Bone Weaver

Monstrosity has long been used by mainstream society to demonize, ostracize or raise fear towards anything viewed as “other”. However, there has recently been a rising awareness of monstrosity and “otherness” as a source of power and strength. In Aden Polydoros’s YA, second world fantasy, Bone Weaver, we are greeted with monstrosity in many different forms and often the lines of good and bad do not fall where society would have you believe they do.

From the very first page we are greeted with a scene that many of us would find horrific, only to learn it is in fact one of cozy domesticity. The main character, Toma, was rescued as a child by Upyr’s – bodies that have arisen from the dead and usually gorge themselves on living flesh. Toma’s parents have learned to control their hunger for human flesh and are raising an upyr child – Toma’s sister Galina. This isolated little family is turned upside down when Galina is kidnapped by monster hunters looking to bring their prize to the leader of an uprising. From the uprising’s point of view, a monster is being taken for experimentation and culling but from Toma’s vantage point a sweet loving child is about to be horrifically tortured.

As Toma sets off towards the big city to rescue Galina she joins forces with the recently dethroned Tsar, Mikhail, whose magic has been stolen by the leader of the uprising. Rounding out the not-so-merry trio is Vanya, who has been branded as a witch and a murderer after using his hidden magic to save his people from slaughter by the ruling class. Vanya is part of an ethnic minority known as the Strannik who have long been used as scape goats by the ruling class and are victimized on the regular when inept leaders need something to distract the populace with. Any magic possessed by a Strannik like Vanya is deemed unclean witchcraft as opposed to the heroic powers of the ruling class and Tsar despite there not being much difference between them that readers can distinguish other than their parentage.

In this the reader will easily find a parable to Judaism and the history of Jewish persecution as well as a view inside true monstrosity that is often presented as heroism – the persecution of minorities by people in power who are then deem themselves heroes for killing the “unclean” and “infidel” among us. Vanya represents a bucking of that system. A question that begs to be answered – why is his magic any more unclean than Mikhail’s simply because his parents were not the elite ruling class? When children are run down in the streets by the purported heroes and keepers of the peace simply because they are different and therefore present a convenient way to diffuse rising political tensions, how can anyone tell monster from hero anymore?

As the trio journeys together, Mikhail is repeatedly exposed to the injustice and hypocrisy that has taken place under his rule and often in his name. Toma discovers more about her past and the Strannik while Vanya staunchly refuses to be seen as anything less than what he is – a person with magic, same as anyone else, not an unclean witch or a hero. Because those are titles that aught to be earned rather than inherited.

The setting of this secondary world that is populated by creatures from Eastern European and Slavic folklore In this too, readers are forced to reexamine our preconceptions as the creatures show compassion and understanding when it is offered to them – usually by Toma who approaches them without the prejudices that Mikhail and Vanya have grown up with. The ending felt overly optimistic to me – can one enlightened Tsar change centuries of baked-in prejudice? – but I am hopeful that it is the set up for a sequel in which we get to watch this change happen in real time. Because winning a war is easy compared to dealing with the ensuing aftermath and moral grayness across party lines.I would love to see how these characters take on that challenge.

Note: Bookishlyjewish received a free e-arc, no strings attached, despite initially being turned down by the publisher on NetGalley. No hard feelings, those arc review sites usually run on metrics we never meet and everyone has always been very kind when we get the guts to ask in person.

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E Broderick is a writer and speculative fiction enthusiast. When not writing she enjoys epic games of trivial pursuit and baking. She currently lives in the U.S. but is eagerly awaiting the day a sentient spaceship offers to take her traveling around the galaxy.