2.5 stars but rounding up to 3

No matter how much lore, myth & monster this book had, which was fresh and new to me, it couldn't save it from the longest, slowest and most drawn-out story.

4.5 stars

I really hope the author writes more books in this world, and with these characters. This was really a masterfully crafted world and story. The characters were unique and richly written, the world was amazing, and the way you experience it all through Toma's eyes as she finds out that all she believed to be true is not was so well done.

Toma lives in the forest with her adopted family of basically undead people but they act just like normal people. Her entire live is flipped upside down when her younger sister is kidnapped after rescuing someone from a crashed airship. The chaos and adventure that ensues kept me turning the pages of this book long into the night.

This is my first book from this author and I will definitely be picking up more from them in the future and keeping my eye out and fingers crossed for more of this story.

4/5 stars.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the e-ARC of this book.

I liked this book! Some of the pacing felt off sometimes, ranging from a little too fast to way too slow and no in-between, however, and it felt kind of anticlimactic in some places. Other times, IT HIT ME WITH A WAVE OF EMOTIONS I DIDN'T KNOW IT COULD GET OUT OF ME. I like how romance was such a subplot, but also showed the characters embracing their sexualities and identities all the while. It focused on other kinds of relationships--sibling, found family, platonic--and that was what this book needed, not romance. The found family trope is one of my favorites and it had me sobbing by the end.

I wish some of the creatures were explained a little bit more in the beginning, and that glossary would've been way more helpful in the beginning, but otherwise, this book had a good plot, great characters and character dynamics, and really showed the tragedies of religious war, religious violence, and the long-lasting impact that war has on a place and people.

I couldn’t believe all the world building in this one. Love that this had Slavic folklore. I’d recommend it.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for the digital advanced reader copy. This is my honest review.

Bone Weaver by Aden Polydoros follows Toma. She is a live human who has been adopted by two undead humans. When her adoptive sister—who is also undead—gets abducted by those who wish to experiment on her, Toma discovers that she may have her own magical powers. The empire is on the verge of revolution, but Toma was unaware in the wilderness of her home before she had to venture outside to rescue her sister. When Tsar Mikhail washes up not far from her home, she helps heal him. Along with Mikhail, they cross paths with Vanya, a commoner who has been labeled a witch. These three together will be the key to taking down Koschei, the leader of the revolution. He must be destroyed if Mikhail is to get his magical powers back. But what it really comes down to is Toma, who must embrace her powers and learn to use them to their full extent.

This haunting political fantasy is world building galore. I really liked how much everything was fleshed out so thoroughly. This is a great dark fantasy.

Thank you so much to Inkyard Press and Netgalley for letting me read an eARC of Bone Weaver! Bone Weaver is such an interesting book with lots of folklore and fantasy, and I had such a great time reading it!
Bone Weaver 4/5 Stars
Summary from Goodreads: The Kosa empire roils in tension, on the verge of being torn apart by a proletarian revolution between magic-endowed elites and the superstitious lower class, but seventeen-year-old Toma lives blissfully disconnected from the conflict in the empire with her adoptive family of benevolent undead.
When she meets Vanya, a charming commoner branded as a witch by his own neighbors, and the dethroned Tsar Mikhail himself, the unlikely trio bonds over trying to restore Mikhail’s magic and protect the empire from the revolutionary leader, Koschei, whose forces have stolen the castle. Vanya has his magic, and Mikhail has his title, but if Toma can’t dig deep and find her power in time, all of their lives will be at Koschei’s mercy.
A haunting fantasy following Toma, adopted daughter of the benevolent undead, making her way across a civil war-torn continent to save her younger sister as she discovers she might possess magical powers herself.
I loved so much about Bone Weaver! I think Toma is such a cool character and I love the bonds she has with her adopted family. I also really liked Vanya and his back story. Heck, their whole little trio was so fun and I really enjoyed how quickly the plot moved and how plot driven the book was. If you’re looking for a serious, character driven book, then Bone Weaver is probably not the book for you, but I really liked the way the plot moved. I also was a big fan of the pacing as well. Overall, I really enjoyed Bone Weaver and I highly suggest picking it up!

Link to be added once post goes live

Aden Polydoros’ prose did not disappoint. Bone Weaver reminded me of everything I loved about The City Beautiful, from themes of religious persecution to the dark, lush atmosphere the characters inhabit.

