The Bone Shard Daughter Read-Along Week #3

Hello Readers,
I’ve just finished chapters 24-35 of The Bone Shard Daughter and first of all: *SCREAMS*!!! If you haven’t picked up The Bone Shard Daughter yet, I highly recommend you do so soon! There’s still time to join if you’re interested.

The plot really came together in this portion of the book, and I’m loving how Stewart lets all the mystery start to unfold. There’s a lot to discuss this week so let’s get into it!

**Spoilers ahead for The Bone Shard Daughter Ch. 24-35**

Q&A For The Bone Shard Daughter Read-Along Week #3

Sand appears to be organising something of a rebellion herself – but against what? Any ideas about what might be happening to the people on Maila, and why? For that matter, do you have any theories about who Sand herself might be/where she came from?

So, I’ve been considering all the cases of memory loss in The Bone Shard Daughter and the obvious question is: are they related? If the memory loss of the people on Maila is related to Bayan and Lin’s memory loss, it could mean two things. 1) The people on Maila were stolen from their lives by the Emperor and he used his memory machine to wipe their memories and make them slaves. 2) The people on Maila were stolen from their lives and murdered by the Emperor. He then wiped their memories and turned them into constructs. (Note: I’m guessing the person on the boat isn’t actually the Emperor, but that they work for the Emperor).

Right now I’m not sure which of the two options is more likely, or if there’s another person who’s controlling the people of Maila.

Ranami got something of a taste of her own confrontational medicine in another discussion with Phalue, this week. What do you think the future holds for these two? Are either of them really in the right here?

I really don’t think either of them is fully in the right. I think Ranami is right to take action against Phalue’s greedy father, but she’s made it clear that she’s willing to lie and possibly betray Phalue in order to help the rebels. She was never fully honest with Phalue about her intentions. By the end of this section, Phalue finally sees that if the rebels succeed, she and her father will be at the mercy of the people. Ranami should have been honest with Phalue from the start about what helping the rebels really meant.

And, while I understand why Phalue wouldn’t want to help the rebels overthrow her father, her unwillingness to take action hurt the people she wanted to rule. She knew her father was a terrible governor, but she was comfortable waiting for him to step down while people starved.

“Fanatics were all alike, cut from the same cloth and dyed different colours.” Do you think this assessment of Gio by Jovis is accurate? And do you think it only applies to Gio?

Jovis is generally pretty cynical, but I think he’s at least partially right about Gio. I didn’t like Gio at all. He kept trying to manipulate Jovis into helping him more. He very obviously keeps secrets. I think Gio has the same problem Lin deals with in this section. He believes his needs are more important than anyone else’s.

Speaking of Jovis, do you think his power really is connected to Mephi somehow, or is something else going on?

I mentioned in my last discussion post that I suspected Jovis’s powers came from Alanga lineage, not Mephi. I’m also beginning to suspect that Gio is actually one of the Alanga. From what I recall, magic allowed the Alanga to live longer so it’s possible Gio was one of the last to fight the Emperor and his constructs. Gio is also pretty touchy whenever Jovis talks about the Alanga, which I find highly suspicious.

“I lived in a dollhouse of my father’s making, a living graveyard.” We get part of the truth about Lin (and Bayan!) revealed this week, following a rather harrowing massacre; how do you feel about this particular twist? And what do you think the Emperor’s goal here might be?

Kudos to Lisa at Dear Geeks Place for calling it: Lin turned out to be a construct! I found the twist at the end of chapter 35 especially dark. The story has been pretty dark from the beginning, but a lot was left in undertones. There were plenty of clues that something darker was going on, but we didn’t really see it until then.

It’s pretty clear that the Emperor has, ah, control issues. To say the least. If I had to guess, the Emperor was unhappy with not being able to control everything and everyone around him so he found the perfect solution: create new creatures that had no choice but to obey him. Bayan mentions that the Emperor is growing bodies, so it’s possible he’s planning a massive, super-villain-like take over where he replaces all humans with constructs? Could that be why the people of Maila have amnesia? They’re all part of an experiment the Emperor is conducting to see if he can control entire populations of people?

All of this is pretty major speculation, so I guess I’ll have to wait and see if I’m right!

Now that we know more about the Emperor’s constructs, particularly Ilith… what do you make of the nature of her bone-shard commands? Do you think she might prove to be a wild card?

I do think Ilith is a wild card. Lin seems to have free will and independent thoughts, so why not other constructs? Plus, Jovis has already pointed out that you can get by constructs by causing their commands to contradict. We’ve only interacted with Ilith a few times, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she spends much of her time plotting ways to work around her bone-shard commands. The sensitive optimist in me wants to believe Ilith will become an unlikely hero, but I have my doubts.

What did you think about this part of the book?