Review: Silver in the Bone

Silver in the Bone by Alexandra Bracken
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I almost gave up on this book around a hundred pages in. This is a young adult retelling of King Arthur and the magical country of Avalon, which is well-worn if not cliched territory at the very least, and I was concerned about the author's doing something new and interesting with it. But the characters started to grow on me. Then I hit the point where the protagonist Tamsin Lark and her "frenemy" Emrys Dye actually make the journey through a magical Veil to Avalon, to search for a ring that will lift the dangerous curse of her brother Cabell.

Only Avalon is not the beautiful green place of legend, but rather a post-apocalyptic hellhole inhabited by deadly human-spider creatures called Children of the Night. Dark magic is slowly sapping the land and destroying its protective wards, and threatening to overwhelm its last bastion of safety, a tower where the priestesses of Avalon have gathered for a final stand against the darkness.

At that point I realized I was all in on this story, despite its slow beginning. I'm not sure Bracken is doing anything radically different with the bones of Arthurian legend, but her characters are making up for it. Not only with the protagonist Tamsin, her brother Cabell, and their adoptive father Nash, but the secondary characters as well. They are all well-drawn, especially those who become the core members of Tamsin's group at the end: the High Priestess of Avalon, Caitriona; Neve Goode, a self-taught sorceress who accompanies Tamsin, Cabell and Emrys on their journey; and Olwen, a half-naiad Healer of Avalon. Emrys Dye, an arrogant, rich little snot who is after the same magical ring as Tamsin and becomes her love interest, is also revealed to have more depths than meets the eye. And Tamsin herself, utterly lacking in magic, grows from a pessimistic, paranoid cynic who pushes people away to someone who is willing to be vulnerable and let people in, and who is fiercely loyal and caring to those new friends she picks up along the way.

However, for a book ostensibly aimed at a young adult audience (not that that's ever stopped me reading YA) this story is very dark and bloody. Tamsin's general attitude of cynical pessimism is infectious, and by the end, I was wondering how the four survivors of Avalon could get their revenge on Lord Death, the king of Annwn (the country of the dead), for destroying their beautiful isle and slaughtering everyone in it. Then, in the last few pages, Tamsin reunites with Nash, the father figure who vanished seven years ago. He reappears out of the blue and says he needs to solve a curse: not Cabell's curse (Cabell transforms into a murderous black hound when strong emotion grips him), but rather Tamsin's own.

Well. As cliffhangers go, that is rather a gobsmacking one. So much so I immediately plucked the sequel out of my TBR pile and dived into it. If you finish this book, you had best be prepared to do the same. I had to know what happens next, and I expect you will too.

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