The Bone Ships

August 12, 2019
Unusual attention to detail makes a water-covered world come to life in Barker’s first Tide Child fantasy epic. A ridge of mountains separates sprinklings of small islands, and the only material strong enough to make oceangoing ships is sea dragon bone. However, dragons are long extinct and the old ships increasingly ramshackle, so a bitter and destructive conflict between the Hundred Isles and the Gaunt Islands may at last sputter out. The sighting of a dragon sends conspirators after the beast, some hoping to harvest its bones and others intending to kill it before its carcass can be used to renew the war. One of the seekers is Meas Gilbryn, a disgraced aristocrat turned pacifist. At the novel’s opening, she seizes control of the Tide Child, a ship crewed by men and women who have been condemned to death, by slapping down its pathetically failed captain, Joron Twiner. Much of the rest of the novel feels like one of Patrick O’Brian’s richly detailed sagas of seamanship as Meas rebuilds her ship and its crew, including restoring Joron’s self-respect, while pursuing the dragon. Though characterization is declared more than demonstrated, this is a very promising beginning for a proposed trilogy.

Starred review from September 1, 2019
Readers will set sail to a world with ships made from dragons' bones, demanding shipwives, flesh-eating sea monsters, and ever-present death in this beautifully crafted trilogy starter. The Hundred Isles is a culture built on the bones of dead, extinct dragons, its brutality fostered by decades of war. In any world of war and islands, the navy is essential, and on the Hundred Isles, criminals are conscripted as sailors on the black ships of the dead. Joron Twiner has been the shipwife of Tide Child until Meas Gilbryn defeats him in combat. Meas is different because she seeks to change society by ending the war. When word gets out that a dragon has been spotted, she and Joron work together to assemble a crew worthy of killing the mighty beast?but this world still has a few secrets yet to be revealed. The first in the Tide Child trilogy presents a unique and memorable world?harsh and brutal and full of sharply realized, powerful female characters. Barker has managed to craft a story inspired by Moby Dick, Game of Thrones, and pirate lore, and readers will be drawn in and fascinated.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)