I am really glad for the chance to read the revised version of this story. I loved the world and the characters, and even though this was a pretty slow burn fantasy, it gave a lot of time for the characters and world to develop complexities that kept the story really compelling. Such a wonderfully crafted story with characters I still find myself thinking about--Wells turns out gem after gem!

City of Bones was originally published in 1995 and its reprint is due to come out in September 2023. This is an updated and revised version, and I'll be basing my review on the galley copy I received from NetGalley. (This is a heads up in case you come into the review and immediately go, "Wait, that's not what I remember happening!" I'm not sure how different it is, because I've only read City of Bones once, years and years ago and I did not retain very much.)

Khat and his partner Sagai are semi-legal, semi-illegal relic traders. They would be completely legal scholars if they could but the city they are operating from has a very rigid social structure, they're both non-citizens, and Khat isn't even considered to be a person because his species (krismen) was created by Ancient Mages to survive in the post-apocalyptic Waste surrounding the city.

Khat and Sagai are approached by a Patrician who wants their help to find an Ancient Relic. (The Patrician turns out to be a young "Warder"--magic user--named Elen who is extremely clueless due to privilege and general naivete. Khat is not initially very impressed with her, but she slowly begins to show signs of developing a Clue. Elen's teacher believes that the relic is a key to keeping Warders from losing their minds, which is a hazard of the kind of magic they use. What it is...is not that.)

This leads to a quest to find the relic and find out what's for. It also leads to a veritable cascade of discoveries about the Ancients. Such as the part where the Ancients were at war with Eldritch Energy Beings from another world who kicked off their invasion by giving the Ancients lots of knowledge (that incidentally corrupts and drives mages crazy). And also the part where the Ancients were barely able to fight them off and at least one of the Eldritch Energy Beings survived and is attempting to let its friends on the other end of a dimensional gateway through.

The B and C plots involve Khat's dispute with a relic dealer he used to steal for, and One of The Reasons Why Khat is Like This. (Khat is definitely a template for Wells Angry Traumatized and Marginalized Characters. This is not to say he isn't his own character. He is absolutely distinct from later characters such as Moon from The Books of the Raksura and Murderbot from The Murderbot Diaries. He just has a lot in common with Moon, Murderbot, and even Kai from Witch King.)

The B plot is that the relic dealer wants him to go back to working for him, but Khat would prefer not to and is having to resort to choosing violence to express this since the dealer won't take no for an answer. The C plot is that there is a krismen embassy that is trying to find him. Our Protagonist is the only survivor of his lineage and his relatives want him to go home and have kids. (Unfortunately for them, Khat has decided that depriving his victim-blaming uncle of grand-niblings is the Best Revenge.)

This book is a bit like a cross between an Indiana Jones movie and a Road Warrior-type movie. It's an adventure novel with excellent worldbuilding and lots of moving pieces in the plot between the various plot threads. I liked the interactions between Khat and his partner, and his partner's family. I also liked Elen, but probably not as much as I liked Khat. (She needs to have a better sense of her privilege and to know more about the world outside her little Patrician bubble before I can really enjoy her as a character. As it was, as much as I liked her, because she's sweet I also wanted to smack her because she was clueless.)

Slower than my normal read but still excellent. I'm convinced everything Martha Wells writes just turns to gold.

This is very different than my normal fantasy, but doesn't take away from how well-written the story is and the dynamics that make it wonderful. I personally really struggle with slower pacing, so this took a lot of self-control to stay focused. It was worth it though.

There was no info-dumping yet you are perfectly aware and in the know of the world you are in. The characters are so interesting and complex, and far from perfect. It was different to read a fantasy post-apocalyptic story and I think I might need more of them!

Definitely worth the read, just make sure you're in the right mood.

This fantasy book was immersive, I found myself wondering about the characters when I wasn’t reading. The world-building was crafted in such a way that it didn’t feel like work to me. I loved the strong, interesting, not-quite-human protagonist. The side characters were also interesting and well developed. The pacing was excellent and the plot moved along well. This was a satisfying read and I loved it. I kinda wish she had written more stories set in this world!

