![]() ![]() As they work their way around this limitation, Sand realizes that this must mean they are constructs. They want to overpower the captain, but discover they are somehow conditioned to do no violence. They figure out that they all arrived on the island on a ship with blue sails, whose captain is the only one who knows how to make it through the dangerous reefs into the harbor. The other island residents insist they have all always been on Maila, but Sand's awakening continues, and she decides to awaken the others as well. One day, she falls from a tree, and almost immediately begins to remember things, including a different life in a different place. Other island denizens similarly collect clams, and gather daily in a central location to get their food. She doesn't do much, just collects mangoes. In a mostly separate narrative, Sand resides on Maila, a remote island. Her actions lead to additional confrontations, eventually leading to her meeting with Jovis, who approaches the palace on behalf of the rebels, thus tying together the four narrative strands. Phalue agrees to help, but because she loves Ranami, not out of commitment to the cause.Īs Lin discovers the secrets behind her father's power, she is shocked by his actions and becomes determined to gain the throne and change things for the better. She begs Phalue to read relevant books on the subject, eventually dragging her into rebel business. She is frustrated by Phalue's insistence upon defending the existing social structure, and how she parrots her father's philosophies. Ranami is very clear that she has no desire to be a governor's wife. She is unable to understand why Ranami continues to refuse her. Phalue, who had given up her philandering ways upon meeting Ranami, yearns only for Ranami to agree to marry her. Her partner, Phalue, is the daughter of the wealthy governor of Nephilanu Island. Ranami grew up as a "gutter rat", and is determined to change the system, and replace it with one that is more just. He finds himself torn between his original mission to rescue his beloved and his burgeoning commitment to doing what's right, a dilemma that is exacerbated when he finds himself cooperating with the rebels on Nephilanu Island, one of the empire's largest islands. Mephi, to Jovis' amazement, is able to speak, slowly developing from simple one-word concepts to using complete sentences. As he is swept into this activity, ostensibly for the money lost in the island disaster rather than altruism, he discovers that since partnering with the fast-growing Mephi, he has developed super-human strength, which he uses against the imperial forces now hunting him with even greater intent than when he was a mere smuggler. Jovis quickly gains a reputation as a rescuer of children, and is in much demand by desperate parents. He rescues a young boy from the tithing ceremony along the way, and once upon the water, brings onto his boat a creature he mistakes for a kitten, whom the boy names Mephi. As he chases after this ship, he narrowly escapes the disaster of an entire island that sinks for no known reason, drowning and killing most of its inhabitants in the process. Jovis is a smuggler, who is on a mission to find and rescue his wife, Emahla, who was taken some years prior by a mysterious figure captaining a fast ship with blue sails. Not all bone shard donors will power a construct, but those who do will have their life force drained and die early. Because the bones must belong to a living person in order to work, the emperor gathers what he needs through tithing festivals, where the young members of his empire are trepanned, some dying in the process. She and Bayan vie to become the more adept bone shard magicians and thereby receive the emperor's favor. Lin is struggling to recover her memories, lost after contracting a mysterious illness brought to the palace by Bayan. Four major constructs that use hundreds of shards are the empire's ministers, while simpler constructs serve as dock clerks or spies. The Sukai dynasty rules the empire by wielding bone shard magic, using skull fragments from their citizens to harvest their life force in order to animate constructs that fulfill various roles in running the island empire. Lin is the daughter of the tyrannical emperor of the Phoenix Empire, but must compete to become his heir with Bayan, his foster son. The setting is an empire consisting of many floating islands upon the Endless Sea. The plot is split among the points of view of the various characters, winding from one to the next, and eventually connecting. It is her debut novel, first published in 2020. The Bone Shard Daughter is the first book in the Drowning Empire fantasy trilogy by Andrea Stewart. ![]()
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