The Bone King and the Starling by Elizabeth Stephens

One of my friends has been trying to get me to read Elizabeth Stephens for the longest time and after reading THE BONE KING AND THE STARLING, I clearly need to snap up her backlist because this book was soooo good. It reminded me a lot of a more violent and explicit version of Elizabeth Vaughan's WARPRIZE, with heavy dashes of a non-rapey Khal Drogo, set in an alternate Norse fantasy kingdom where mammoths roam across the ice.

The plot of this book is pretty simple. Starling is a Black thrall living in a viking community. Her mother was taken for her beauty but her father was a douche, and when she was orphaned, she basically became a slave-ward in this viking community lorded over by indolent and corrupt lords who starve their town into poverty by embezzling the lion's share for themselves. I guess they heard about Trump's trickle-down economic plan.

When Calai, the bone king, comes to the village, he is disgusted by the living conditions and the squalor. He also does not support slavery at all. I feel like if you're going to write slavery into a fantasy novel, this is the best way to do it, as it is not romanticized at all, and ends with a violent uprising against the oppressors. As soon as we get a taste of Calai's wrath, I was just sitting there kicking my feet, waiting for him to burn everything down to the ground for his lady AND BOY DID HE.

If you love hot warrior heroes, sweet heroines, and books where they're both virgins(!!!!), this book has all of that, as well as touch her and die, who did this to you?!, and "my wife."

4 out of 5 stars