I love Martha Wells, and I love the Murderbot Diaries. I had never read any works by Wells before I read All Systems Red (which I’ve now read multiple times, along with the rest of the series). Presumably due to her rise to stardom with Murderbot, City of Bones (one of her earliest published works) has been updated and revised and is being republished. Of course I had to read an advance reader copy once I got my hands on one.

While it is certainly not accurate to say that City of Bones is an early draft of Murderbot, it is a precursor. Some of the same elements are present. Main character Khat is the shunned and different outsider, with abilities and vulnerabilities that others don’t have. The anxiety is missing, but the need to make allies and even friends with unlikely companions is there. The author’s narrative style and storytelling ability has grown and matured.

I enjoyed reading City of Bones but also found it a bit slow moving. On the whole, I think I prefer the author’s science fiction to her fantasy. However, eventually I’ll get around to reading everything Martha Wells has written. If you are a Murderbot fan, don’t skip City of Bones just because it’s not part of the Murderbot series.

I read an advance reader copy of City of Bones from Netgalley.

Martha Wells never disappoints. I am so, so glad that her backlist is getting rereleased (and revised! So it's up to her current awesome writing abilities!) because I've been wanting to read them and they're hard to find. On to the review:

City of Bones is about Khat, who is a very Martha Wells main character, and by that I mean that he is a bit of an outsider, both from his own people and from the city he lives in, and has some past trauma which makes him angry, snarky and mistrustful of others. Literally my favorite character type, a thing I did not know before reading her books. This city is a city-state in a dry and barren world, centuries after a cataclysmic event burned up the seas and destroyed the ancient civilization. Khat is a krismen, a people descended from magically bio-engineered humans to be able to survive in the toxic desert wasteland that is most of the world now. They are mistrusted by ordinary humans for this ability, and the regular humans all live in tightly packed cities with strict water regulations for the poor. Khat and his partner, a scholar from another city-state and therefore almost as much of an outsider as Khat, trade in relics of the ancient peoples. It's a living, and it allows them the opportunity to get to see and study the fascinating ancient civilization without being in the scholars guild. Then Khat is hired to take a nobleman out to a ruin left from the ancients, and inadvertantly gets involved in a struggle for power and magic which goes up to the highest levels of the city. Literally, because the city is tiered, with the ruler living in lush tropical luxury at the top.

I just love Khat as a character. And I love the consistency with which he is characterized. There is something that happens towards the end of the book which in nearly every other story would have gone a certain way, but Martha Wells doesn't force her characters to change to fit society, and readers, expectations and it works so well.

The world building is also fascinating. The current state of the world is grim, but people persevere as they do, and adapt, sometimes well and sometimes ruthlessly. The glimpses of understanding we get of the ancient world adds depth to the current state of things. but there is a huge amount people do not know about them, which from an archealogical standpoint rings very true. Most of what Khat and his partner trade in are pottery shards, tile pieces and bits of metal. What they, and we as readers, know about the ancients is so small compared to what there is to know, but watching things unfold and slowly getting to glimpse more is riveting.

The only downside is that this is a standalone. I know! Usually I would not complain about that, there are so few. But I love the world and the characters and while I am glad this particular story of theirs is complete, I would love to read about their next adventures.

Overall the book was okay, but contained more potential than actualization. You can tell it's one of Martha Wells's earlier works. The world building is good, though I would love to see more, the story is better, but the characters failed to make me really love them. Khat's past with the Enclave would have been a much more interesting story than him getting dragged into royal schemes that he keeps failing to run away from when presented with the opportunity. I really want to read the non-existant prequel.

I hadn’t read old Martha Wells and my goodness has she evolved in her career and her writing. Very cool repackaging. I didn’t read the old so can’t compare the text itself (revisions, etc).

Thank you to NetGalley and Tor for the arc.

I requested a digital copy in order to sample the prose on my phone (since I don't have a eReader) before requesting a physical copy for review. My review will be based on the physical ARC I read (if I qualify)