Horizon

July 24, 2017
Spanning the ground and sky in a city of spires where people sail between their towers grown from living bone on wings of silk, the conclusion to Wilde’s fantastical trilogy (after Cloudbound) takes on violent political divisions, ecological desolation, and the imminent death of the only world the characters have ever known. Unaware of the extent of the danger threatening the bone spires, political leader Macal is trying to breathe life into his desperate community. Below, a young woman named Kirit and her companions have survived a fall from the sky only to discover that their city’s progenitor, an unimaginably giant creature, is being crushed and starved by the weight of the towers. When disaster hastens the city’s demise, some of the fallen begin to climb, hoping to save those who still live above, but the solution they devise for evacuation seems needlessly complicated; there’s no plausible reason that most of the citizens can’t simply glide down on their own wings. Despite this flaw, fans of the series will be satisfied by its conclusion.

August 1, 2017

At the end of Cloudbound, only a few people know the true nature of the city of bone towers. Two of them, childhood friends Kirit and Nat, were thrown from the towers as punishment, falling through the clouds that are the boundaries of the known world to those in the towers. On the ground, they discover that their city is dying. Their new world is baffling and dangerous, but those still on the towers need to be warned that the city will fall, and soon. As Nat fights his way back up to the towers with the young scavenger Ciel, he will have to contend with the political upheaval above. Meanwhile, Kirit leads the search for a new home for the people of the bone towers. VERDICT The conclusion of Wilde's "Bone Universe" trilogy builds on the powerful world she created in Updraft, and while the pacing dips in places as the focus shifts between the tower and the ground, it is a satisfying end to an inventive series.--MM

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