I loved the incorporation of Slavic folklore into a secondary world historical fantasy, as I could observe the historical parallels while jumping into an unfamiliar magic system. Some of the elements felt almost too natural; I wish the role of the undead and the various “monsters” had been explained more in-depth as it was a lot to take in at once.

The plot, though nothing new, was compelling. My primary complaint is that the ending felt unfinished—I wanted to see more from the characters I grew attached too, and I wish their journey hadn’t been cut as short. While a bit unsatisfying, the open-endedness does tie well to the novel’s themes of displacement, trauma, and found family.

Overall, Bone Weaver was an intense, haunting fantasy that solidifies my desire to keep reading Polydoros’ work and more fantasy that draws on Jewish backgrounds like my own.

3/5

i gotta be real with you i wanted to like this book more so so bad and i really did like a lot of it, but the ending felt so unfinished. i love a standalone, but i felt like it needed another chapter. an epilogue. something to wrap things up. i felt like character arcs and relationships were just left unfinished and it was really unsatisfying in a way where i was trying to see if there was meant to be a sequel. i love a standalone fantasy but this didn't feel complete? i did enjoy the characters and where i thought things were headed, but then instead of wrapping up it just ended and i was like .......oh

the ideas and concepts were so strong and i was really interested in the worldbuilding, but my main takeaway from the book ends up just being a sense of disappointment which is sad

I adored the world-building in Bone Weaver. The setting is very unique and Aden Polydoros is a very talented and creative writer when it comes to bringing a world to life. Unfortunately, I didn't feel drawn to the characters as much as I'd like. Within a few days of reading this I had already forgotten most things about them. I wasn't that invested in them even though I was intrigued by the world.

Another one of those stories that although it was good it wasn't anything to write home about. I loved the myth and the way the author created something new. But overall it just wasn't as good as I thought it could be. I was just wanting more.

This book was really interesting! I was intrigued by the storyline and that's what initially drew me to this title. I also really love the cover artwork.

Excellent plotting and lush worldbuilding. Only thing is that the characters sometimes felt dry, but everything else is great!

Thank you Netgalley and Inkyard for the eARC. I really liked the premise of this book, but was unfortunately not able to finish it. What I did read was enjoyable.

I will be honest, it took me quite a bit of time to finish this one up. This mostly boiled down to this book deserving a bit of extra focus due to the fantasy elements interwoven in.

Toma lives in the wilderness with her adoptive upyri parents and sister—oblivious to the turmoil brewing in the Kosa Empire. However, when the tsar shows up on her injured on her doorstep, her peaceful existence is upturned. Revolutionaries kidnap her sister, and she must team up with the tsar to save her.

Bone Weaver by Aden Polydoros presents a lush dark fantasy told through evocative language.

Right off the bat, I’ve got to say that the worldbuilding was by far the highlight of the book for me. The story effortlessly blends together and draws from imperial Russian history with Slavic folklore in a way that felt natural—like steamships were created to more safely navigate waters filled with rusalki.

I also really enjoyed the exploration of political and religious conflict throughout the book. For instance, bogatyri are imperial magic users whose powers are derive from the three sister goddesses while kolduny are witches whose powers derive from the Unclean Force and are considered heretics. (Side note: my one qualm here is that since most of the lexicon in this book derives from Russian, the term "Unclean Force" did stick out like a sore thumb to me.)

However, while the world itself is richly immersive, I unfortunates found the characters themselves to be flat and the dialogue wooden at times, so this book was a bit of a mixed bag for me.

Thank you very much to Inkyard for this ARC!!

I adored The City Beautiful by this author, and Bone Weaver just didn't quite hit the same mark for me. It was good, and set in a fantasy version of Russia which I ALWAYS love. The beginning of this book (first 50 pages ish, where Toma is in the woods with her family) was also so creepy and eerie and compelling, but the rest I found slightly repetitive and dull. The two guys she teamed up with didn't have an distinct enough voice to me, so I felt it dragged.

I did like the ending though!!!

Huge shoutout to Inkyard Press for providing a digital ARC of such a great read. I was so engrossed in the story that I finished it in a day- the characters were likable and even with political intrigue and religious elements, there was a clear thread to follow and I never felt lost or overwhelmed with new words or folklore.

‘Bone Weaver’ is an excellent, well-paced novel that stands on its own. Well worth the read.

A girl raised by the dead discovers her own life-saving magic in Aden Polydoros’s second novel, Bone Weaver. I knew Polydoros was one to watch from the moment he first announced his Jewish historical thriller debut, The City Beautiful, which was one of my favorite books from last year. So when I heard he was diving even deeper into fantasy with his next book, which takes place in a secondary world inspired by Imperial Russia and Slavic folklore, I immediately requested a review copy and was not disappointed. Bone Weaver comes out tomorrow, September 20.

