For generations, the Hundred Isles have built their ships from the bones of ancient dragons to fight an endless war.

The dragons disappeared, but the battles for supremacy persisted.

Now the first dragon in centuries has been spotted in far-off waters, and both sides see a chance to shift the balance of power in their favour. Because whoever catches it will win not only glory, but the war.

The Wounded Kingdom trilogy by RJ Barker is one that’s really special to me. All three books are just so heartfelt & human, and very character driven. And off the top of my head, it stands out as one of the only trilogies where the third book (King of Assassins) is my most favorite.

So my expectations for The Bone Ships, the first book in the Tide Child trilogy, were insanely high. Ships made from dragon bones? Fuck yes! I grew up around the ocean & actually spent a lot of years working in a boatyard. I’ve read way more nautical non-fiction books than fictional, but that’s something I’d love to change!

What I’m trying to say is, I was in exactly the right mood for some seafaring fantasy, and The Bone Ships delivered on every possible level. I fucking ADORED this book!

One of the things that challenged me the most about The Bone Ships is that there’s literally no hand-holding. Like, this is a world with its own set of rules, its own terminology, and you just have to dive right in and roll with it. There is an appendix at the back, which I found occasionally useful, but I almost preferred to just make sense of things based on context. And if it sounds like I’m saying this book is needlessly complex or difficult to follow, it’s neither of those.

The story begins almost abruptly, with little regard for a traditional “beginning.” We meet Joron Twiner, shipwife (basically the Captain) of the Tide Child. But as soon as we meet him, his status is challenged by a a legendary shipwife named Lucky Meas Gilbryn. Joron is not much of a fighter, nor is he a very good shipwife. In fact, he’s pretty terrible at it. The Tide Child is a black ship, a ship of the dead…crewed entirely by people who have been condemned to die for one reason or another.

Joron is a bit puzzled as to why this famous shipwife is taking control of the Tide Child, but that’s exactly what happens. They are a fleet ship of the Hundred Isles, with a brutal & efficient new leader, and they’re about to embark on an epic adventure: an arakeesian (sometimes called a keyshan) has been spotted. Long thought extinct, the keyshan are the sea-dragons whose bones were used to build the fleet.

No more dragons means no more bones. So a resurgence of these majestic beasts could mean a lot to the Hundred Isles, as well as to the Gaunt Islanders, whom the Hundred Isles has waged many a war against.

The Bone Ships is absolutely PACKED with colorful & unusual characters, and that’s for sure the strength of the book. The cast of characters is endlessly diverse, and includes a non-binary character. We also get to know the gullaime, a sort’ve bird-like humanoid creature who can control the wind using magic. Joron & the gullaime develop a really fascinating relationship over the course of the book.

And I mean…I don’t know that I could have loved Lucky Meas Gilbryn any more. She’s nearly fanatical in her approach to order on her ship, which is something that was sorely lacking under Joron’s command. She asks a lot of Joron, and he just grows so much as a result. They develop a really unique bond, and oof…these are two really special characters.

There are a lot of secondary characters to keep track of, and while it could feel occasionally overwhelming, Barker does great work making everyone very easy to distinguish. For real, there are some AMAZING characterizations here, even if they don’t appear all that often in the book. Narza is one that really stood out to me…she functions as Meas’s bodyguard (to a point), but she’s this intensely quiet, yet OUTRAGEOUSLY BADASS & VIOLENT presence in the book. Just…fucking awesome.

This world RJ Barker has imagined is so incredibly vivid, and as anyone who has read The Wounded Kingdom will tell you, he knows his way around a brutal action scene. The ship-to-ship battle sequences are astonishing, gory, and epic in every sense of the word. There are more than a few genuine HOLY FUCK moments in this book!!

The Bone Ships is clearly the beginning of another brilliant trilogy from RJ Barker. I think his style of writing is gorgeous, and the imagination on display here is unreal. This was exactly the right book at the right time for me, and I’m floored. I loved this so stupid much! I can’t wait to hear some news about book two!

Many thanks to Orbit for sending me a copy of The Bone Ships! It’s a new favorite!