SF/F Review – The Bone Orchard
The Bone Orchard, by Sara A. Mueller
Synopsis: The madam of the high-class brothel for nobles (and herself the consort of the Emperor) deals with her multiple-personality disorder by creating clones of herself and transferring her alter personalities into them. When the Emperor is murdered, she must find his killer and avenger her lover.
Book Review: This is the best book I’ve read this year. It rivals Gideon The Ninth and First Fifteen Lives of Harry August. While “Who Killed The Emperor?” nominally drives the plot, the real mystery we care about is “How the hell did Charm end up this way, and who the hell is she really, anyway??”
Every clue we get is tantalizing. Every revelation is eye-popping. Every detail uncovered about the world and/or Charm’s situation is dripping with Rule of Cool. It is dark, and dazzling, and viscerally rewarding.
There is so much I’d love to say, but I can’t because it would be spoilers, and spoilers are extra bad in a mystery novel.
The book dwells on hive-minds. The most powerful forces within it are hive-minds. Charm herself is a sort of hive-mind that’s been shattered.
The book is extremely sex-positive, while not hiding the ugly realities of sex work when your clients are literally above the law.
The book is about being strongly agentic, and having a ton of power and agency even when you don’t have physical might or legal power. It’s about a master of soft power—the power of persuasion, seduction, popularity, and loyalty.
The book is about psychic humans with insane amounts of power, who are driven into early death or gibbering madness by their powers, and who can destroy entire cities with their powers if they aren’t controlled/enslsaved. (It’s similar to The Fifth Season in this way, though it is not the central focus/theme like it was in Jemisin’s magnum opus).
It’s not a perfect novel. The final chapter is very rushed, and almost feels like someone else wrote it using Mueller’s notes about how the denouement would resolve. It should have been at least two chapters, split across at least two more scenes.
That being said, The Bone Orchard is fantastic, and the thing that most upsets me is that it ended at all. I could have kept reading this for another thousand pages. There’s so much here, and all of it is exactly what I love. OMG, the characters are so fucked up, it’s relentlessly beautiful.
Highly Recommended.
Book Club Review: Also great for book clubs. Many things to discuss, most of which would be spoilers. The audio book is a delight, masterfully narrated. Regardless whether they read or listen, people will love this and have things to say. Recommended!