Review: Bone Jack

This review was meant to be written and posted last week. Unfortunately, I became unexpectedly busy, and so I'm only just writing it up now.

Bone Jack by Sara Crowe is about Ash, a fifteen year old boy whose father is a soldier who has come home a very changed man, and his ex-best friend Mark whose father killed himself. Ghosts from the land's past and the mythology of the area are part of the fabric of the book, and the reason why I was so desperate to buy it in the first place.

It was a fabulous book. It had been on my 'to remember' list for a long time - Goodreads reliably informs me that is has only been two years, which really isn't so long. I was so happy when I finally put my pennies together to buy it that I read about five chapters before I finished the bus journey home.

Why, then, did it take me four months to read? The answer to this is simple, and fairly ridiculous. It felt like I was moving too fast. Definitely not my normal problem. When I finally finished and managed to get over my ecstasies just enough to recommend it to a friend, I told her that I wasn't really sure what age group the book is aimed at. The main characters are in the 14-16 range, and the book is dark enough to delight someone who was reading a Swedish book about witches at the same time* but the ease with which I read it made it feel like it was targeted towards a younger audience. Sure enough, on the author's blog I found reviews from a few 12 and 13 year olds. This is by no means an issue - it just felt like I wasn't giving the book time and space to do it justice. So, I decided to slow down.

I'm glad I made this decision. It made me enjoy the book that much more. I would have loved it if I had swallowed it down in a couple of days, as I was probably on track to do, but I would have perhaps missed some of the richness. Crowe's writing is a real treat. She manages to create a miasma** of fear, of constantly looking over one's shoulder, of chills down one's spine when unbearable heat gives over to the feeling that something is not quite right. The atmosphere of much of the book is neatly summed up by this sentence: 'Ash gazed back through a haze of pain and smoke and blood and terror.'

I loved everything about this book. It's about family, and friendship and fear and human sacrifice. What more could I want?

This book counts towards the Mount TBR challenge.

Happy Reading!
Little Newman

*And we all know that they do Dark in the North.
**Fact: 'miasma' is a Greek word that refers to a malevolent power that causes catastrophe until the original wrongdoer is sacrificed. No spoilers from me, but that is a strikingly relevant word.