Thank you to Orbit and Netgalley for the review copy in exchange for an honest review. This does not change my opinion in anyway.
Book: The Bone Ship’s Wake (Tide Child 3) by R.J. Barker
Release Date: September 30th 2021
Tags: Naval Fantasy | Bone Ships | Life at Sea | Black Pirate | Sea Dragons | Family
Trigger/Content Warnings: Torture | Loss of Limb | Death | Murder | Kidnapping | Physical Abuse | Plague
Other books in this series I reviewed
The Bone Ships | Call of the Bone Ships
The sea dragons are returning, and Joron Twiner’s dreams of freedom lie shattered. His Shipwife is gone and all he has left is revenge.
Leading the black fleet from the deck of Tide Child Joron takes every opportunity to strike at his enemies, but he knows his time is limited. His fleet is shrinking and the Keyshan’s Rot is running through his body. He runs from a prophecy that says he and the avian sorcerer, the Windseer, will end the entire world.
But the sea dragons have begun to return, and if you can have one miracle, who is to say that there cannot be another?
You know when I first started reading this series when The Bone Ship came out I was incredibly unsure about this series. It was a naval series and so very out there with the bone ships, its criminal and flawed characters. But somewhere at the end of the first book the characters started growing on me and by the second book (last year) I was very happy to be reading on. Now I’m sad that this series has come to an ending. For now.
This book completely upsurped me in ways that I didn’t think it would. I was never Joron’s biggest fan but his fight and struggle to get back Meas was so completely sold on me and I was right there with him, trying to get his shipwife back. Balding my fists when they were being chased my other ships, hoping they wouldn’t catch up, but ready to fight if they did.
Despite my e copy being over 500 pages, it was a very captivating read. I never did expect that of me with naval fights like we get in this book. And boy do we get some nice ones. I was also wholy on board for the continued relationships we got with Joron, Garriya, Cwell, Gullaime, Mevans, Brekir, Meas and some other minor characters. I cared about every single one of them.
And then there are the keyshans, this dragon like creatures that are waking up. I’m so happy that Joron doesn’t actually have that much power over them. He can just wake them up and that is it basically. It would have given everything such a different feel if these huge and magnificent and quite frankly terrifying creatures could be controlled my one man.
All in all this felt like such a good ending to this story of Joron and Meas. But at the same time I want more. More about their new world. About Garriya and who she really is. More about the gulliame society etc. So hopefully R.J. Barker will grant my wishes some day.
I love this whole series so much. And I agree, I would love more books in this world!
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