What do you think?
Rate this book
Arhel #2
Bones of the Past
Foraging through the Wen jungles in search of the lost City of the First Folk, barbarian scholar and ex-headhunter Medwind Song remembers an old Hoos warning too late and disrupts the very-much-alive ancient civilization. Reissue.
327 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published March 1, 1993
9 people are currently reading
229 people want to read
About the author
Holly Lisle
109 books449 followersHolly Lisle has been writing fiction professionally since 1991, when she sold FIRE IN THE MIST, the novel that won her the Compton Crook Award for best first novel. She has to date published more than thirty novels and several comprehensive writing courses. She has just published WARPAINT, the second stand-alone novel in her Cadence Drake series.
Holly had an ideal childhood for a writer…which is to say, it was filled with foreign countries and exotic terrains, alien cultures, new languages, the occasional earthquake, flood, or civil war, and one story about a bear, which follows:
“So. Back when I was ten years old, my father and I had finished hunting ducks for our dinner and were walking across the tundra in Alaska toward the spot on the river where we’d tied our boat. We had a couple miles to go by boat to get back to the Moravian Children’s Home, where we lived.
“My father was carrying the big bag of decoys and the shotgun; I was carrying the small bag of ducks.
“It was getting dark, we could hear the thud, thud, thud of the generator across the tundra, and suddenly he stopped, pointed down to a pie-pan sized indentation in the tundra that was rapidly filling with water, and said, in a calm and steady voice, “That’s a bear footprint. From the size of it, it’s a grizzly. The fact that the track is filling with water right now means the bear’s still around.”
“Which got my attention, but not as much as what he said next.
” ‘I don’t have the gun with me that will kill a bear,’ he told me. ‘I just have the one that will make him angry. So if we see the bear, I’m going to shoot him so he’ll attack me. I want you to run to the river, follow it to the boat, get the boat back home, and tell everyone what happened.’
“The rest of our walk was very quiet. He was, I’m sure, listening for the bear. I was doing my damnedest to make sure that I remembered where the boat was, how to get to it, how to start the pull-cord engine, and how to drive it back home, because I did not want to let him down.
“We were not eaten by a bear that night…but neither is that walk back from our hunt for supper a part of my life I’ll ever forget.
“I keep that story in mind as I write. If what I’m putting on paper isn’t at least as memorable as having a grizzly stalking my father and me across the tundra while I was carrying a bag of delicious-smelling ducks, it doesn’t make my cut.”
You can find Holly on her personal site:
Hollylisle.com
You can find Cadence Drake, Holly's currently in-progress series, on her site:
CadenceDrake.com
You can find Holly's books, courses, writing workshops, and so on here:
The HowToThinkSideways.com Shop, as well as on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and in a number of bookstores in the US and around the world.
Holly had an ideal childhood for a writer…which is to say, it was filled with foreign countries and exotic terrains, alien cultures, new languages, the occasional earthquake, flood, or civil war, and one story about a bear, which follows:
“So. Back when I was ten years old, my father and I had finished hunting ducks for our dinner and were walking across the tundra in Alaska toward the spot on the river where we’d tied our boat. We had a couple miles to go by boat to get back to the Moravian Children’s Home, where we lived.
“My father was carrying the big bag of decoys and the shotgun; I was carrying the small bag of ducks.
“It was getting dark, we could hear the thud, thud, thud of the generator across the tundra, and suddenly he stopped, pointed down to a pie-pan sized indentation in the tundra that was rapidly filling with water, and said, in a calm and steady voice, “That’s a bear footprint. From the size of it, it’s a grizzly. The fact that the track is filling with water right now means the bear’s still around.”
“Which got my attention, but not as much as what he said next.
” ‘I don’t have the gun with me that will kill a bear,’ he told me. ‘I just have the one that will make him angry. So if we see the bear, I’m going to shoot him so he’ll attack me. I want you to run to the river, follow it to the boat, get the boat back home, and tell everyone what happened.’
“The rest of our walk was very quiet. He was, I’m sure, listening for the bear. I was doing my damnedest to make sure that I remembered where the boat was, how to get to it, how to start the pull-cord engine, and how to drive it back home, because I did not want to let him down.
“We were not eaten by a bear that night…but neither is that walk back from our hunt for supper a part of my life I’ll ever forget.
“I keep that story in mind as I write. If what I’m putting on paper isn’t at least as memorable as having a grizzly stalking my father and me across the tundra while I was carrying a bag of delicious-smelling ducks, it doesn’t make my cut.”
