The Bone Ship’s Wake
The sea dragons are returning, and Joron Twiner's dreams of freedom lie shattered. His Shipwife is gone and all he has left is revenge.
Leading the black fleet from the deck of Tide Child Joron takes every opportunity to strike at his enemies, but he knows his time is limited. His fleet is shrinking and the Keyshan's Rot is running through his body. He runs from a prophecy that says he and the avian sorcerer, the Windseer, will end the entire world.
But the sea dragons have begun to return, and if you can have one miracle, who is to say that there cannot be another?
-Goodreads
Title: The Bone Ship’s Wake
Series: The Tide Child #3
Author: R.J. Barker
Page Count: 493
Genre: Fantasy
Rating: 4.75/5.0
Date Read: January 14th, 2025
Opening
The Tide Child trilogy by R.J. Barker had been on my radar for a couple of years and I ended up signing up for The Broken Binding subscription right when they were releasing beautiful copies of these books. This helped move these books up my TBR and I finally began this adventure in January of last year. Fast forward a year later and I finished the trilogy with The Bone Ship's Wake in January of this year.
Other review(s) from the series: Book #1 The Bone Ships
Pacing
The pacing of book three was smooth. The story has been established already with the two previous books and the author continued to keep things moving along nicely in the final installment. Even though I own some beautiful copies of these books, I did opt to experience this series and specifically book three in the audio version narrated by Jude Owusu who does an excellent job bringing this tale to life.
World Building
The world building was so unique. I started reading this series after I had read The Liveship Traders and at first I thought it was going to be very similar to that but it wasn't. The ships and the history of the sea dragons is a great backdrop to the storyline. Beyond that, the amount of seafaring culture whether on ship or land had several of it's own twists. In book one I got lost from time to time but by this point in the series I had settled in and could just sit on the edge of my seat waiting to see what was going to happen.
The way this book and series ended was one of the best part of the world building to me. The way things have been eluded to throughout the series and was able to be wrapped up in the way it was just brought this epic tale to a wonderful conclusion.
Character Development
The character development has been great throughout this series. Joron has become one of my most memorable characters of late. His overall character arc was a work of art. The avian race of characters has been so interesting throughout this series but in The Bone Ship's Wake they really get their moments in the spotlight and it was fantastic! There is so much I could say about several characters but it's difficult with this series as there is loss and returns and I don't want to spoil any of those moments for anyone reading this review.
Closing
I'm happy to have finally not only gotten to this series and finished it, but also just that I've finally read some of R.J. Barkers works. This was my first and I'm sure it won't be my last as I already had The Wounded Kingdom series on my want to read list as well.
Scoring
Pacing 4.75 / 5.0
Worldbuilding 5.0 / 5.0
Character Development 4.75 / 5.0
