Bonesmith by Nicki Pau Preto is the first in the House of the Dead duology. I love the dark premise and the cover is gorgeous. The thing that wasn’t clicking for me was the narration written in third person.
Chapter 1 starts as:
“Ready your blade.”
As one, the novitiates knelt in the snow, their weapons held high on upturned palms. For valkyrs like Wren, it was a blade fashioned from dead bone…”
If it were me, I would’ve edited it as:
“Ready your blade!” Our commander shouts.
Together, we kneel with weapons pointed to the sky. My blade- like all other valkyrs- is fashioned from dead bone that’s whiter than this snowy terrain.
… for some reason that makes me feel more connected to the scene.
Anyways, the imagery is done poetically well but sometimes there seems to be too much telling than showing.
Here’s the blurb:
In the Dominions, the dead linger, violent and unpredictable, unless a bonesmith severs the ghost from its earthly remains. For bonesmith Wren, becoming a valkyr—a ghost-fighting warrior—is a chance to solidify her place in the noble House of Bone and impress her frequently absent father. But when sabotage causes Wren to fail her qualifying trial, she is banished to the Border Wall, the last line of defense against a wasteland called the Breach where the vicious dead roam unchecked.
Determined to reclaim her family’s respect, Wren gets her chance when a House of Gold prince is kidnapped and taken beyond the Wall. To prove she has what it takes to be a valkyr, Wren vows to cross the Breach and rescue the prince. But to do so, she’s forced into an uneasy alliance with one of the kidnappers—a fierce ironsmith called Julian from the exiled House of Iron, the very people who caused the Breach in the first place…and the House of Bone’s sworn enemy.
As they travel, Wren and Julian spend as much time fighting each other as they do the undead, but when they discover there’s more behind the kidnapping than either of them knew, they’ll need to work together to combat the real danger: a dark alliance that is brewing between the living and the undead.