Yzabel / May 31, 2014

California Bones by Greg Van Eekhout

My rating: [rating=4]

Summary:

When Daniel Blackland was six, he ingested his first bone fragment, a bit of kraken spine plucked out of the sand during a visit with his demanding, brilliant, and powerful magician father, Sebastian.

When Daniel was twelve, he watched Sebastian die at the hands of the Hierarch of Southern California, devoured for the heightened magic layered deep within his bones.

Now, years later, Daniel is a petty thief with a forged identity. Hiding amid the crowds in Los Angeles—the capital of the Kingdom of Southern California—Daniel is trying to go straight. But his crime-boss uncle has a heist he wants Daniel to perform: break into the Hierarch’s storehouse of magical artifacts and retrieve Sebastian’s sword, an object of untold power.

For this dangerous mission, Daniel will need a team he can rely on, so he brings in his closest friends from his years in the criminal world. There’s Moth, who can take a bullet and heal in mere minutes. Jo Alverado, illusionist. The multitalented Cassandra, Daniel’s ex. And, new to them all, the enigmatic, knowledgeable Emma, with her British accent and her own grudge against the powers-that-be. The stakes are high, and the stage is set for a showdown that might just break the magic that protects a long-corrupt regime.

Review:

(I got an ARC through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.)

3.5/4 stars, I can’t exactly decide, but let’s say 4, because I really liked the world depicted in this book.

Somewhere at the end of the 19th century, or in the early 20th century, California cut ties with the rest of the USA. North and South are now separate “kingdoms”, the southern one being giverned for a century by the mysterious Hierarch and his six closest associates. In itself, the back story behind this isn’t extremely developed, but for once, it didn’t matter for me, because the atmosphere permeating fascinated me, and in the end, I found this more important. (I tend to forgive such aspects in fantasy more than I do in dystopian stories, probably because of the magic factor: if there’s magic and supernatural beings, the world isn’t totally our own, and there’s more leeway for alternate history and various changes.)

I must say I loved the magic developed here: consuming bones from a creature allows a sorcerer (called osteomancer) to temporarily gain characteristics from said creature. The more is consumed, the stronger the magic, and some, like the main character, are so permeated with essence from such beings that they can call upon them at will, or almost. There’s something both gross and fascinating in this, similar to what gets my interest in stories where necromancy is concerned. Consuming bones is a large paved way leading straight to cannibalism: why wait until the creature is dead, after all? And, of course, why only consume animals? Readers who don’t like such themes will likely not feel at ease with what happens in this novel. I, well, I kept reading, wanting to know more about how this worked, about how far some people were ready to go.

The setting, the city, felt like a mix of strange glamour and disgusting practices, a combination that usually works for me. People living under delusions fuelled by the glamour magic of an old sorcerer named Disney, whose amusement parks keep visitors half-drugged with false beauty, and are one of society’s backbones. Lively markets full of conmen and thiefs, having to eke a living under the nose of the wealthy ones working for the “government”. Black market, osteomancy being both a tool of power and one that will get you hunted, because you never know when someone more powerful decides it’s time to consume more… substance. Though the descriptions weren’t very long, they were of a kind that made me able to easily picture the streets, the canals, all the places the characters went through, and to me, this world was a vivid one.

The heist itself is of the classic kind, so I’d say it depends on what a reader is looking for here. If one is familiar with such stories and has read a lot, it may not be surprising, and may even appear as predictable. However, if this is the formula one is looking for, for the sheer pleasure of seeing the heist being prepared and carried on, or if one hasn’t read/seen too many stories of that kind, it could be a very different experience.

I really liked this novel, but two caveats, still. First, while it was permeated with that morbid fascination born from osteomancy, I feel it could have been more developed when it came to some aspects. Quite a few times, I realised I wanted to know more, more, more. Some things I could infer, some others I never got an answer to. Second, the story rests on atmosphere, world-builging, and on the heist itself; in comparison, the characters’ motives weren’t always clear, and their personas sometimes seemed simplistic. Again, it probably depends on what one is looking for. I was looking for a heist and a strange kind of magic, not for very deep exploration of every single human psyche involved, but if I had been, I guess I would have liked the novel less than I did.

This is a rich world, in any case, and one that deserves being written about some more. If there’s to be a sequel, I’d definitely pick it.

(Note: there were a few typos here and there. Since this is an ARC and not a published copy, though, those will hopefully have been corrected by the time it hits the shelves.)