The Bone Shard War (The Drowning Empire)

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Die kurzen Kapitel, die zwischendurch eingestreuten Actionszenen und die vielen verschiedenen PoVs sorgen hier einfach für reichlich Abwechslung und regen den Lesefluss an. April 2023 is almost over, and The Drowning Empire is the first series I finished reading this year. It might be a fantastical world with magic, but the way the characters feel about love, loss, friendship, and more is very relatable. Ragan would rather rule over an Empire of one island that follows him than an Empire of many that resists.

When her (admittedly ambitious) dreams of becoming a dragon slayer didn't pan out, she instead turned to writing books.We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Yet in this book I loved seeing her tender side with Ayesh, and becoming the leader of The Shardless Few I think also made her realise how complicated and hard being a leader is. Jovis overcoming his circumstance through his clever ways we know and love, Mephi being his motivation and compas.

There were world-building and ending mysteries solved, realisations that shook the ground (aside from the Alanga ground shaking). I could feel Mephi’s pain radiating off the page, after everything they’d been through and done for each other and how close they were… I really couldn’t cope with that. Their quest is completely dropped and the motivation for hunting down the swords is never explained. this book reads like one of my university essays - a long-winded crowd of words, circular arguments, saying the same thing in different ways over and over, anything to reach the word limit in time. This last book splits time quite evenly between the different protagonists, and even though the series began and ended with Lin, the other characters feel of nearly equal standing over the course of the series.Parts of this felt so slow, and the slow parts seemed all over for timings and it really did confuse me. Nisong journey was also super interesting in this, I feel like we really did get a great understanding of her. I think, in all honesty, the first book of this trilogy will always be my favourite; Lin sneaking furtively through the palace, desperately trying to find out the truth; Jovis rescuing Mephi and the each new discovery about him. I have to say I wasn’t as invested as what I would have liked and I don’t know if it’s that I’ve forgotten bits or if it’s just something else? Now this sweeping tale of magic, revolution and mystery, where a young woman's sense of identity will make or break an empire, finally comes to an epic conclusion.

I love how the story evolved, the characters grew (most of them) and how everything was so well handled in the end. The Bone Shard Daughter is epic fantasy at its most human and heartfelt, concerned with the real lives caught in the gears of empire and rebellion.

Jovis is, for the bigger part of the novel (for plot reasons) powerless to act and more in his head being desperate because of it and Lin. With the character’s journey and background throughout the trilogy, Stewart tackles other themes such as hope, privilege, and the harshness of social status. No matter what you carve from this Empire, no matter who you hurt, no matter how much you take for yourself, you will never be worthy. As I’ve mentioned above Nisong begins to redeem herself by the end, as does Jovis even if his actions were not his fault.

We know her story, but it was also put more in context now about her past vs her present with Philaue and Ayesh (and Shark). Zugegeben, im Mittelteil war etwas die Luft raus und ich hatte das Gefühl, dass sich die Handlung irgendwann im Kreis drehte und ich keine neuen Infos mehr bekam. Publishers really need to start including mini summaries of the key points of the previous novels in fantasy series. The multitude of plot threads would have worked if there had been more variation in goals, personalities, and type of threat.

Maybe there were only heroic moments and decisions and we all had to keep choosing those as best we could. Ragan's chapters were also infuriating because he is so one-dimensional with all hate and no thinking.