Bonebag has grown up in the Scura min Scurse, a gloomy, threatening forest, with his strangely cold parents, Modor and Faeder. His is a life of isolation, deprivation, and a profound lack of love. And yet, Bonebag seems to know what it means to be happy—how can that be? One day, he finds a golden locket in the grass, and with that discovery, everything changes. It leads to his meeting the ghostly Madalena, who informs him that Modor and Faeder aren’t his parents but rather ancient monsters who will devour him, as they’ve devoured countless children before. With Madalena’s help, he narrowly escapes, bursting out into the Great City, a world he never knew existed, determined to find his real parents. Bonebag quickly learns that the world is divided into wealthy Fops and the orphaned Rags they exploit. He stumbles headlong into two transformative friendships and races to outrun the curse that follows him from the life he escaped. But every path seems to lead back to the Scura. Genuinely scary, deliciously dark, and full of unexpected turns, this work about standing up for what you know is right, even when the stakes couldn’t be higher, impresses and delights with its rich worldbuilding and invigoratingly inventive language. Characters largely present white.