The upyri that have raised Toma since she was ten years old aren’t your typical flesh-eating revenants. Though their bodies may be slowly falling to pieces, Papa, Mama, and little Galina are as loving a family as Toma could want, and she is content to spend her life among the undead in their isolated cabin in the Edge. But their peace is disrupted when the tsar’s dirigible crash-lands in the woods outside Toma’s home and the rebel soldiers pursuing him capture Galina. Toma will have to join Tsar Mikhail on his mission for vengeance against the rebel leader Koschei in order to get her sister back. As they travel across the country of Kosa, Toma and Mikhail are joined by Vanya, a member of an oppressed minority group whose ability to use magic makes him suspect among both his own people and those in power. Mikhail is forced to confront the violence and inequality his family’s reign has contributed to, while Toma begins to discover her own heritage and unlock the traumatic memories of her birth parents that she’s kept long-buried. But these revelations will be short-lived if they fail to stop Koschei’s violent revolt.

One of the central questions of the book is whether there really is a difference between the magic that society considers good and the magic considered bad. Upper-class magic users, like those in the tsarist army, are called bogatyri and revered for their powers, considered a gift from the goddesses. Meanwhile, others—like Vanya—are denigrated as kolduny, or witches, and hunted down by a Tribunal to be killed. But are they really wielding different kinds of magic or were these systems just put in place to control who is allowed to have power and who isn’t? Then there is the Unclean Force, a nebulous concept blamed for everything from kolduny magic, to blighted lands and dead humans returning to life as monsters. But if kolduny and bogatyri are the same, perhaps all magical forces come from the same source, as well. Both Toma and Vanya question these distinctions between “good” and “bad” magic that the rest of society has accepted as immutable fact.

Toma takes these questions a step further by refusing to accept society’s understanding of the monsters that populate this fantasy world. If proper precautions aren’t taken, the dead often come back for a monstrous second life—whether as upyri like Toma’s family, or as ruthless rusalki or vodyanye in the rivers and marshes, alluring mavki in the woods, or the doom-bearing drekavcy that tend to haunt graveyards. To Toma, this second life is miraculous, not monstrous, and she views these beings as sympathetic and deserving of compassion. The knowledge that the dead can return in another form makes Toma less afraid of death. But is it always a positive thing for the dead to return to life? In this book, Toma’s journey involves developing meaningful relationships with the risen dead, but the next lesson she may need to learn is how to let the dead rest when the right time finally comes.

If you love Slavic folklore, magic based on fiber arts, or found family narratives, you’ll definitely want to check out this book.

Mild spoilers here, but nothing major. I’m going to skip the plot summary this time because I have lots to say.
Bone Weaver had so much potential. The world is rich and detailed, the ‘monsters’ are unique and really interesting, but unfortunately, a lot of the other aspects fell flat for me.

I had issues with inconsistent characterization throughout, but especially with our main character, Toma. Several times throughout the book she loses all hope and is ready to give up, but another character will say 'don't give up! you're strong!' and then suddenly she's fine and ready to fight on! (I feel like this might actually be more of an issue of underdeveloped dialogue. I think the author intended these to be encouraging conversations, but it didn’t come across that way) She also came to the realization at some point in her travels that her parents were right and she didn't truly belong with them anymore. I was so interested in this and excited to see her live a new life full of things she didn't even know were out there! But then at the end she changes her mind and says she's planning to stay with them no matter what? I was so confused and disappointed.

The dialogue was flat and definitely contributed to a lot of my other issues with the writing. Some of those issues being the pep talks mentioned above, the bonds between the characters not being believable, and just not feeling as immersed in the story as I wanted to be. Speaking of underdeveloped relationships, I honestly wish there hadn’t been a romantic subplot at all. It wasn’t given the time it needed to be compelling, and I just felt like it made the story drag.

For such a long book, nothing feels as well developed as it should be. I feel like several standalone books taking place in the same world would have been a better call here. This would have allowed more time to focus on each geographical area or type of creature that the author obviously spent a lot of time and effort developing.
This is still a three star book for me because I feel like some people are going to really like it and I do love the world that was created here. However, it fell into a lot of typical YA pitfalls that really tarnished the experience for me.

I started to read this and it didn't grab my attention within the first 50 pages. I stopped reading at that point. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.