The Bone Raiders by Jackson Ford

Aka How to Train your Fire-breathing Lizard

I am thankful to the author, Little Brown Book Group, and Netgalley for my copy of this fun, thrilling, fast-paced riff featuring an all-woman crew of nomadic raiders and fire-breathing lizards amidst the backdrop of nation-building.

April 2010 – On a long Easter weekend holiday when I was posted in London, a bunch of us decided to head down to Nottingham (Don’t ask why) . This was my first experience with a long weekend break in England, and even as we decided to head down to the town square on that weekend, it was eerily deserted. Not a single soul in sight and nary a shop open, there was just nothing to do or even spend time on. The only thing that was open at around noon was the local cinema. We walked in and picked up the earliest available show with no idea in mind of the kind of movie it was. 12.30pm found four grown-up men in their late 20s occupying the last row in an empty theatre for what was a kiddie film to the consternation of a few parents who had gotten their kids along and found this tableau laid out in front of them. That movie turned out to be “How to Train Your Dragon,” and it turned out to be an absolutely fantastic movie – even more so given these circumstances. How to Train Your Dragon always has a special place in my memories, and reading The Bone Raiders brought back those memories to me as the book follows the path of the movie thematically, even as it crafts a path of its own as a fantastic, action-packed, and entertaining series opener

“Being a raider meant freedom. Doing what you want, when you wanted. Riding under the open skies, with nobody but your clan to answer to”

The Bone Raiders is a book of interesting choices all the way through. It is a story that places a group of nomadic raiders as our supposedly “heroes” of this story, ranged against an empire-building undertaking. Normally, in any other situation, the narrative choice would have been to show the events from the viewpoint of the empire builders and how these raiders would have been the supposed bad guys, unwilling to move away from how things were. In this case, the choice to flip the narrative is an interesting one. One could almost say that the author is taking his shots at urbanisation and gentrification at a certain level.

“You couldn’t tame something that lived in the wild – that would take years. But if you established dominance, showed that you would be very difficult to kill cleanly – and gave your quarry an escape route – then you might walk away from an encounter”

The other interesting choice that the author makes is to present the Bone Raiders as an all-female crew with terrific character and team dynamics. But that doesn’t mean that they are any less bloodthirsty or brutal. It is a fantastic group with some fascinating team dynamics at play. There are a couple of old, jaded leads who formed the group, there are followers, and then you have the maverick and the young rebel – all these relationships and character quirks are pretty well defined. The antagonist of the group, the true brains and executor of the empire-building exercise, is also female, interestingly, while being a former raider with quite a reputation herself.

“All we’re doing is adding to the formula: stay small, raid as little as possible, ride giant fuck-off mountain monsters when we do”

Our group of raiders, the Bone Raiders, increasingly find their raiding pickings slim as a direct result of the empire-building scenario and find themselves cornered and left with very few options. They are also increasingly being vastly outnumbered as the outlying villages and clans, their typical targets for a raid, get subsumed by the empire. A providence of fate pits the youngest of the Bone Raiders, Sayana, against a fire-breathing lizard, and she survives the encounter, believing that this could essentially be the weapon that could shift the tide against the empire.

“You start hunting where you shouldn’t and it cuts into food sources. Tigers – and not just them, by the way, everything else out there – start looking for other things to eat. They start roaming, do you understand”

Naturally, it is not as easy as it sounds, and there are complications in whether the lizard could be trained, let alone tamed. While this does sound tropish, it is the treatment of this situation that makes this book a rip-roaring read. The book is electric and tremendously paced without compromising on the character beats. Sayana gets the “Chosen One” arc while hinting at a chequered past. As the youngest of the group, she is fairly rebellious in her thinking and gets the “straining against the hierarchy” arc. She also has very interesting, varied chemistry with each member of the Bone Raiders, and that part is pretty enjoyable. Even within the group, there are some interesting dynamics at play and a significant sense of shared history with some of the members. Every member of the group gets a fantastic arc, even if it’s not as detailed as Sayana’s. A couple of arcs are fairly heart-breaking as well

“One cannot tame the heart. One might as well try to swallow the sun”

Yesuntei, the antagonist, gets a pretty good arc as well. A fairly driven, calculating antagonist, Yesuntei’s opposition to the Bone Raiders gets personal as well once the book hits its stride. She also shared a pretty complicated relationship with her sister, Tuya, who has her own agenda with regards to her part in the empire. She also happens to be very good with animals – a part that appeals to the Bone Raiders. The complicated sister relationship does devolve a bit at the end with Yesuntei becoming an almost one-note villain, losing some of her complexity, but the exploration of this sibling dynamic is rather interesting.

“Sometimes, when the world changed forever, you were the only one who knew about that”

This is a book that hits its stride pretty quickly and doesn’t let go. The book also has quite a few surprises, pleasant and unpleasant up its sleeve, and doesn’t hesitate to throw a few curveballs as well. There are complex motivations at play, and some of the relationships go through the wringer as characters grow through the course of the book. There are a bunch of heck-yeah moments, especially as the book hits its climax and the ending is suitably action-packed in a very fun way. The author adds a neat little twist at the end, tantalisingly unspooling some threads for exploration in the sequel

Overall, The Bone Raiders is a fantastic series opener that, while following a template in certain regards, is a rip-roaring adventure that delivers massive character moments while packing tons of fun in its action beats. A proper blockbuster of a novel, and pays fantastic tribute to one of my all-time favourite movies.

Rating – 4.5 Fire Breathing Dragons on 5

The Bone Raiders is due for publication tomorrow the 12th of August – you can order your copy on Bookshop.org