The Bones of the Past

Saddle up your dragons and summon whatever magic you can gather – this is The Bones of the Past, by Craig A. Munro, and you can read it starting May 30, 2017.

book cover for Bones of the Past

This is an epic fantasy novel, emphasis on “epic”, and is the first of a planned series: “The Books of Dust and Bone”. It’s also Craig Munro’s first novel, which makes this even more impressive. As expected with a digital ARC, there were some grammar missteps and sentence problems, but I expect these will be corrected in final editing. Otherwise, The Bones of the Past is an incredible tale of four seemingly unrelated storylines. The world building is fantastic, the ideas are original, the characters – even the demons – have soul, and it’s very entertaining.

First, we meet Rahz the Insane. He’s gone back to his home, Sacral – an empire that has been existing on another plane for several centuries and under the protection of their religious deity, the White Mother. As prophesied, Sacral has returned to its original location in the desert (the Wastes) at a preordained date and time to rejoin the world they left so long ago. Rahz has been sent to do something there, but it isn’t clear what.

We meet the citizens of Sacral as they host their games. Similar to the Gladiators of Rome, two fighters face off in a giant arena and fight for glory and honor. There is no killing: the mages magically remove the injured to begin the healing process before the fighters die. Their army is well trained and led by Warchosen, humans with extraordinary [god-given] talent who follow the King’s directives. But Maura, whose husband, Beren, embeds runes into weapons and armor, can’t shake the feeling that something bad is on the horizon.

We meet Nial, a little girl who lives with her abusive, drunk father in Bialta. Her father was once a promising blacksmith, but now spends his days drinking and his evenings beating and berating Nial. One night, he beats Nial to the point of death. In a moment of desperation, Nial inadvertently merges with the soul of a demon, Zulaxrak, and their combined magical talents make them a formidable power. Most importantly, with each other, they can survive.

Then there is Salt, a sailor who picks an unsavory wench to take to bed when he makes port in Bialta. Saved by the Night Guard, an elite special unit that deals with the magic underworld, Salt joins into their ranks and trains to fight their enemies. He strives daily to not let them down, but unforeseen obstacles that will push him to the limit.

We also meet Carver, a person (or maybe not a person, I’m not really sure) who literally carves the flesh of animals and humans to make improvements. Sometimes he combines aspects of multiple animals into a singular, new creature. Sometimes he uses magic to make human bones stronger or bigger. He’ll do what he has to do in order to catch the eye of a powerful leader who will grant him the space and funding to continue his experiments and pursue his own end goal.

Each of these characters has their own storyline, and each is well developed. There are a number of side characters who are equally well developed and serve their roles admirably. There is enough detail to really get a good picture of the world the author envisions, but not so much that there are pages and pages of unnecessary text. As I mentioned, this is the first book in a planned series. For most of this book, each storyline appears unrelated to the others. Towards the end, however, some of the stories start to merge closer and you can almost see how they will be interrelated going forward.

It’s a bit like the Dallas Mix Master. We have four major highways that converge in downtown Dallas: I-45, I-35E, I-30, and US-75. They all wind around each other and have oodles of merge lanes so you can get from one to the other. So, while they are still distinctly different highways, they connect to each other (sometimes directly, sometimes by another secondary highway) and somehow it all works even if it appears a busy, convoluted mess of a road system.

Dallas Mix Master map

copyright Google Maps

Bones of the Past has just as much going on, but, trust me, is much more fun than dealing with the Mix Master. There is good and evil. Although sometimes evil is good, or, at least, well-intentioned. There is war – for some, they defend their home against invaders; for others, they invade to show their strength. And there is trickery, because of course there is trickery when you have demons and gods involved. There are adventures and travels and strange lands with even stranger people. There is a lot going on, and somehow it all works.

Honestly, my ARC will self-implode in a few days when the book is released and I will be buying my own copy immediately. If Mr. Munro’s first novel is this good, I can’t wait to see how the series develops.

Overall: 8.5/10.

** I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for my honest review.**

Discussion

  1. d
  2. Fae
  3. Ola
  4. Ada
  5. Mae
  6. Zac
  7. Tam
  8. God
  9. zen
  10. gpt
  11. Queens Nails
  12. Gus
  13. gay
  14. xxx

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