Ivory and Bone

Julie Eshbaugh

Jun 2016 · Sold by HarperCollins

About this ebook

“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.

Ratings and reviews

Firstly, great work on the retelling. In simple terms, it is a genderbent retelling of Pride and Prejudice in a prehistoric society (there are mammoths all around) consisting of human clans, with the stakes of life-and-death. The world is also interesting in building - society here is mostly hunting and foraging, and civilization is limited to small clans of people, partly nomadic, living off the land and a little exploration. The plot is centered around Kol's clan and the two neighbouring clans to them who share a history with them and with each other. The protagonist, Kol, is telling the story to Mya, the Darcy of this plot, and that is where I first had trouble with this book. Because it is in second person narrative (I think this is one of the very few I have read in this style), it was a bit difficult while reading itself, to remember who is being referred to. While the story is interesting and the writing definitely on par, the style of narrative itself made it a bit cumbersome to read. Nevertheless, I loved how it alluded to Pride and Prejudiced, with Kol's family desperate to secure brides for their sons and the Olen Clan, the more sophisticated one, with the upper hand. The romance is subtle but also influences the plot immensely, and that makes it for a good read. The ending, though, felt a little anti-climactic to my taste - it didn't deliver on the building up of the book. Overall, I would give it 3.5 stars.

About the author

Julie Eshbaugh is a YA writer and former filmmaker. She made two short films and then spent several years producing an online video series for teens, which received several honors from the Webby Awards. You can learn more about Julie’s writing escapades (with the online group Publishing Crawl) by visiting www.julieeshbaugh.com.