You can find Holly on her personal site:
Hollylisle.com
You can find Cadence Drake, Holly's currently in-progress series, on her site:
CadenceDrake.com
You can find Holly's books, courses, writing workshops, and so on here:
The HowToThinkSideways.com Shop, as well as on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and in a number of bookstores in the US and around the world.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
August 10, 2018
Human-loving trees we got ourselves here... loving humans for breakfast, of course, would we have it any other way?
I'm still not sure how to rate it. It's about 4,5, subjectively.
Objectively, we start at 5 stars (I read it, had no ranting fits and all...):
+1 star: my eyes got not workout here, I'm gonna pick something else to exercise them today;
-1 star: many POV's here, I sort of think there might be too many of them, and we are led from so far that I'm sure many readers are likely to get bored (not me);
+1 star: many POV's here, we are led down several roads simultaneously twisting and joining somewhere very far down the plot development, I think it's cool;
(Yes, I have contradictory feelings on the multi-POV feature.)
+1 star: very anthropologically oriented approach to world-building: I love how various societies sprout along the book;
+1 star: everything above happens without noticeable infodumping (seriously good job done featuring multiple societies having multiple quirks and all!);
-1 star: something was a bit off about the characters, some of whom were sort of larger than life (including the trees, the human-loving ones, and Faia, being sort of nonchalant on teaching her 2-year old kid to become a headhunter), though it's ok for fantasy.
Review TBC...
I'm still not sure how to rate it. It's about 4,5, subjectively.
Objectively, we start at 5 stars (I read it, had no ranting fits and all...):
+1 star: my eyes got not workout here, I'm gonna pick something else to exercise them today;
-1 star: many POV's here, I sort of think there might be too many of them, and we are led from so far that I'm sure many readers are likely to get bored (not me);
+1 star: many POV's here, we are led down several roads simultaneously twisting and joining somewhere very far down the plot development, I think it's cool;
(Yes, I have contradictory feelings on the multi-POV feature.)
+1 star: very anthropologically oriented approach to world-building: I love how various societies sprout along the book;
+1 star: everything above happens without noticeable infodumping (seriously good job done featuring multiple societies having multiple quirks and all!);
-1 star: something was a bit off about the characters, some of whom were sort of larger than life (including the trees, the human-loving ones, and Faia, being sort of nonchalant on teaching her 2-year old kid to become a headhunter), though it's ok for fantasy.
Review TBC...
March 18, 2015
I enjoyed this second book in the Arhel trilogy even more than the first book. The first book was entertaining, but the story was really pretty generic as far as fantasy stories go. Bones of the Past, on the other hand, had a more unique story and it too was written well.
I can’t think of any way to provide a brief synopsis of the plot without spoiling some part of it that I had fun discovering for myself, so I’m not even going to try. Well, I guess I could just limit myself to saying that there’s a society in this fictional world that has a really odd view about how to celebrate the twelfth year of a child’s life.
I really liked three out of the four main characters in the story. The fourth one was ok, but I never warmed up to her much. Two of the main characters are children/teenagers from the aforementioned odd society. The other two are adult mages. One of those is the one I never really warmed up to. The other was Medwind, the mage instructor who had discovered the main character in the previous book, Faia. Faia herself is in this book a fair amount, but I don’t believe we ever read anything from her perspective.
Both books so far have each told a complete story. I complained in my review of the first book that there was some wolf stuff that was never explained, and it wasn’t followed up on in this book either so I don’t think it was intended to be a plot thread. That book was Holly Lisle’s first novel, and I guess she was just using it to foreshadow events but forgot to consider whether it actually made sense in the context of the story. In this book, I didn’t notice anything like that. I thought everything made sense, although there was one aspect of the story near the end that I found to be way too coincidental, and there were several things related to that aspect which weren’t explained to my satisfaction.
But overall I was happy with the story and with the way most of the main plot threads were tied up. I had trouble putting the book down because I always wanted to see what would happen next, and I definitely plan to read the final book in the trilogy.
I can’t think of any way to provide a brief synopsis of the plot without spoiling some part of it that I had fun discovering for myself, so I’m not even going to try. Well, I guess I could just limit myself to saying that there’s a society in this fictional world that has a really odd view about how to celebrate the twelfth year of a child’s life.
