This book was only alright to me. It was very...I'm not sure if I even have the right words to describe it, but distant is the best I can come up with. You are in a first person view but you never really get to feel anything. Things are being described, but I felt no attachment or meaning behind them, so I couldn't get really into the story. ( )

I bought this book shortly after reading The Hollow Kingdom by the same author, WHICH I LOVED SO, SO MUCH, GO READ IT!, so naturally I wanted to read more of her work, but sadly this one was not for me.

I couldn't relate with any of the characters, and in the end I felt like I didn't know Maddie, the protagonist, at all. That after 200 pages she was still a stranger to me, and that's never a good sign. Although I admired her courage in the end, and how she wanted to save those she loves at all costs.

Black Ewan was the most despicable character, I honestly couldn't believe the things he thought he had the authority to do---he made me extremely uncomfortable.

This was not a memorable book, and I just know I'll totally forget about it in a couple of weeks. I hate when that happens. ( )

”Best if you was dead,” a young boy is informed in this compelling examination of the werewolf legend, for his terrible curse will isolate him from other people, and from his own humanity. ”Don't look on no one again,” he is warned, for ”You're the kind that kills them they love...”

And so begins By These Ten Bones, a short novel by the author of the Hollow Kingdom Trilogy, which follows the story of young Maddie, a weaver's daughter in medieval Scotland, who falls in love with the mysterious wood carver who has come to stay in her small village. But Paul is harboring a dangerous secret, and it will take all of Maddie's love and courage to free him...

I greatly enjoyed By These Ten Bones, by turns moved or terrified by it, and will not soon forget the scene in which Maddie confronts the demonic werewolf. I recall feeling almost queasy while reading it, though no actual violence was done. Dunkle is a talented author, and she is at her best here. Highly recommended. ( )

I've read other things by Dunkle before (The Hollow Kingdom, The House of Dead Maids), and one of the things I really like about her is that she seems willing to confront the darker aspects, the things that make you uncomfortable. This is something I've come to associate with her, and I really do like it. But another thing I've come to associate with Dunkle is stories that come so close to making me feel the need to push them into everybody's hands, but not quite making it. This was true of By These Ten Bones. I think I wanted to love it more than I did, and I wanted to want to push it on everybody - but I didn't. This makes it sound like I didn't like it, or even that I was disappointed with it, neither of which is very accurate. I do want to push it on recommend it to some people, but not everybody. I just...it always felt like there was just some barrier we couldn't push through. The story and I were held back by something, something was missing and I don't know what it was. But I could feel it.

Alright, this is the weirdest analogy ever (maybe only topped by my soup vs. Soup analogy), but say you were eating your favorite ice cream sundae, and it's delicious; it has scoops of rich chocolate and fragrant vanilla ice cream  topped off with nuts and cherries and sprinkles and whatever the hell else you put on it. And you like it, it's good - but something's missing, and you can't figure out what until you get to the last bite and you realize you forgot the damn caramel sauce. It's still a really good sundae, but you know how much better it can be with the little addition of that salty-sweet caramel, and now you're disappointed.

That's sort of how this is. Or maybe it's not like that at all. (I mean, it's a book, not a sundae. And why do all of my analogies have food?) But something about this book left me feeling incomplete, and it wasn't big enough to really stand out, but rather left me with that subtle nagging feeling that something that would put it over the top, something that would make me love it instead of like it, was missing. And I really don't know how else to explain it.

Part of me feels like maybe it was just a by-product of the style. It's very folkloric, very sparse in style and even in plot, pared back and bare bones. It's told very simply and somewhat slowly, too, and maybe that's what left me with that nagging feeling - maybe I wanted something more lyrical, or something I could connect to more, emotionally? Either way, the style does work for the story and does help build something really atmospheric and foreboding. There's a good sense of place and tension, and I worried for the characters and how everything would turn out.  I also feel like it's something I would read again, maybe even multiple times. But I don't think everyone will connect to it - I think it will be too spare, too simple, or too weird for some people to get past.

But for those who do, they'll find a really interesting tale of Otherness unlike most of the YA fare out there, and one that is worth their time. Even if there is an indefinable something missing... ( )

Just when you thought you were sick of werewolves, I have for you a book that is unlike any other werewolf book you’ve seen. For one thing, the mythology is raw and old and steeped in the folklore of the Scottish highlands. The werewolf in Clare B. Dunkle‘s BY THESE TEN BONES is less a wolf and more of a shadow creature — a demon that takes over a man’s body on the night of the full moon. And, unfortunately for young Maddie, the weaver’s daughter, a young man with this affliction is in her village.

When the stranger first appeared, a carver who would not speak, the folks with whom Maddie had grown up thought him an idiot. Maddie saw something, though. Pestered him long enough to get just the littlest bit of attention. And when the man he called master is caught beating the nephew of the village leader, ending up locked up, this mysterious visitor is free of his proverbial shackles for the first time in years. Maddie is the first person he comes to, revealing that he can speak. But here’s the strange thing: he seems to want those shackles back.

When the man Maddie has taken to calling “Carver” is attacked in the night by a creature of some sort, Maddie’s mother takes him into her care. He has a high fever, but as he recovers he begins to confide in Maddie. Soon she realizes that Carver is in danger in a different way than she could imagine. And if he is what she thinks he is, so is she — and everyone around them.

Told in elegant prose and set in the Medieval Scotland, there is so much to love on each page of BY THESE TEN BONES. The voice is beautiful, visceral — and it is through this voice that we see a long-forgotten folktale in a light only a storyteller can shine. BY THESE TEN BONES just came out in paperback this week, so I hope you’ll head to your local library or bookseller and find yourself a copy — and then perhaps read it alone in the dark! ( )