The Bone Roots
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- $6.99
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
A tale of two mothers, each desperate to protect her child. But only one of them can succeed. And only one of them knows why.
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The Bone Roots is a slavic-folklore inspired fantasy that explores how far a mother will go to protect her child…
It’s been 40 years since the Fox took Kada’s brother. Though she ran and kept herself hidden, she fears it may be stalking her again, this time to steal her daughter.
Every year, Vedma Kada gives thanks to the bone roots – those that belong to the child-bearing tree who gave Kada her desperately-wanted baby, Secha. Kada lives her life in service of the bone roots and the goddess Zemya, but they cannot keep her daughter safe. Not when Secha’s emerging powers, both mysterious and brutish, threaten to out her for who she truly is…
Meanwhile Sladyana, a rich noblewoman, has spent the last fifteen years searching for her missing daughter, Luba. She was snatched from their home by the Fox thief and Sladyana has heard nothing from her since. But the one who gave Sladyana her daughter has come within her grasp once again, and so has the secret of her daughter’s fate.
File Under: Fantasy [ Tree of Life | Mother Issues | Out Foxed | Unravelling Secrets ]
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
For this dark fairy tale, Houston (The Second Bell) spins a lush narrative that gets lost in its own fecund detail. There's a folkloric simplicity to the premise: two women go to a tree blessed by a goddess—one a noble hoping for a child, the other a witch who has promised to help. They find twin babies hanging from a branch like fruit. Fast-forward 15 years, and wealthy Sladyana believes that her goddess-given daughter has been stolen from her by supernatural forces. Though she takes in a nonspeaking orphan, fostering the child cannot fill the void. Meanwhile Kada, the witch, raises a not-quite-human daughter of her own whom she ferociously guards, fearing exposure of the child's uncanny nature. Threat appears in the form of a marauding blue-eyed fox, alongside a glossary's worth of other monstrous beings that Kada overcomes or commands in succession—all while navigating the complex dynamics of family and village. This is a tapestry of a book, wonderfully woven but thin. The Slavic mythology it draws from brings the benefit of novelty, but the fairy tale elements don't quite come together to lend emotive meaning to Houston's decorative prose. Fans of fabulist literature hoping for depth should look elsewhere, but readers seeking pure story, lovingly told, will find plenty to savor.
