The Bone Raiders

The Bone Raiders

Jackson Ford

Book - 2025

"You don't mess with the Rakada. The people living in the grasslands of the Tapestry call them the Bone Raiders, from their charming habit of displaying the bones of those they kill on their horses and armor. But being a raider is tough these days. There's a new Great Khan in the Tapestry. He's had it with the raider clans and plans to use his sizable military to do something about it. And then there are the araatan: fire-breathing lizards the size of elephants, roaming the grasslands in search of dwindling food supplies. Sayana is a Rakada scout, and she loves her job. But if she wants to keep it, she's going to have to do something drastic. Like convincing her clan to ride araatan instead of horses. Sayana doesn&#...039;t quite know how to bridle the beasts without being eaten and/or cooked alive, but she'd better figure it out fast - or she and her clan, along with every other raider in the Tapestry, will be wiped out"--Back cover.

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Subjects
Clans > Fiction.
Monsters > Fiction.
Imaginary places > Fiction.
Imaginary wars and battles > Fiction.
Fantasy fiction.
Action and adventure fiction.
Novels.
Genres
Fantasy fiction
Action and adventure fiction
Novels
Published
New York, NY : Orbit 2025.
Language
English
Main Author
Jackson Ford (author)
Edition
First edition
Physical Description
471 pages : map ; 21 cm
ISBN
9780316577694
Contents unavailable.
Review by Booklist Review

Bone raider Sayana is scouting out a village to loot when she is discovered. She's tied up to a post, about to be cruelly dispatched when an araatan, a giant, alligatorlike creature that breathes fire, shows its ugly face. In desperation, Sayana manages to get loose and finds herself seated on the neck of the monster. Not only do her fellow raiders (five of them) show up but so does a battalion of the Khan's troops, who were there to make sure the villagers were following the royal decree to abandon their homes and migrate to Karkarum. Sayana discovers that by grabbing the stubby protuberances on the araatan's head, she can steer the creature. By harnessing the ferocious beast, the bone raiders could become defenders of the villages of the Tapestry rather than predators. It doesn't turn out to be easy, with loss and betrayals before the end. Ford (A Sh*tload of Crazy Powers, 2022) begins this new series with quirky characters, loads of great action sequences, and his trademark brand of humor.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

In the Rakada series launch, Ford (the Frost Files series) crafts a gritty yet buoyant saga of raiders trading their horses for dragons. The Rakada, also called the Bone Raiders due to their skeletal armor, are fighting against the consolidation of their hunting grounds, known as the Tapestry, by the Khan of Karkorum. When their raid on a village is crashed by a giant fire-breathing lizard, Sayana, the Rakada Princess, gets swept up onto its back and clings on for dear life--before realizing the beast is rideable as a horse. This sparks an idea: if her people can harness the monsters as mounts, surely they can beat the Khan. Failing to convince the other Rakada of the wisdom of this plan, she decides to kidnap a beast trainer out of Karkorum, right under the nose of the trainer's sister, who is the Khan's Right Hand. Amid the relentless action, Ford draws from Mongol history to fully develop his Rakada protagonists, showing their moral quandaries and ethical uneasiness. This is a promising start. Agent: Ed Wilson, Johnson & Alcock Literary. (Aug.)

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