The Bones of Ruin

The Bones of Ruin, an urban fantasy set in Victorian London, is about a group of people with strange powers and a mysterious Committee using them for its own ends. Iris is an African tightrope dancer who cannot die. She has no memory of her life before an explosion in South Kensington that she walked away from, and she wonders if the explosion might explain her supernatural power.

Adam is a member of the (all-white) Enlightenment Committee, whose members believe mankind will soon be destroyed in a cataclysm, and they are positioning themselves to rule over the resulting new world. Adam’s father, John Temple, has disappeared with all his research about the end of the world, as well as the key to a remarkable machine discovered at the bottom of Lake Victoria.

Adam promises Iris answers to her past if she will participate as his champion in a tournament the Committee is holding to determine who will be in charge. All the other champions have supernatural powers which they seem to have acquired in the South Kensington explosion. Over the course of the tournament, the teams of “Fanciful Freaks”, as they call themselves, compete, fight and sometimes brutally murder each other. Iris and her teammates, Max and Jinn, make shaky alliances with a few other champions with the goal of finding out the truth about themselves and the Committee. They discover a secret lab under the Crystal Palace where the Crown has been doing experiments with other Fanciful Freaks, and where they have reassembled the machine found in Lake Victoria, believing it will open a portal to another dimension. Without the key in John Temple’s possession, however, they can’t safely operate it.

Coming in contact with the machine, Iris regains her memories: in multiple lifetimes she has been the cause of a civilization-ending cataclysm. Her heart is made of white crystal, the source of her ability to regenerate and the cause of the South Kensington explosion. Adam’s goal is to prevent anyone from escaping through the machine so that all humanity will face the judgement Iris is meant to bring to the world. But Iris decides she doesn’t want to doom humanity, and so she runs away with Jinn and Max. Readers are prepared for a sequel in which Iris and her friends take their lives into their own hands and presumably try to prevent the end of the world.

Sarah Raughley uses her Victorian setting to point a finger at colonialism and the ideal of the noble explorer plundering “savage” civilizations. As Iris pieces together her past, she learns that she was brought from Africa and exhibited in a zoo, and, when her powers were discovered, she was experimented upon. Now Adam considers her a tool he can use. The Committee, with members from several European nations, exhibits the arrogance and condescension of imperialists, assuming they have the right to determine everyone else’s fate.

Iris is an engaging character whose desire to know the truth about herself convincingly propels the plot forward. Her friendship with Jinn, her growing attraction to Max (and Jinn’s jealousy), and her wary trust of Rin, another champion who speaks an African language Iris understands, ground the story in believable relationships. All of the Fanciful Freaks, even the murderous ones, have backstories that generate reader sympathy, and Raughley uses their diversity to explore different kinds of prejudice and otherness and the trauma it creates. Iris, herself, is not given a free pass as she participated in human trafficking in Africa, and she kills someone with her powers.

The mystery is dribbled out slowly through fragments of memories and cryptic comments from other characters; some unnecessary repetition drags the pacing. There are plenty of tense action scenes, however, and the uncertainty of anyone’s true motives adds suspense. Adam gets several chapters in his point of view to show the Committee scheming: his character is interestingly ambivalent, but the scheming becomes repetitive.

The violence is graphic and often shocking:

With his pale fingers curling into the fabric, he lifted the boy up with one arm and, with the force of a demon, slammed Henry’s fourteen-year-old back onto his knee.

The ugly, loud crack was so horrific, it stole the air from Iris’s throat. … As Henry’s lifeless body dropped to the ground, Gram’s quick hand reached for Lucile’s fake face and tore it off. Iris stared in utter horror as blood slopped from Lucille’s head, from Gram’s hand, and from the fresh flesh dangling in his dirtied fingers. Soon, Lucille’s body was on the grass at his feet.

Iris finally began screaming when she saw Gram put the soggy flesh in his mouth.

The Bones of Ruin uses complex, diverse characters and a unique, if somewhat convoluted, premise to expose the ugly underside of Victorian British arrogance and attitudes that still underlie prejudice and violence against anyone considered “other”. The themes are interesting and important, but their development is hampered by wordiness and some dragging in the plot.

The Bones of Ruin is recommended for older readers who can handle violence and have read enough to recognize the historical references. It would be particularly interesting to read alongside Victorian adventure stories like those of H. Rider Haggard or H.G. Wells as an #OwnVoices response.