Of Bone and Thunder
A Novel
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- $22.99
Publisher Description
From Iron Elves author Chris Evans comes a groundbreaking stand-alone fantasy novel that blends epic fantasy with the dark allegory of the Vietnam War.
A land of thick jungle and mist-swirled mountains. An enemy moving unseen beneath the lush canopy. The growing threat of thaumics—a volatile magic wielded by few that threatens to destabilize an entire kingdom. The youth of a nation sent to fight in a faraway hell while back home, discord and disillusionment reign…
In the distant nation of Luitox—wracked by rebellion—thaumic users copilot mammoth armored dragons alongside fliers who do not trust their strange methods. Warriors trained in crossbow, catapult, and stealth are plunged into sudden chaotic battles with the mysterious Forest Collective, an elusive enemy wielding a devastating magic of its own. And the Kingdom’s most downtrodden citizens, only recently granted equality, fight for the dignity they were supposed to have won at home while questioning who the real enemy truly is.
Of Bone and Thunder is the story of Thaum Jawn Rathim, whose idealized view of war collides with brutal reality; of conscripted soldier Carny, drowning in a hallucinogenic haze of fear and anger; of Breeze, the ambitious graduate of the Royal Academy of Thaumology, convinced she can reshape the very nature of warfare—if she can win the trust of those around her; and of Ugen Listowk, a veteran crossbowman haunted by failure yet determined to lead his men through the darkest jungles.
Plunging deep into the heart of moral and mortal darkness, these reluctant soldiers must battle dragons, face a ghostly enemy, and confront the chaos of a jungle war that mirrors their own inner demons. With blood, magic, and unrelenting tension, Chris Evans delivers a powerful military fantasy epic where survival is the only victory—and war is fought not for glory or the Kingdom, but for one another.
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Evans (the Iron Elves series) considers the grim consequences of a drawn-out civil war following the revelation that the king of a fantasy realm is illegitimate. His characters including lowly crossbowmen; a thaum, or wizard; and a royal ranger each have individual story lines that weave together as they make their way through a war that has no end in sight and often appears to lose any sort of moral imperative. The characters are a ragtag collection, thrown together by the fortunes of war and often at odds. In addition to the battle between the rival factions, there is a guerilla war against the humans by their non-human enemies. The hurry-up-and-wait pace of warfare is reflected in the structure of the novel, which focuses on the day-to-day minutiae of the characters' lives with occasional bursts of action. Readers will spot parallels to real-world ongoing wars, their horrors seen all the more clearly through the lens of the fantastic.
