Bone Of My Bone by Johanna van Venn

Blurb:

Bram Stoker Award–nominee and USA Today bestseller Johanna van Veen unveils a sapphic folk-horror tour de force—perfect for fans of The VVitch and The Salt Grows Heavy. A skull's grin is eternal…

The year is 1635.

Sister Ursula, a young nun fleeing the ruins of her convent, and Elsebeth, a sharp-witted peasant, escape a band of marauding soldiers and disappear into the Bavarian forest. War scorches the land, and no one survives it alone. Amid the devastation, they find something in the arms of a dying man: the gilded skull of a saint.

It is said that if you reunite the saint's skull with her body, a wish will be granted. Desperate for salvation, and each with secret desires of their own, Ursula and Elsebeth follow a ragged map across the blighted countryside. But darkness follows them. A necromancer, drawn to the relic's power. The saint herself, whispering at night. And as the lines between blessing and curse blur, the women must face a harrowing truth: the magic they seek comes at a cost.

At the journey's end, they'll face an impossible choice—one that could tear apart everything they know… or bind them to each other forever.

Review:

In the year of 1635, Sister Ursula, a young nun who is on the run from the decimation of her convent that she’s been devoted to since being inducted, meets Elsebeth, a sharp-witted peasant, when she attempts to flee from her homeland. Together, they manage to evade those who’re following them and escape into the Bavarian Forest. While war scorches the land around them, they realize they must rely on each other to survive. Surrounded by devastation, destruction, and those who want them dead, they discover a priceless artifact—the skull of a saint. If they can return the saint’s skull with their body, they can garner any wish of their hearts. Determined to save themselves and repent before their God, alongside achieve their own furtive goals, they work together to discover the saint to whom the skull belongs. But when a necromancer is drawn to the artifact’s power and decides to take it from them, they’ll have to face both the wilderness, each other, and the malevolent force that will do anything to foil their plans.

Bone Of My Bone is one of the finest, most well-written debut novels I’ve ever read. I absolutely adored the storyline, the magic system, the characters—it was all so fresh and visceral and engaging, and I never grew tired of hearing the characters Ursula and Elsebeth narrating their adventurous, dark-toned story. Everything from the setting to the world to the war ravaging their lives had me drowning in the immersion of the novel: hook-line and sinker.

I especially liked how the necromancer in this storyline was the villain rather than the hero. With so many necromantic fantasy novels on the rise, I believe this is an interesting and realistic take on how deadly and brutal necromancers can be. The descriptions of the necromancer using his power was equal parts tangible and disturbing, making me flinch, gape, and cringe in equal measure. 

It was absolutely masterful, the way van Veen disgruntles readers with her excellent handle on the way she disturbs readers with her descriptions and prose. Even simple things, like two characters lying beside each other, took on a haunting hue when it was highlighted in the eerie, complex way that the author accentuates the different parts of the scenes in the book.

Van Veen is a legend of historical fantasy and horror, making even the most insignificant of scenes and dialogue relevant in the long run of the manuscript, and pulling readers further into her fictional worlds. I couldn’t get enough of the conflicts the characters faced. The fight scenes were especially interesting, with the characters relying on their own individual talents to get out of (or into) the situations they found themselves in. With the necromantic magic involved, the fight sequences became an entirely incredible sort of scene that I couldn’t get enough of.

I also loved the contradiction that is Ursala’s faith and her queer relationship with her love interest, Elsebeth. I was so invested in the way the characters would talk about each other, then justify their behaviors and excuse them, especially in Ursala’s face. Determined to adhere to her faith, she was in denial for her feelings for a long while, before finally admitting her infatuation and deciding that her faith and her love for Elsebeth could co-exist…until they couldn’t anymore.

This novel was well-written and much anticipated, and I can’t wait to see what van Veen writes next!