lies our story, and it had be turning pages in that state where I
desperately wanted to know what happened next, but also didn’t want the book to
end. It’s a tale of found family, and of sacrifices and of challenges, and of
friendship, blood and death. A story of trying to change the world, and a story
about people, and what happens when they try to change the world.
It’s compulsive, compelling reading. I’m absolutely
desperate to see more of the Tide Child, and I think once you’ve
finished this book, you will be too. Go out and pick this one up right away.
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