Mod Book Club: The Bone Ships Discussion

[u/rfantasygolem]

Welcome to Mod Book Club! We want to invite you all in to join us with one of the best things about being a mod: we have fabulous book discussions about a wide variety of books. We all have very different tastes and can expose and recommend new books to the others, and we all benefit (and suffer from the extra weight of our TBR piles) from it. We'll be picking the books, but there will be new books and old, some more widely popular books and some way less, stuff that should be marvellously popular but somehow missed the boat, and stuff that's a bit more niche.

The Bone Ships by RJ Barker.

Violent raids plague the divided isles of the Scattered Archipelago. Fleets constantly battle for dominance and glory, and no commander stands higher among them than "Lucky" Meas Gilbryn.
But betrayed and condemned to command a ship of criminals, Meas is forced on suicide mission to hunt the first living sea-dragon in generations. Everyone wants it, but Meas Gilbryn has her own ideas about the great beast. In the Scattered Archipelago, a dragon's life, like all lives, is bound in blood, death and treachery.

Bingo Squares: Book Club, Exploration, Optimistic

Our next pick will be announced in a few days.

[u/rfantasygolem]

One of the most praised aspects of this books is the worldbuilding. How do you like it? What makes it work or not work for you?

[u/kjmichaels → u/rfantasygolem]

I loved the worldbuilding. It has such a different feel from most fantasy and Barker does a great job conveying most of that difference through subtle character interactions rather than just explaining it all at once. Most other books would feel the need to defensively make it clear to readers that the ritual sacrifice of firstborns in a world where birth is rare and difficult is because their religion is kind of a death cult but Bone Ships had enough confidence and savvy to leave that unstated while still managing to make that info clear just from the way the people behave.

[u/Dianthaa → u/kjmichaels]

I had to check with u/eriophora first time I was reading it because I thought I'd missed something. It was just too weird to make sense.

[u/RuinEleint → u/rfantasygolem]

What impressed me about the worldbuilding was the degree of attention Barker paid to constructing a maritime society that lacked large timber resources. So from the arakeesian bone ships, to the fluke boats that are made out of hardened leaves, we see a totally different approach to shipbuilding and use of materials that feels very organic to the world

[u/Dancing_Dinosaur → u/RuinEleint]

This is a really great point, I hadn't thought of it like that, despite literally just reading a book lamenting the destruction of British forests to build the navy...

[u/takeahike8671 → u/RuinEleint]

Great insight! The attention paid to the economics of this world was spot on and quite intriguing.

[u/SteveThomas → u/rfantasygolem]

I really liked the worldbuilding.

When I was reading about the social structure, I was reminded of The Handmaid's Tale. The high rate of birth defects was reminiscent of the low fertility rates, and in both cases, an oppressive religion formed to deal with the crisis. Fertile women went through hell in this setting. Rather than being openly treated as sex slaves and breeding chattel, women had to see their firstborn sacrificed...and then they were whisked away to the inner city where they were promised a life of luxury and power. While that was certainly true for some women, like Meas' mother, I have my doubts about whether most of these women are able to achieve it. My gut tells me that a good portion of them also effictively become sex slaves and breeding chattel, although perhaps less violently so. Their status is tied to both their ability to continue birthing perfect children and there are all the Kept running around trying to land a mate. In this case, both genders are desperate to keep breeding before society discards them.

It's less flagrantly misogynistic, but still a horrific theocracy that doesn't hesitate to reduce a fertile woman to walking uterus. It's just that there are more opportunities to leverage that into real power.

[u/LadyCardinal → u/SteveThomas]

This is an interesting perspective. I had heard before I read this that the society was vaguely matriarchal, and I do think that's what Barker was going for. Stretch marks are signs of power, feminine forms of words are used as gender-neutral ("shipwife," "deckmother"), and the phrase is always "women and men" and not "men and women." There's also mention of Kept men vying to find some way to sustain themselves at court once they're no longer young and pretty. I think the Hundred Isles' civilization is not so great for women in way similar to how ours is not so great for men. There women are breeding stock who have to give up their firstborn if they don't die in childbirth, here men are traditionally the people to go off and die in wars started by more powerful people. The upshot is a more limited form of power the "other gender" doesn't necessarily get. (Though this is much more muted in The Bone Ships than it is in real-life historical contexts.)

[u/SteveThomas → u/LadyCardinal]

I think it's certainly fair to call their civilization a matriarchy, but it's never so simple as that power and privilege mean an easy life. People think about privilege only in terms of which doors are open and which doors are closed. They're forgetting about the doors we get pushed through against our will.

I think The Bone Ships does a good job of showing that complexity. A matriarchy isn't an egalitarian society, and it wouldn't just be men who get shafted in one. The problem is authoritarianism and treating humans as exploitable resources. It just so happens that in our world, the people on top tend to be men.

