I read Fran Wilde’s first novel, Updraft, not long after it came out, and I fell in love with the world she created.
In the Bone Universe, people live in a city of bone towers and fly from place to place. Nearly invisible skymouths grab the unwary with their tentacles. Mysterious tattooed Singers, who live in the Spire, maintain order. Breaking the city’s Laws can result in receiving bone chips, which weigh a flyer down. The Singers sacrifice the worst Lawsbreakers to the city, dropping them from the sky without their wings.
Updraft is Kirit’s story. In the days leading up to her wingtest, Kirit wants nothing more than to become her mother’s apprentice, learning to successfully trade goods among the towers. One bad choice threatens all of her plans.
Wilde’s Bone Universe is interesting and logical. In a world where people never descend their towers, metal is a scarce and valuable resource. The only meat people eat comes from birds; their clothing is made of silk (spun by spiders). As Kirit’s story unfolds, Wilde tells us just enough and no more. She leaves her readers curious: What lies beneath the clouds? In the first book, we never learn.
I also enjoyed the characters: Kirit and her friend Nat (unlike many male-female friendships in books, this one seems to be entirely platonic); Wik, a Singer who discovers a rare talent in Kirit and forces her to bargain with the Spire; and the young Singer apprentices Moc and Ciel — although they remind me a little of Poppet and Widget from The Night Circus.
Because Wilde is so good at drawing us into her world and the lives of her characters, I was glad to pick up the next novel in the series, Cloudbound.
Compared to Updraft, Cloudbound was disappointing. This time the story is told through Nat’s eyes. While I enjoyed meeting him in the first book, I found him a little annoying in the second. As a young adult, Nat has become involved in the city’s politics. It feels like much of the book involves his angst over doing the right thing. Where Updraft moves along, Cloudbound is slow, filled with political debates that drag on and on. Were it not for the fact that Wilde gives us a whole new layer to the Bone Universe as we dive beneath the clouds, I might have given up on the series.
But Wilde’s world carried me along, bringing me to the final book in the series, Horizon. Any faith I’d lost in her was restored by this book. This time she tells the story from three points of view: Kirit’s, Nat’s, and that of Spire-born Macal. We move from the ground, where we finally discover the truth behind the Bone Universe, back up to the tops of the towers and to all points in between. The stakes are high, and the plot moves at a faster pace than in Cloudbound. We see the characters at their best and their worst. By the time I had finished, I found myself missing both favorite characters and the universe itself — the sure sign of a good series.
If you enjoy science fiction and fantasy set in well-crafted universes, spend some time exploring Wilde’s Bone Universe. Her website mentions two short stories set in the Bone Universe and some additional stories and novellas set in a different universe. I look forward to future encounters with her work.