The Bone Ships

I felt like perhaps I had been a little harsh with the last audiobook I reviewed, claiming that it was lacking any particular flare that made it stand out from the crowd. I was toying with going back and being more lenient, and then I started The Bone Ships and was reminded of the brilliance that can be achieved when an author makes their characters incredibly distinctive in both language and personality.

The Bone Ships is a ship-based adventure that sees our protagonist, Joron Twiner, stumbling into the roles of second in command of one of the titular bone ships, crewed by criminals condemned to serve aboard until their deaths. Joron serves under the disgraced captain Meas Gilbryn as she must take charge of the crew of reprobates and guide them on a clandestine mission that could help bring an end to the war that their people have been fighting for longer than records have been written. There’s your synopsis, but as good as the story is, it isn’t the reason that this book stands out for me. Sure, it’s a cracking story, but what really gives this book the edge over so many that I’ve listened to lately is its language, both in the writing style and in the way it is used by the characters. I’m used to nautically-based books using a lot of sea-speak terms, but this book throws most of those old turns of phrase overboard and comes up with a whole new set of rules and a deck-tongue all of its own. It’s not captains anymore, it’s ship-wives. It’s not ship sails anymore, it’s ship wing. The book throws you head-first into the Hundred Islander cant and leaves you to sink or swim, but fear not, after a little while of confusion you do find your seas-legs. It’s not just that the language is different and intriguing, it’s that it all makes sense within the context of the book. The ships aren’t made of wood because this world of hundreds of isolated islands doesn’t have proper trees, and so every fighting ship is primarily made from the bones of seas-dragons that have since been hunted to near extinction. The civilisation’s whole culture is based around seafaring, and the world reflects that.

The culture of the world Barker has created is genuinely one of the most fascinating I’ve ever come across. As ever, I love peoples and civilisations that have been made by allowing the core concepts of their world to grow organically, and that has never been more true here. Most children in this world are born with some kind of birth defect, and so the society has evolved into a matriarchal one, with women who produce the highest number of healthy children forming the upper rungs of the society. This concept is then allowed to grow to form the backdrop upon which the entire narrative is set. Now I personally hate when diversity and representation is shamelessly and inelegantly shoehorned into a book for the sake of simply appealing to what some people believe modern standards should be at the expense of the quality of a story, and this book is a perfect example of how a female-led hierarchy dynamic could have evolved entirely naturally and without slapping a big sign above itself saying ‘look how progressive my book is for having women in charge’. It doesn’t need to declare anything like that because it simply is what is it. It’s perfectly done, and not just with the women being largely in charge. Gay and lesbian characters are present throughout. And why? Because it is mixed sex crews aboard the ships and getting pregnant at sea could throw the entire system into chaos. So, we have ship crews that are actively encouraged to find partners of the same gender. It’s perfect. It makes sense. Conversely, the people that spend their days living on the islands prize nothing more than fertile men and woman due to constant pursuit of producing babies free of defects, meaning that the men who are kept as courtly concubines of the fertile women spend all their days walking around with oiled muscles on show and constantly looking to duel any other concubine in order to raise their perceived fitness and prowess, as well as allowing them to remove potential rivals. Barker turns gender and sexual norms on their heads not because doing so is so ‘in’ right now, but because this is a logical way in which this society would have evolved over time given the pressures put upon it. This is absolute best example of representation I have ever witnessed in a fantasy book. One that promotes traditionally belittled groups not to make itself look good in the eyes of current popular opinion, but to create a wonderful story, crafting the characters of these groups into genuine living breathing people with their own wills and agency and not just two-dimensional husks inserted only to score diversity points.

As for the characters, the entire book is from Joron’s third-person perspective, and although I would have loved to have gotten a glimpse inside some of the other character’s minds, this was done so well that I really didn’t mind. Joron is an entirely believable and flawed human, and as for Meas Gilbryn, well, that old girl is magnificent in every sense. There are plenty of other characters we come to love or hate through the book, all crafted with the same care and talent as the world within which they live. Now I don’t usually like books set aboard ships purely because I think they can be too confining, but this narrative has a steady pace of action and suspense to keep you constantly going. I was entertained throughout, more so in some areas, but I definitely enjoyed this one enough to immediately download book 2 after finishing it. The story was compelling, with enough curveballs to keep an old hand at the genre constantly guessing. Is it the best book I’ve ever read? No. But was it still a damned good listen? Absolutely.

As for narration, there were multiple slightly annoying times where Jude Owusu mispronounced a word that threw me off a little. However, in the long run I couldn’t give a crap about that because the man is the absolute perfect narrator for this book. Perfect, both for the broad range of voices he portrays and the emotion that he pumps into their speech. Sometimes an author finds exactly the right voice to bring their story to life, and Jude Owusu was the right voice for this series. Brilliant.

Personal Score: 4.25 Star   

Professional Score: 4.0 Star