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The Bone Palace (The Necromancer Chronicles #2) Mass Market Paperback – December 1, 2010

by Amanda Downum (Author)
4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 82 ratings
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Death is no stranger in the city of Erisén -- but some deaths attract more attention than others.

When a prostitute dies carrying a royal signet, Isyllt Iskaldur, necromancer and agent of the Crown, is called to investigate. Her search leads to desecrated tombs below the palace, and the lightless vaults of the vampiric vrykoloi deep beneath the city. But worse things than vampires are plotting in Erisén. . .

As a sorcerous plague sweeps the city and demons stalk the streets, Isyllt must decide who she's prepared to betray, before the city built on bones falls into blood and fire.
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Previous page
  1. Book 2 of 3
    The Necromancer Chronicles
  2. Print length
    480 pages
  3. Language
    English
  4. Publisher
    Orbit
  5. Publication date
    December 1, 2010
  6. Dimensions
    4.5 x 1.25 x 7 inches
  7. ISBN-10
    0316069000
  8. ISBN-13
    978-0316069007
  9. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. In a spectacular freestanding sequel to 2009's The Drowning City, Downum jumps a few years forward to find forensic necromancer Isyllt Iskaldur investigating the death of Forsythia, a young prostitute with stolen royal jewelry sewn into her clothes, in the haunted city of Erisin. As Isyllt follows the trail of death and theft to the sewers and their vampiric inhabitants, Savedra Severos, the crown prince's beautiful transgender mistress, struggles to defeat assassins and unravel plots involving her own uncle and a demonic sorceress mysteriously allied with Isyllt's mentor and former lover, the spymaster Kiril. Finely drawn characters love and betray with enthralling passion and pain, and the taverns and gardens of plague-ridden Erisin and the titular ruined palace at its center make a dark and richly detailed background for this complex and bloody tale of sorcery, madness, and intrigue. (Dec.)
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From Booklist

*Starred Review* Several years have passed since the events chronicled in Drowning City (2009), the first volume in Downum’s Necromancer Chronicles. Issylt is now at home in Erisin and working as a King’s Investigator, though her necromancy skills mean she takes on the toughest cases—like finding the prostitute found dead clutching jewelry that was buried with the queen. Fortunately the king is on a campaign as he hasn’t been all too rational since the queen died three years past, leaving Issylt a few weeks to uncover the tomb raiders, solve the dead girl’s murder, and deal with the entrenched and complex aristocracy jockeying for power. As Issylt digs deep into the history of the palace, of several prominent families, and of the city itself, she uncovers matters everyone else would prefer she leave alone. Downum’s second fantasy is as sharp and complex as the first, full of fascinating characters, from the transvestite mistress of the prince to his warrior wife. As the setting and many of the characters are new to the series, Bone Palace works fine as a good starting point for new readers. Suggest to fans of the equally dark and imaginative Nights of Villjamur (2010). --Jessica Moyer

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Orbit; 1st edition (December 1, 2010)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Mass Market Paperback ‏ : ‎ 480 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0316069000
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0316069007
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 7.8 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 4.5 x 1.25 x 7 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 82 ratings

About the author

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Amanda Downum

Amanda Downum

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Amanda was born in Virginia, and has since then spent time in Indonesia, Micronesia, Missouri, and Arizona, with brief layovers in California and Colorado. In 1990 she was sucked into the gravity well of Texas, and hasn't managed to escape. Yet.

She lives in Austin, where she can be found haunting absinthe bars, goth clubs, rock gyms, and other liminal spaces. Her other hobbies include cooking hearts and hiking. Her day job sometimes lets her dress as a giant worm.

Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars
4.4 out of 5
82 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Matthew Jude Brown
5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent fantasy.
Reviewed in the United States on February 6, 2011
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This is a wonderful sophomore work from Amanda Downum, a fairly new name who, by the evidence here, is an author to watch. It's especially nice to see that it's better than her good previous novel, The Drowning City. The two make the beginnings of a loosely connected series, The Necromancer Chronicles, but there's absolutely no need to read the previous book first; only one on-page character, Isyllt, carries over, and no knowledge of what happens is required; everything gets explained again here. Even better, this one doesn't really spoil the previous work, either, aside from the protagonist's survival to turn up here.

The plot has aspects of the mystery, and begins with the discovery by the police of a dead prostitute with a royal ring sewn into her clothing and vampire bites on her body. Isyllt, a necromancer and investigator for the Crown, suspects reasons more complex than the typical, and so it proves. During the course of her inquiries, she talks to the Crown Prince, who in turn tells his wife and mistress; it's the latter, Savedra, who becomes the second major viewpoint character as she independently investigates the mystery from a completely different direction.

The characterization here is the best part; both Isyllt and Savedra are fascinating viewpoints with very different inner voices and insights into the world they inhabit. Isyllt is just the kind of driven, stubborn, insufficiently-concerned-about-self-preservation woman that a plot like this needs to advance. Her life is one that's gone off course, and there's not that much she can do about it; she needs a purpose, and finds one, and hangs onto it like a terrier until she's done. Her flaws are organic to her character, and nicely done.

Savedra is the best treatment of a transsexual in fantasy that I've read, and Downum avoids making it an easy matter of magical transformation; it rings much truer for that. Savedra's nature is also surprisingly, happily angst-free; sure, she wishes she was more accepted, but her family and her Prince love her, and the things she's worried about don't include her transsexuality. Rather, it's the assassins, the plots and the deadly politics that surround her inescapably. It's a good thing she was brought up in that world, and learned to survive and thrive in it.

It's a fast-paced book, and there's always something going on, so it's very suited to those with little patience for wordy fantasy. My only complaint, really, is that I could have read so much more of these characters. I was disappointed to reach the end.

