Ivory and Bone (Ivory and Bone, #1)

by Julie Eshbaugh

“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.

• ISBN10: 006239925X
• ISBN13: 9780062399250
• Publish Date: 16 June 2016 (first published 7 June 2016)
• Publish Status: Active
• Out of Print: 15 October 2021
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Inc
• Imprint: HarperTeen
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 384
• Language: English

Reviews

[Angie]

I was very excited to read Ivory and Bone, because I had never read something like it before. A Fantasy set in Prehistoric times? Yes, please! It was a nice change from all of the Medieval Europe based Fantasy worlds. Unfortunately, the plot did not excite me at all. In fact, I found myself bored a lot of the time. Kol's clan is visited by some members of another clan. He and his brother are immediately taken by the two girls who are their age. But something is off about Mya. Kol doesn't know what, but he can't stop thinking about her.

Ivory and Bone did capture me from the very beginning at first. It's told in Second Person POV! Yes, it is! The prologue shows Kol and Mya in what appears to be a precarious situation. She asks him to tell her about the most marvelous day of his life, so he does. The story basically ends up being a love letter to Mya (who I didn't like at all). Although near the end when the story catches up to the prologue it switches to normal First Person. Boo.

I was expecting the plot to focus on a war between clans. Early on we learn that there are tensions between Kol and Mya's tribes, but then Lo shows up. At that point my interest had already been waning, but then Ivory and Bone completely lost me. Kol is just not very smart. He learns that someone is plotting a murder. What does he do? He approaches them, alone, and is like "Hey, are you plotting a murder?" Are you kidding me?! And the whole basis of this impending war was pretty silly. Live and let live, people!

Ivory and Bone was just not the story for me. The beginning is Kol complaining about Mya while simultaneously trying to get her attention. Mya is just rude and awful. She's been through some stuff, but that doesn't give you free reign to crap on people. And the story was really a Romance. I love Romance novels, but I don't think this was suppose to be one? But that's how it ended up, with kissing.

Read more of my reviews at Pinkindle Reads & Reviews.

[tweetybugshouse]

This is one of those 2016 books that your like i not sure it looks interesting but i not much for prehistoric type of books. When the book showed up in my fairy loot box i decided fate said you should give it a go. The neat thing that fairy loot does is you get paired up with someone else to read the book. Which for me is great motivation to get the book read. My partner is in Switzerland so it been fun to talk to her, and to find out she was an exchange student in Washington/Oregon area when she was in high school.

Anyway i ended up really enjoying the story, each chapter leaves you with just a enough to want to read just one more chapter to see where the story is going to go. You really get a sense of the life the characters are leading as hunter, gathers, fisherman and how desperate they are to have their clans continue. The twists that showed up in the story really helped keep you guessing as you read the story. I not sure if it was a great idea to tote it as pride and prejudice retelling but if that what it takes to get others to check out your book more power to you. It was a great read, nothing that really dragged in it i really enjoyed it.

[shannonmiz]

You can find the full review and all the fancy and/or randomness that accompanies it at It Starts at Midnight
2.5*

Okay, first of all, I didn't hate the book or anything, so put down the pitchforks. I just was...underwhelmed, I guess? Maybe I was expecting something different? I have no idea. But this was a mixed bag for me. Definitely there were good parts that I enjoyed, so that's a plus! Let's discuss those, hmm?

The Good:

• The. Setting. Look, you say prehistoric, and I am there. Every time a mammoth was mentioned, I was legitimately giddy. And it was very clear that humans weren't exactly thriving at this point, which was probably terrifying.


• The atmosphere of the book was very well written and suited the time period. I felt the solitude of the characters, the desolation of the landscape. There were animals attacking and vast unsettled wilderness, all the fun stuff. And sadly, not a ton of reproductive options in these clans, which is obviously bad news.


• I liked Kol, and I liked his family. While he wasn't as fleshed out as I'd have liked, what I did know about him I enjoyed. He just seemed like a decent person and I liked that the "softer" side of prehistoric people was shown rather than a barbaric one.

The Neither Good nor Bad But Worth Noting:

• This book is written in second person. Basically, it's Kol talking to Mya, referring to her as "you" during the book. This didn't really bother me, but I think it should be mentioned? Great. Consider it mentioned.


• The synopsis says this is a "prehistoric fantasy", and I don't really know what the fantasy element is? Maybe it's in the next books? Or, maybe it is because we don't know these things to be historically true, so the author had to create some of the history? No idea. But if you're expecting some kind of, well, fantasy (which I wasn't, so I was fine with it), it isn't here.

The Not As Good:

• I didn't really buy Kol's feelings for Mya. I mean, okay, he's basically never seen girls his age, and I didn't really get much chemistry other than like, what I assume biology would dictate, especially when she's one of like, three eligible females within a bagillion miles or something. I just sort of felt like Kol didn't really care about Mya as much as he cared about female in reproductive age range. Which is not a bad thing, considering... it just doesn't exactly make me swoon.


• I feel like this could have been set anytime, anywhere, and still remained mostly the same. I mean, clans fighting, romantic turmoil, rushing to save each other... with mammoths thrown in. I just felt like Kol and Mya could have been plopped into pretty much any other setting and fit, which was kind of disappointing- I just wanted more of the world.


• The story kind of lags, especially in the beginning. I was really worried when I was at about 40% and I was rooting for the characters to be trampled by mammoths. Too harsh? Look, I needed some excitement, and a mammoth trampling would have provided that. I just wasn't getting much of a plot- it was mostly just clan living and "Why is Mya acting like a jerk?" and stuff.


• When the plot did come into play (and it did!) it just didn't blow me away. Maybe that's on me, and I know how hugely subjective that is, so take it for what it's worth. I don't know if it was predictable necessarily, it just wasn't as high stakes as I'd hoped.


• There are a lot of characters, and I don't feel like I got to know any of them- even Mya and Kol. Sure, I had a better grasp of them than other characters, but I kept getting confused about all the different clanspeople, because their names were all basically two or three letter names that aren't in our language. While I don't expect them to be named Mary and Joe, I did hope to know enough about them to remember their names because of their character development.

Bottom Line: I wanted to love this one so badly, and there were definitely parts I liked. I will probably give the second one a shot, because it did pick up more at the end, and I would like to see where the author takes the series.

**Copy provided by publisher for review

[Amber]

This review was originally posted on Books of Amber

Thoughts before reading this book: Prehistoric world? Fantasy? Sign me up!

Thoughts after reading this book: Oh. Well. That was disappointing.

Is just one book that ticks all of my prehistoric/dinosaur nerd boxes too much to ask for? Apparently so. I was so, so excited about Ivory and Bone before I read it because I'm all for prehistoric settings. Unfortunately I didn't connect with the way the book is written, and I didn't care for any of the characters. Bit of a downer.

The main problem I had was the second person point of view that this is written in. The main character, Kol, is addressing Mya, and it completely threw me out of the story. I think second person can be done well on occasion. You know, if there's a need for it. But there really wasn't with this book.

In addition to that, this book was mostly about the romance between Kol and Mya, and less about the action and murder and fantastic setting. The latter could have been used for all sorts of epic things, but I feel like the author didn't make full use of it.

I don't want to read the sequel because I'm afraid it'll be much of the same. I can't even remember whether or not the book ended in a way that warranted a sequel, so that's not good either. I guess I'll recap Ivory and Bone for Recaptains, but then I'll cut my ties with the series.