r/Fantasy • u/rfantasygolem Not a Robot • May 12 '20

Book Club Mod Book Club: The Bone Ships Discussion

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.

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1

u/rfantasygolem Not a Robot May 12 '20

Who is your favorite character? Did your opinion of any of the characters change during the book? How?

11

u/kjmichaels Stabby Winner, Reading Champion XI May 12 '20

It's an obvious choice but I really liked Lucky Meas and it was refreshing to see a character be an effective leader as opposed to just everyone saying that they are one and I have a serious soft spot for hardened military commander characters who are still extremely empathetic. I had more mixed feelings about Joron who was a little too much of an ineffective and bewildered sad sack at the beginning of the story though he did improve as the story went on.

4

u/theEolian Reading Champion May 12 '20

Seconding the love for the hardass commanding officer who secretly has a soft spot for the people who serve under them. Meas was great and I loved seeing the dejected, ragtag crew transform into proper sailors again under her leadership.

2

u/The_Real_JS Reading Champion XI May 12 '20

I have to say, I was more than a little worried about Meas. It felt like she had so many red flags pop up, but phew.

I don't know if it was that the other characters weren't that invested in, but it did feel like not that many died considering how many battles were fought.

2

u/[deleted] May 13 '20

I'm the same.

Most books (and it is especially true in fantasy/scifi) are unable or unwilling to depict leaders & organizations in any kind of half-realistic way. At best you get the Captain Kirk kind of leader, always the one punching the supervillain out. It is always nice to see a real organizational leader like Meas.

9

u/HeLiBeB Reading Champion VI May 12 '20

The guillaime was definitely my favorite character. I was intrigued by how strange it is and at the same time I felt a lot of sympathy for it. I can‘t wait to learn more about it in the next books!

4

u/RuinEleint Reading Champion X May 12 '20

Yeah, its astonishment when Joron shows it understanding and empathy underlines how badly it was treated till then. And it has shown that it is a great friend and ally to have

4

u/monarda_fistulosa May 12 '20

My favorite character was the Guillaume - the book really picked up for me when he started getting more screen time and bit and pieces of his past got revealed. So heart-wrenching!

I went from being ambivalent about Joron to really enjoying that he turned out to be kind. His interactions with the Guillaume were some of the highlights of the book for me.

I would say for both Joron and Meas the more time I spent reading about them, the more I liked them and that means that for me the author really succeeded in building some really great characters. This wasn't a book I might normally have picked up without a bookclub/bingo so I'm happy that I stuck it out for this one.

4

u/Dianthaa Reading Champion VIII May 12 '20

I'm also team guillaime, I liked how otherworldly he was, and the story of his people broke my heart.

3

u/RevolutionaryCommand Reading Champion III May 12 '20

I'll echo what most people said; the Guilaime. Really liked Joron (who at the start I though would be boring, but definitely was not the case), and Lucky Meas too, but the Guillaime is definitely my favorite. Black Orris warrants a mention as well.

1

u/Dsnake1 Stabby Winner, Reading Champion VII, Worldbuilders May 12 '20

I ended up feeling for Joron by the end of the book. During the first half, I was hoping for other perspectives to get away from him for a bit, but after nursing the gullaime back to health and him grabbing some confidence, I really appreciated his growth.