A new month is upon us! We’ve reached June 2, the first Monday of the new month. This week, I got to two ARCs (advance reader copies) that I’ve really been looking forward to. The first was a sequel to a book I had a lot of fun with. The second had a synopsis I couldn’t resist. Here’s the full recap.

1. A Scar in the Bone – Sophie Jordan

CW: Child Abuse, Graphic Depictions of Violence & Injuries, Fire & Burn Injuries, Grief, Gore, Loss of Parent, Blood, Vomit, Abandonment, Betrayal, War, Genocide, Slavery, Sexism

A big thank you to NetGalley and Avon and Harper Voyager for the eARC! This one will be coming out on October 14th in standard hardcover, a very pretty special edition, an eBook version. All are currently available for pre-order.

Summary:

A Scar in the Bone is the sequel to Sophie Jordan’s A Fire in the Sky. The following review contains spoilers for the first book, but not for the second. Proceed with according caution.

It has been a year since Tamsyn and her husband Fell discovered that they were actually dragons and met a pride of others like them – including the twin brother Fell didn’t know he had. Almost immediately afterward, he and his brother were attacked by a rival pride while out flying and Fell was lost. Tamsyn is only now beginning to climb out of the depths of her grief. She’s hoping to make herself valuable to the pride who have taken her in. Although they have housed her and trained her all this time, she still doesn’t feel like one of them.

Part of the issue is her inability to leave her cares for the human world entirely behind. She finds herself straddling two seemingly incompatible worlds. She does not know how she can be both while humans are still determined to hunt dragons to extinction. Still, she cannot help but worry for what she has left behind: her sisters and those who inhabit the lands her husband protected. They are under grievous threat, and from someone Tamsyn had once believed she could trust.

My Thoughts:

A Fire in the Sky was a lot of fun, so I was very much looking forward to this sequel. My hopes were high, but unfortunately the start of this book dashed them pretty quickly. Immediately we learn that the male lead has died. We’ve not only lost the relationship that the entire last book was building toward, but also one of the two POVs. Even worse, Tamsyn’s resulting grief has brought her so low that nearly all of her character growth has dissipated. It really pulls the rug out from under the reader. This was right after I accidentally noticed a spoiler in the table of contents of all places. I perhaps would have made the same deduction from foreshadowing, but the prior knowledge took away from the emotional impact of some key moments.

I had enjoyed the first book enough that I was willing to overlook a rough start. The dragons were what I was most excited for. In the last installment, readers learned that there are different types of dragons, each with unique powers. As I was hoping, we got to see a lot more of those this time. Battle and training scenes were brought to a new level, and the wide variety of abilities were used in creative ways. However, I wanted more dragon. All the dragons we meet also have a human form, and they spend most of their time in that shape. This is even true for those who hate humans. Many of them may as well have been humans with magical abilities instead.

Overall, it felt like this book needed another round of developmental edits. It wasn’t until after the halfway point when the pace and plot finally picked up. Even then there were a handful of issues, leaving it unable to make up for the first half. Some paragraphs were self-contradictory. A couple of times narration seemed to forget which form a character was in and describe the wrong anatomy. Hardest to get over was the unclear arc of this book’s villain. The character in question has made a big change from the first book without adequately demonstrating how that happened. It takes too long for it to be believable, although it becomes so as the story progresses.

I wanted to like this one more than I did. Ultimately, I felt like the first one was better. This series is set in the same world as the author’s Firelight series, and I may still check that one out. I do like the magic system and the world that’s been created here, so I’m considering exploring more. I read the first book and saw a lot of potential for the series, but this installment hasn’t reached it.

2. The BoneKeeper’s Daughter – Elise Fry

CW: Human Sacrifice, Blood, Child Abuse, SA, Sexism, Cannibalism, Self-Injury/Self-Mutilation, Loss of Parent, Confinement, Child Death, War, Classism, Famine (To Be Continued…)

A big thank you to the author for the eARC! It will be coming out on June 7th (this coming Saturday), but is currently only available for pre-order on Amazon Kindle.

Summary:

Wren was not raised like the other children of her village. That’s because she is the youngest Keeper the bones have ever chosen. Bones are everywhere where she comes from, making up the very walls they live within. Many still have their souls inside them, and those that do whisper to a single chosen one every generation. They chose Wren as soon as she was born.

The Bones also choose who will become an Offering to the gods at the BoneKeeper’s hand. At least, that’s what is supposed to happen. Some on the Council saw Wren’s youth and gender as weakness. They saw that as opportunity. They have worked hard to bend her – and the very laws of nature – to their will.

My Thoughts:

So far I’m about a third of the way through this one and I’m thoroughly hooked. It is a fully immersive, gritty dystopian fantasy with a lot of pain and anger inside of it. At the same time, it’s weaving a number of lovely stories about community and tradition and the ways we interact with death and grief. The magic system is dark, but it draws you in in a way you can’t turn away from. The characters are just as fascinating, and it’s difficult to know which ones to trust. Everyone has motives of their own. I know I’ve only glimpsed the surface of it so far and I can’t wait to see what comes next.

This book is definitely on the longer side with a listed print length of 716 pages. However, at a little shy of 250 pages in, I haven’t hit a dull moment yet. It’s one that requires careful review of the content warnings before diving in, but so far it’s perfectly up my alley. I started it right before bed on Saturday and I’ve been able to fall into it for hours on end. If I look tired in my video today, it’s because I stayed up too late reading.

June 2 is Now in the Books

June 2 is the first Monday of my birthday month, and I’m hoping to gift myself more reading time. I’ve got a bunch more ARCs on my list and an ever-growing physical TBR from all my bookstore adventures. I plan to visit every single one in the state. Since I’m in Massachusetts, I’m lucky enough to have a lot of them. You can join in along with my partner and I in our explorations – we have a whole playlist of bookstore videos for you to check out!

Keep an eye out on my YouTube channel or the main updates page here to follow along on all my bookish adventures. My reading recaps go out on Mondays and bookstore adventure videos go out on Thursdays. Plus, there are lots of little shorts in between. As always, I want to hear from you! What have you been reading lately? Are you having fun with it? Have you read any of these titles, and if so, what did you think of them? Tell me everything, and follow along for more!