The Bone Queen

May 1, 2017

Gr 9 Up-In this prequel to the "Pellinor" series, disgraced Bard Cadvan of Lirigon has retreated to a small mining town after an exercise of magic killed one classmate and left another badly injured. Cadvan, a Bard still in training, severely overestimated his abilities in thinking he could summon Kansabur, the dreaded Bone Queen, without consequences. It took the joined efforts of more powerful Bards to return her to the Abyss. Fellow student Bards Dernhil, Ceredin, and Selmana, as well as older Bards of the First Circle, drink wine and cider, ride horseback from village to village, and hole up in wood-beamed inns during violent rainstorms as they seek to ensure Kansabur remains banished. The detailed maps to the continent of Edil-Amarandh, along with background on pronunciations and translations, draw readers into the Australian author's elaborately constructed realm of Annar. The atmosphere of the novel is J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth mixed with Tamora Pierce's Tortall and a little of the Wizarding World of "Harry Potter" for good measure. Fantasy enthusiasts will find it satisfying to disappear into Croggon's world. This book stands alone and is even more enjoyable in conjunction with the other "Pellinor" volumes. VERDICT Recommended for any YA fantasy collection.-Maggie Knapp, Trinity Valley Schools, Fort Worth, TX

Copyright 2017 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from April 15, 2017
Croggon takes readers back 50 years before the four original books in her Pellinor series for this prequel about a malevolent spirit breaking into the World.Cadvan, a mentor in the Books of Pellinor, is much younger here. He's living in a mining village, having been exiled from Barding for an act born of arrogant, immature jealousy: he summoned a Revenant, the titular Bone Queen, with sorcery and lost control of her. An arduous banishment seemed to cast her out, but she merely split apart, like Mercury--with some parts finding their ways inside people. The protagonists--Cadvan; his old peer, Dernhil; their mentor, Nelac; and Selmana, a probably teenage Minor Bard and apprentice to the humors of earth, metal, and stone--are given deeply humane characterizations and complex interpersonal histories. Together they tackle the cryptic, soul-breaking task of suppressing the Bone Queen. The Dark threatens; the "tissue between the Circles is broken," opening ways for evil to seep through; and the Bone Queen stalks Selmana with a "suffocating pall of malice." Croggon's humbly exquisite prose weaves splendor into everything, from spells of magery and the frightening, otherworldly realm that the protagonists must tread to the regular World's aesthetic beauty and human emotion (grief, shame, terror, trauma). No pain is romanticized. Either direction of reading--this first, or the original quartet first--will hold beauty. The protagonists here (unlike in the earlier books) are white. Magnificent yet intimate, dark yet tender. (Fantasy. 14-adult)

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