I really liked three out of the four main characters in the story. The fourth one was ok, but I never warmed up to her much. Two of the main characters are children/teenagers from the aforementioned odd society. The other two are adult mages. One of those is the one I never really warmed up to. The other was Medwind, the mage instructor who had discovered the main character in the previous book, Faia. Faia herself is in this book a fair amount, but I don’t believe we ever read anything from her perspective.
Both books so far have each told a complete story. I complained in my review of the first book that there was some wolf stuff that was never explained, and it wasn’t followed up on in this book either so I don’t think it was intended to be a plot thread. That book was Holly Lisle’s first novel, and I guess she was just using it to foreshadow events but forgot to consider whether it actually made sense in the context of the story. In this book, I didn’t notice anything like that. I thought everything made sense, although there was one aspect of the story near the end that I found to be way too coincidental, and there were several things related to that aspect which weren’t explained to my satisfaction.
But overall I was happy with the story and with the way most of the main plot threads were tied up. I had trouble putting the book down because I always wanted to see what would happen next, and I definitely plan to read the final book in the trilogy.
March 15, 2015
This is a fast, involving and entertaining read, with some intriguing and sometimes frightening world-building. After getting to know Medwind Song in Fire in the Mist, I liked seeing her rise to main-character status in this one, and I loved the fresh insights into the culture from which she comes.
Things can get pretty gruesome (carnivorous tree-gods!), and some readers may feel a bit squeamish about Medwind's relationship with her much older husband and the exploitation of the "sharsha" girls, but this is a good book to read if you're looking for a story that shows women lending each other a helping hand. Female friendships and even complicated female rivalries are foregrounded in this book. Medwind, Faia, Seven-Fingered-Fat-Girl, Choufa, Roba, and even little Kirtha and Runs Slow are all well worth getting to know.
Things can get pretty gruesome (carnivorous tree-gods!), and some readers may feel a bit squeamish about Medwind's relationship with her much older husband and the exploitation of the "sharsha" girls, but this is a good book to read if you're looking for a story that shows women lending each other a helping hand. Female friendships and even complicated female rivalries are foregrounded in this book. Medwind, Faia, Seven-Fingered-Fat-Girl, Choufa, Roba, and even little Kirtha and Runs Slow are all well worth getting to know.
September 13, 2013
A fantastic second novel. While this does have a predecessor and some of the events from that have shaped the story, this novel is set several years after the first and has a largely different setting so it could be read as a stand alone.
This novel is largely set in the forests, with tribes who worship trees, monsters, outcasts as well as a few character from the first novel thrown in. it is a great read, and also touches on many social issues that ourselves have. For example each group believe all f the others to be savages because the do things differently, and only learn that they aren't so different when they have to work together to survive
I found it fascinating from start to finish and look forward to the third and (I believe) final novel in this series
This novel is largely set in the forests, with tribes who worship trees, monsters, outcasts as well as a few character from the first novel thrown in. it is a great read, and also touches on many social issues that ourselves have. For example each group believe all f the others to be savages because the do things differently, and only learn that they aren't so different when they have to work together to survive
I found it fascinating from start to finish and look forward to the third and (I believe) final novel in this series
February 26, 2016
This proved a good book with plenty of suspense and adventure. The author covers the story from several different viewpoint characters, which made the story stronger. I felt for the children of the Wen being outcasted by their people or ending up food for cannibal trees. All the characters were three dimensional and sympathetic. Ms. Lisle writes good books with vivid images and likable characters. If a bit grim in places, the book keeps you hooked until the end. I believe readers will enjoy this book.
January 8, 2011
I used to read all of Ms. Lisle's books. This was an odd one. The first one was a bit over the top with the man hating. This is was a decent follow up I guess.
January 28, 2011
Review to be added later.
October 22, 2011
Apparently a sequel, but worked as a stand alone novel and I did not know until later that it was a follow up book.
February 4, 2015
while this book was written well it seemed to lack something which made the characters so special
April 24, 2019
Second in the series, it doesn't rely much on the first one and is readable on it's own.
This is a pretty dark story. I like that the world is very different from others I've read. The timbre of the darker elements of the religious rites and other aspects are pretty depressing though, and colored my appreciation of the story.
This is a pretty dark story. I like that the world is very different from others I've read. The timbre of the darker elements of the religious rites and other aspects are pretty depressing though, and colored my appreciation of the story.
March 25, 2017
A fun story of travel and discovery in a world full of intriguing peoples.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews