The Bone Shard Daughter by Andrea Stewart

The emperor’s reign has lasted for decades, his mastery of bone shard magic powering the animal-like constructs that maintain law and order. But now his rule is failing, and revolution is sweeping across the Empire’s many islands.
Lin is the emperor’s daughter and spends her days trapped in a palace of locked doors and dark secrets. When her father refuses to recognise her as heir to the throne, she vows to prove her worth by mastering the forbidden art of bone shard magic.
Yet such power carries a great cost, and when the revolution reaches the gates of the palace, Lin must decide how far she is willing to go to claim her birthright – and save her people.

Well, that surely was a read, wasn’t it. See I’m not so sure about the first half of this book. And the second half was good. But as a whole book, does it work?

I just don’t know. I’m so conflicted!

From the very beginning of this book I felt like I was jumping in at the middle of the story. Which as we all know from my review of Faith that it’s not my favorite thing to have happen in a story.

I also didn’t like how the character pov jumps happened by chapter. Don’t get me wrong, as the book went on I understood why the author chose the approach she did take on the time she spent with each character. It just really bothered me during the first half of the book. For example, she mentioned a character in the first 4 chapters that wasn’t heard from again until you were 30% of the way through the book.

Given all of my negative thoughts thus far, I very nearly DNF’d this book. But I decided to stick with it, and I’m glad that I did. I found myself really enjoying the second half of the book to the point where I was up until midnight reading because I had to know how it ended.

I will say the ending felt a little weird to me. I know its the first book in a series but I dislike when endings don’t actually end something. This felt like one big ole “see you next season”. I don’t particularly like when books try to be movies or tv series.

It irks me.

All that being said, I really enjoyed the bone shard magic system. It’s complex and, well, gross. I loved it.

The world the author created is of a nation on the brink of revolution, and it works, for the most part. I would be really interested to see how the world expands in future books in the series.

Pacing was slightly problematic for me, the first half of the book plodded along while the second half picked up speed. It’s part of my confusion at reading the book.

Character development was really well done. The authors characters really shine in this story. They were rich and complex, which is something other parts of the book were lacking.

As I don’t know that I’d pick up the next one in the series, I have to give this book 3 out of 5 stars.