Ivory and Bone
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4.4 • 8 Ratings
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
“Exquisitely written, ferocious, and haunting. Don’t miss this one!” —Sarah J. Maas, New York Times bestselling author of the Throne of Glass series
“Julie Eshbaugh is a unique new voice with talent enough for a whole team of writers. I’m still under the spell of her storytelling.”—Amie Kaufman, New York Times bestselling co-author of Illuminae and These Broken Stars
Loosely inspired by Pride and Prejudice, Ivory and Bone is an enthralling tale of high-stakes survival, blinding betrayal, and star-crossed love.
Hunting, gathering, and keeping his family safe—that’s the life seventeen-year-old Kol knows. Then bold, enigmatic Mya arrives from the south with her family, and Kol is captivated. He wants her to trust him, but any hopes of impressing her are ruined when he makes a careless—and nearly grave—mistake. What Kol doesn’t know is that underneath Mya’s cool disdain is a history wrought with loss that comes to light when another clan arrives. With them is Lo, an enemy from Mya’s past who Mya swears has ulterior motives.
As Kol grows closer to Lo, tensions between Mya and Lo escalate until violence erupts. Faced with shattering losses, Kol is forced to question every person he’s trusted. One thing is for sure: this was a war that Mya or Lo—Kol doesn’t know which—had been planning all along.
With riveting action and illustrative prose that leaps from the page, Julie Eshbaugh will have readers mesmerized and thirsty for more…So don’t miss the sequel, Obsidian and Stars.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Eshbaugh debuts with an exciting and unusual adventure with an emphasis on the power of storytelling, set in a prehistoric past. Seventeen-year-old Kol is next in line to become the High Elder of his clan, but without any girls of marrying age, the clan may die out. When Mya's clan arrives, Kol is immediately drawn to her, but she proves elusive, even aloof, perhaps owing to past friction between their clans. Kol's father encourages the clans to mingle, but the appearance of a girl named Lo sets off a harrowing chain of events, throwing the clans into upheaval and Kol's heart into turmoil. Eshbaugh tells the story through Kol's voice, and it's immediately revealed that he's recounting it to a wounded Mya, who asks him to tell her about the "most startling and marvelous day" of his life. Building Kol and Mya's beautiful, dangerous world takes some time, but once Eshbaugh's story finds its footing, it provides a fascinating setting for the love triangle between Kol, Lo, and Mya, as simmering tension between the clans builds to a terrifying and poignant climax. Ages 14 up.
Customer Reviews
A PERFECT BOOK
So what is Ivory and Bone?
An incomparable masterpiece. A bold work of art in a genre saturated with voices of similitude. An antediluvian dystopian love story riding an obsidian knife-edge between life and death.
Shall I elaborate?
Imagine, for a moment, a world with no internet. No cell phones, no wi-fi, no Starbucks, no television, no cars, no Coldplay, no bookstores, no single-serve slices of red velvet cake and the individually wrapped plastic fork to go with it.
And yes, sadly, no Goodreads.
Imagine a world so breathtakingly beautiful and dangerous, so hard and cold and brutal, yet bristling with colors that will never be brighter and enormous landscapes unmarked by the will of humankind.
In this world, every step could be your last, and every breath is spent in the fight for survival. So, as creatures forever striving with their environment, humanity itself faces extinction.
And in this world, what would be the greatest of all life and death dramas? What would be the hardest and most important of all choices?
That’s right, teenage romance.
Unforgettably gripping, author Julie Eshbaugh marvelously weaves the tale of Kol through first/second person narrative, harkening back to the oral tradition in which such a story would’ve been passed down from generation to generation. Kol’s account zips with the furious excitement of the hunt and the buzz of seeing the young and beautiful woman of his destiny but breathes with a musical sense of peace and stillness through tender moments and reflections of pain, with Eshbaugh’s subliminal grip of our senses as a reader as deft as it is sensitive.
Not to be missed, Ivory and Bone is a one of a kind work that resonates with a sense of personality and intimacy uncommon to the trendy flash and fancy of modern YA, and I am so deeply grateful to Julie and HarperTeen for an ARC of this perfect tale.
And while there is an allusion to Pride and Prejudice, I do think it would be unfair to call this a retelling. Ivory and Bone is such a unique and beautiful story, it deserves to stand on its own like a mountain against the sky.
Recommended for all ages.