I have been lax, and slack, and inefficient. I finished this wonderful book a week ago and I haven’t reviewed it yet. Let’s fix that.

First up, let’s get the basics out the way. The Bone Ships, by RJ Barker, is a magnificent book. It really is. Barker’s previous Wounded Kingdom trilogy (Age of Assassins, Blood of Assassins, King of Assassins) was very good, but this is a massive step up, and it wouldn’t be unfair to say that this is Barker’s masterwork.

The basic story is simple enough. The Hundred Isles have been fighting a war against the Gaunt Isles for generations. In this world of scattered islands, the battles are fought on the seas between ships built from the bones of gigantic, extinct sea dragons. Over time, with no new supply of bones, ships have become only more valuable. Then a new sea dragon is spotted making its way through the islands. If either side hunts and kills the dragon, the vast haul of bones will prolong the war for many more generations.

Joron Twiner is the Shipwife (captain) of the black ship the Tide Child. Black ships are old, decaying bone ships crewed by women and men condemned to death. Rather than take his ship into battle, Twiner has laid up in an isolated bay, found a tumbledown shack and is slowly drinking himself into oblivion, leaving his crew to their own devices on board ship. And there he remains until the day that Lucky Meas turns up to challenge him for the position of shipwife. Lucky Meas has been condemned to the black ships after losing her position in the fleet, but she’s not taking it lying down. After defeating Twiner and sparing his life, she sets about getting the Tide Child into shape. Because Lucky Meas has a plan: she will not let either the Hundred Isles or the Gaunt Isles capture the sea dragon. She will protect it in its passage through the archipelago, fighting off both sides if necessary, until it is beyond reach and then she will kill it, denying the bones to everyone and hopefully hastening the end of the war.

The Bone Ships is simply the story of the Tide Child as it carries out its mission.

Like I said, a pretty simple story, right?

Well, at that level it is. But where The Bone Ships really shines is in its world building and its characters. Barker dives deep into a very alien world. Much fantasy – most fantasy, and I include my own in this – is based approximately on locations, cultures, and history from our world. The Bone Ships really isn’t. In the ocean-based, ship-focused story, there are obvious echoes of Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin series and CS Forester’s Hornblower, but Barker has created a complex, unique world to set the stories in and then he has followed through rigorously to the consequences of this world. It’s worldbuilding that informs every aspect of the books. Any examples don’t really do justice to the immersive nature, but let’s take a few anyway. The Hundred Isles is a strongly matriarchal culture, and this manifests itself not just in the political set-up or people’s positions, but in the language. Ships are always ‘he’, the captain is the shipwife, people are referred to as ‘women and men’, not ‘men and women’, and so on. The ships, being built of bone, have different names for their components. The masts are ‘spines’, the front is the ‘beak’.

But that’s just scratching the surface. From the birdlike wind wizards, the gullaime, to the brutal sacrificing of first-born children (luckily not explicitly described on the page, for those of us who don’t have the stomach for that), and a complex set of shipboard customs, this is an intricate and very different society. It is also not one that is admirable. Anyone born disabled in any way or born to a mother who dies in childbirth is consigned to an explicit underclass.

The complexity of the worldbuilding could cause some problems as the reader flails for familiarity – and a few reviews reference that – but it didn’t for me, and the reason for that was the characters. There are a quite a lot of them, but all of them are well-realised and convincing, and they are what lead you into the story. Joron Twiner and Lucky Meas, being the leads, are the most interesting, but there are plenty of other great characters. They are our guides into a world that at first is difficult to understand but which becomes increasingly convincing.

There isn’t a great deal of fantasy set aboard ships for some reason. Robin Hobbs’s Liveship Traders series is the most obvious example, and The Bone Ships deserves comparison with Hobbs’s books, in tone as well as in it’s shipboard setting.

The Bone Ships is exhilarating, engrossing, and thrilling in equal measures. I loved the time I spent in the company of the crew of the Tide Child. A few readers may find themselves cast adrift by the alienness of the fantasy setting, but I don’t think most will. I understand there was a glossary in the book, but I didn’t have consult it once and didn’t even realise it was there until I saw other people mention it.

I should note here that RJ Barker sent me a paperback copy of this book for review. This did not in any way affect my opinion of the book or my review. In fact, I ended up reading an ebook copy that I bought myself, partly because the paperback was so pretty I didn’t want to crease it, but mainly because I wanted to keep reading at night without a light.

One note, though, and I feel I should include this, because I’ve noted it for some self-published books recently and I want to be fair: there were quite a few typos in the ebook edition. Not so many that it interfered with my enjoyment of the book, but they were noticeable. I don’t know if the print edition shares those.

The Bone Ships is the first in the Tide Child trilogy, and I for one can’t wait for the next.

5 stars