I think this would work well for someone used to the so-called "paranormal romance" genre (paranormal urban fantasy with some romantic elements, in most cases, but I digress) ; it has a similar dark feel to most of them, a similar focus on the relationships between people, and it's paced similarly.

Overall, a very strong recommendation from me. Very readable, very fun, deliciously dark, and a set of characters I like a lot. What's not to love?
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Erik_L
4.0 out of 5 stars Good adventure
Reviewed in the United States on January 17, 2011
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The Bone Palace is a well written romp through the underbelly of a classic medieval metropolitan city. The death of a prostitute leads Isyllt, a necromancer/investigator for the crown, on a fascinating adventure through the bars, sewers, and castles of the capital city of Erisin. I was unaware this was the second in a series until I was well into the 22 chapters. Along the way, we encounter vampires, ghosts, mages, and other interesting folk. There is reference to what I now assume to be references to the first book, but this novel is very enjoyable as a standalone story if you are accustomed to fantasy terms.
My complaints for the book are two. First off, Ms. Downum appears to be a lover of crosswords, because the complex words are too long to fit on a scrabble board. The dictionary feature of the Kindle was put to a lot of use during the reading of The Bone Palace. I am not sure why the author seems to think it necessary to use such complex terms, but I found it interesting as well as annoying. Second, there is a large cast of characters to figure out. Some are street people, some are royalty, and some are a bit of both. It took a while to straighten them out.
Bottom line, a very good book if you're accustomed to reading fantasy novels with odd names and terminology and you have a love of expanding your vocabulary. I look forward to reading The Drowning City, and look forward to the next novel.
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Robert A. Sloan
5.0 out of 5 stars Awesome series, fantastic book.
Reviewed in the United States on June 5, 2012
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An incredible series by one of my newest favorite authors. Amanda Downum is extraordinary. Her protagonist Isyllt is a scarred, tough, kick butt Necromancer - and she doesn't hesitate to bring ghosts and the dead into a good novel with a Necromancer in it. Isyllt is not a Nice Girl by any stretch of the imagination.

She is the archetype of the Bad Ass Hero, the dark hero who's scarred and cold and rough, has a dark past and deserved bad reputation. Would be a typical sexy bad-boy protagonist - and she's a woman. If you have any feminist leanings at all, this author is a Must Read because Isyllt is not the only interesting female character in the book. About half the characters are women and every one of them is memorably interesting.

If you like LGBTQ friendly fiction, this series is for you. This volume features a transgendered character who lives in gender as the woman she is. It's a magical world with low tech, so they don't have gender reassignment surgery. Savedra relies on artifice, makeup, corsetry and an amazing trained courtesan grace to be a "pearl" in the palace, an official concubine to her beloved Prince. She couldn't marry him even if she was cisgender, marriages for royalty are arranged and political. But she is content with her position and passionately loyal. I think courtesans and odalisques get short shrift in fiction sometimes, reduced to brainless sex objects or turned into villainous home-wreckers or virtuous yet abused captives. Savedra is none of those things. She's a wonderful character and reads very true to life.

Not all of the interesting powerful women are butch. Every one of them is an interesting, very different character in her own right. Isyllt has the "Morticia" looks typical for your archetypal sexy female Necromancer. Raven hair, dead pale skin, striking beauty who's tall and thin. But she's too real for that. She's got battle scars from the first book that are physical as well as the scars on her heart. She's too thin in some places past the point it's elegant and knows it. She looks good in mud as well as silks and she doesn't always wear black.

Because she is so real, Isyllt is tremendously cooler than most of the hot tough women I like in fiction. She's no physical wimp. Magical or physical, she is a spy and a darn good one. Think of the coolest stuff in spy thrillers folded into a fantasy series too, with high magic instead of fancy technology. She rules. And so does Downey, I think after this series I'd buy any book she wrote - trusting that whoever's in it is going to be interesting and sympathetic enough to follow to the end.
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Top reviews from other countries

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Tony617
4.0 out of 5 stars A good read
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 2, 2022
Verified Purchase
I borrowed this book from my daughters library and found it a surprisingly good read. The author describes a quite convincing alternate world where magic and witchcraft is commonplace, and demons (inhabiting dead bodies) and vampires abide. It's set in a vaguely European 16/17 century context, but later developments and technologies such as matches are feely mixed in as the story requires. The lead characters are woman, including the central villain, a sorceress (Phaedra) and her nemesis, the witch or rather "necromancer" Isyllt. A major sub-thread revolves around the Crown Prince (Nikos), his wife (Ashlin) and his official mistress (Savedra). Despite constant references to her gowns and skirts, the latter is soon revealed to be a hijra - "a woman born a man". It's not adequately explained how Savedra became Nikos' mistress other than they exchanged glances across the room at a ball, and she's also from a rival family, but her male body enables a twist to the plot that quickly becomes obvious and inevitable. I actually went back and reread the early chapters as I had initially skipped through them too quickly to understand all the scene setting. Overall an enjoyable read of a genre I would not usually touch.
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Twyla Istace
5.0 out of 5 stars good read.
Reviewed in Canada on December 26, 2014
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I read it in 2 days. good read.
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LouisaBalata
4.0 out of 5 stars Je m'en vais lire la suite, le troisième tome ...
Reviewed in France on November 21, 2014
Verified Purchase
Histoire intéressante que l'on lit d'une traite (l'écriture est fluide), belles descriptions et personnages travaillés au niveau de leur personnalités. Quelques scènes de type "gothique glamour" qui ne sont pas indispensables à l'histoire, mais mise en avant d'un sens souvent oublié dans les histoires : le sens olfactif. Cela donne une tonalité intéressante à l'histoire. Pas besoin de lire le premier livre pour comprendre celui ci qui est le deuxième tome de la série ...
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