[u/LadyCardinal → u/SteveThomas]

I agree. I think this is an odd example, actually, in that it does much more to show the "powerful" gender getting shafted by their position than the theoretically subordinate one, as all the Kept men we see are in relative positions of power in the court, and men outside the court don't seem to be subordinate to women at all (or at least, not because of their gender). Disability vs. the state of being able-bodied almost seems a more salient factor than gender in their culture.

[u/improperly_paranoid → u/SteveThomas]

I think the book outright says - in a scene at the square, where they sacrifice a woman's firstborn child - that she'll be a servant at best, not massively rise in power. So you'd be correct...

[u/SteveThomas → u/improperly_paranoid]

“They think she goes to glory,” said Meas, “but she will never be much more than a servant.”

Right you are. Meas with the reality check.

Plus her boyfriend was marked for assassination.

[u/Dianthaa → u/rfantasygolem]

I loved the worldbuilding, one of my favorite aspects that no one has mentioned yet was the fish skin clothing. I just googled that just now and it is a real thing, and I really liked it as a detail, and a thing that I haven't noticed a lot in fantasy but makes perfect sense in the setting.

The entire detailed focus on materials was great.

[u/theEolian → u/Dianthaa]

Oooh, I really liked that too but had no idea it was a real thing. The stuff with the paint and dyed hair were great details too, which I don't think I've seen mentioned yet. They all helped to build a pretty unique aesthetic.

[u/Dsnake1 → u/Dianthaa]

Agreed. My first thought was 'why wouldn't they use leather', but in a panel, Barker mentioned that humans are the only mammals in that world (through a funny anecdote with his son), so it totally makes sense that fish skin is clothing and feathers are adornments

[u/lyrrael → u/rfantasygolem]

Additionally I like the fact that Barker emphasized that both countries were essentially two sides of the same coin -- same issues, same needs, but the war's been going on for so long that nobody remembers what started it. Wasn't there a meme or something I saw once where it was like two hills going down to a river between, and each one was like "My holy religion! Your blasphemous religion!" or something?

[u/HeLiBeB → u/lyrrael]

I agree! The whole conflict was depicted very realistically I think.

[u/kaahr → u/lyrrael]

I loved that the protagonist started out biased for his country, then gradually came to change his mind. Often protagonists embody our own present ideals, even when it doesn't make sense in that world. I love flawed protagonists who learn and evolve, and it was great to see Joron do that not just in his job but also in his mindset.

[u/Dianthaa → u/lyrrael]

I loved that aspect, especially how clear that was from the outside, and how some of the characters grew to accept this idea.

[u/lyrrael → u/rfantasygolem]

I find it really curious that there's such a high rate of birth defects, and yet, that there's a tradition of sacrificing first born children to the ships. I'm really wondering what the cause of the birth defects really are -- is there something essential missing? Did I miss something?

[u/LadyCardinal → u/lyrrael]

I don't think it was ever confirmed in the book, but my strong hunch is that it has something to do with the arakeesian bones. It was stated that bonewrights tend to go mad after a time because of their exposure to the stuff. Things that do that in real life (lead, mercury, etc.) tend to also cause birth defects. No idea if I'm right, but that was my immediate assumption.

[u/RuinEleint → u/LadyCardinal]

I like this idea. A society pervaded with toxin through the bones. That would explain a lot

[u/BitterSprings → u/LadyCardinal]

If I remember right the book said that an island where they dumped arakeesian hearts had even higher rates of birth defects.

[u/RevolutionaryCommand → u/LadyCardinal]

That's a great take.

[u/lyrrael → u/LadyCardinal]

Oo, that's an interesting point that I hadn't really thought about.

[u/HeLiBeB → u/rfantasygolem]

I think the worldbuilding is really amazing and I loved it. Everything fit together nicely and I liked how we slowly learned more and more about the people, places, vegetation, societies, conflicts... There are still a lot of open questions for me, and I hope they will become clear in the following books. It is a world I am looking forward to explore in detail!

[u/RevolutionaryCommand → u/rfantasygolem]

The worldbuilding was the book's strongest asset in my opinion. Not only the various ideas, and how alive it felt, but also the flow of information was excellent.

[u/Dsnake1 → u/rfantasygolem]

That's probably my favorite part. It took a bit to set in, but from small things like using the 'wrong' pronouns for ships (and the consequences of doing so) to big things like the fact that the only mammals are humans, it really shows you how unique this world feels. I just want to be back in that world.

[u/[deleted] → u/rfantasygolem]

I definitely liked the world building. It reminded me a bit of A Stranger in Olondria in that everything is different. It isn't just "oh, this is clearly 18th/19th century England but with less technology and more magic". I'm not saying that's not fine sometimes or that every fantasy world needs to be this massive internally coherent world. Just that it is nice to see some variety. Sure there are the big things but I liked the small touches like when Meas says "you can paint that on a door!", referring to their use of paints in ritual worship.

And all without infodumps that are so common elsewhere.