After reading Daggermouth and deeply loving it, I was hungry for another great dystopian romance. My beloved book community on Threads recommended Bones by K.L. Speer, the first in an ongoing series of dystopian romantasies with a complex heroine and a dangerous, action-packed world.
Twelve years ago, a warlord came across a child in the desert, a child with healing powers that would make her invaluable in a vicious, post-apocalyptic world. Ever since, Bones has lived completely under his control, until she finally has a chance to make her escape.
But her escape just leads her to new captors, after she is unable to leave one of them to die, and they discover what she can do. They bring her to a place called The Vault, where she finds herself once again at the mercy of a cruel leader.
Not everyone at the Vault is what she has come to expect, though, and as she plans her escape, she starts to find purpose in healing, until her past comes back to haunt her and threatens to shatter the tentative peace she has built.
The high point of the book is Bones herself. She is a complicated, imperfect, and fascinating character. Bones has been used and abused all her life, and as a result, she carries deep trauma. Bones explores these trauma responses and all the mess that comes with it.
This book is a dystopian romantasy, yes, but more fundamentally it’s a book about a woman finding herself and healing. Fans of Nesta Archeron will connect with Bones. While the stories are very different, both of them hit a certain note for women with trauma who handle it in imperfect but very real ways.
Trey, the main love interest, is a classic noble white knight character, but through much of the story, he’s a flat character. It’s intentional, and it all makes sense in the end, but it makes for a frustrating three hundred pages.
The romantic plot line in Bones is also a very, very painfully slow burn, which makes sense given the characters, but the pay-off when the slow burn finally breaks is a little lackluster.
I love a found family trope, and this book does it well. If there’s ever a character that needed to find her people, it’s Bones, and I hope in book two, we get more of this crew and get to know each of them better.
At the end of the book, there’s a twist that’s predictable if you read a lot of romantasy, but it still managed to elicit an emotional response. I have very conflicted feelings about where this story went, it was all at once powerful and cheap, and I’m not sure how to process it.
I had issues with Bones, but I have high hopes for where the series is going. I loved the main character, and great world-building combined with high-stakes action made an interesting if flawed story, and I look forward to seeing where it goes next.
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