City of Bones

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Martha Wells: City of Bones (Paperback, 2023, Tordotcom, Doherty Associates, LLC, Tom)

Paperback, 416 pages

Published Sept. 5, 2023 by Tordotcom, Doherty Associates, LLC, Tom.

ISBN:
978-1-250-86167-2
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4 stars (1 review)

2 editions

reviewed City of Bones by Martha Wells

City of Bones

4 stars

City of Bones is a standalone fantasy novel from Martha Wells. It's a revised 2023 edition from an older 1995 novel. It follows Khat, a non-human kris, who is a relic hunter in the tiered hierarchical city of Charisat and his colleague Sagai. Khat gets offered a job by powerful people he can't refuse, and this job escalates into world-breaking danger.

This is a dystopian world where the oceans have been burned off into dangerous desert wastes. There's some mostly broken Ancient relics and art from a previous era. The Kris are a human-ish species bred to live in the wastes specifically. There's some magic that a rare few can use (but not too much, less they lose their minds, which reminds me of Surviving Sky recently too.) All of these details make this feel like a dystopian world but it's not Mad Max-esque apocalyptic survival either; it's hard to …