The Bone Shard War
My Review
It's here. The final book in The Drowning Empire series. I'm super glad I was able to binge the entire trilogy because I don't know how I could have waited an entire 17 months. That's just crazy. I'd have gone through extreme Mephi withdrawals. I'm already going through them now that the series is over. It's terrible.
I do have to be honest, though, The Bone Shard War does something I do not like in fantasy books. It makes use of the dreaded time jump. Small time jumps of a month, two months, maybe even six months, are okay. But when you start getting into the two-year mark like this one, I get very sad. I really wanted to see the events Andrea Stewart described play out on-page. It was weird hearing how certain terrible things had happened to one of the major characters and never really getting enough emotion to feel for Jovis's predicament, especially as his events played out towards the end of the book. I had a hard time connecting to his actions.
Despite the time jump, I felt that the other four major characters, Lin, Phalue, Ranami, and Nisong stuck pretty true to their earlier characterizations. It was just Jovis that I had a hard time with, though his chapters were still my favorite. Him and Mephi are my favorite relationship of the whole series. I love that little creature, and I'm so jealous of Jovis for having an ossalen when I don't. I will say, however, that Lin's actions as emperor did get a bit repetitive. She seemed to be making the same mistakes and nothing would change. The ending kind of reflected this, but that's another issue I had. The ending flip-flopped some of our bad guys, and it felt a bit like a copout, sadly.
Now, I'm not saying I didn't enjoy this book. But I am saying it was one I think readers will have to sit with for a while. Things happen to the major characters that aren't your happily-ever-after story, so don't go expecting that. And there are innocent and lovable creatures that didn't deserve any of the abuse the characters put them through. I'm still very mad about some of the animal abuse in this book. It was terrible. I'm also just trying to wrap my head around what happened to some of those creatures at the very, very end. I cried. It was not pretty.
Honestly, I think this is a book that you just have to sit with. It reminded me a lot of Victoria Aveyard's Red Queen series' ender, War Storm. I very much did not like the unsatisfactory ending of that series, but as time went on and I had some distance to reflect on the storyline, I found myself appreciating it more. And now that I've given myself time to think about The Bone Shard War's events, I can appreciate the book a little more. I still think the action scenes went on a tad too long, but some of the smaller nitpicks I had about major characters being separated from each other and having fewer fun scenes with Mephi kind of faded so I could focus on the overall storyline. And I still really liked the series as a whole. Even with an ending that I just wasn't sure about at first.
All in all, I think fantasy readers who appreciate authors writing bittersweet, more realistic endings will be pleased with this one. It's definitely for fans of The Poppy War and The Daevabad series (as I've repeated quite a few times by now, sorry), but if you like sweeter finales, be prepared for some torment with this last installment. It'll get you right in the feels.
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