Broken Souls and Bones (Broken Souls and Bones, #1) by L.J. Andrews Series: Broken Souls and Bones #1
Published by Ace on April 29, 2025
Genres: Fantasy
Pages: 480
Format: eBook
Source: Netgalley
I received this book for free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
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Together they’ll restore a divided kingdom—or burn it down—in this new romantasy from USA Today bestselling author and TikTok sensation LJ Andrews.
Lyra Bien intended to live a quiet life to avoid the attention of the magic-obsessed king in the fortress of Stonegate. Until Roark Ashwood—the prince’s silent guard and rumored killer for the crown—invades her village and uncovers the truth behind the silver scars in her eyes. To save her best friend from death, she’s forced to reveal her abilities, and is immediately claimed by the crown as the next melder.
To be the King’s melder is to be revered and feared in equal measures, but above all it is a slow death sentence. Lyra is determined to find a way to free herself and her friends from bondage. But first she must get more information from the silent, brooding sentry who first took her captive: Roark.
As Lyra gets closer to Roark, she soon learns he’s nothing like she assumed—and in fact everything she needs. The more they work as allies, the harder it becomes to ignore the growing passion between them. After a sinister truth is revealed, Roark and Lyra must choose to stand against all they know, or accept their dark destiny.
Loved the characters. Hated the world building.
Let’s get straight to the literal bones of Broken Souls and Bones.
The characters were great–The main characters (Lyra and Roark) and secondary characters (Prince Thane and his betrothed and Lyra’s BFF, Kael Darkwin). I loved them all but not even great characters could keep me invested in a story with silly world building.
Roark Ashwood was tossed out and maimed as a youngster for failing his people in Dravenmoor. Now unable to speak, he was taken in by the Kingdom of Jorvandal but the king didn’t expect much from him, giving him to Prince Thane as a guard. This is the best thing to have happened as Roark and the prince are like brothers. Now that Roark is such a dangerous warrior, commanding a great deal of respect from the army, the King wants Lyra to remove bond with the prince and give one to him instead. Together Thane and Roark created their own sign language so Roark could communicate and while only a few bothered to learn more than the basics, Roark doesn’t care to converse with most people anyway. I can’t imagine how being unable to speak would work during a battle. He has a translator while giving orders and making rousing speeches but what about in the heat of battle? Making Roark use sign language to converse gave his character an extra depth, and it also made it easier for us to know the nature of the secondary characters simply due to whether or not they could be bothered to learn to communicate with Roark. Upon Lyra’s abduction from her small town, she jumped on the booklet of hand signals because she was fascinated by it and wanted to know what Roark was saying.
Lyra Bien has a strong, intelligent personality which helped her fight the darkness that takes over most melders. Having a strong backbone also helped her stand up to Roark and the demands of the King. She was told to hide all her life since she had the gift of a melder and melders were always forced into the service of the king. Melders fuse bones of the dead onto hosts, usually strong warriors as a boost to their strength.
I got through about 60% of the story but I didn’t enjoy the whole soul-bone melding thing. First of all, in order to fuse the soul-bone to your bone, Lyra has to reach your bones. Not only does she cut the skin, she has to get to your bone so that is cutting through your muscle with a regular old knife, no anesthesia, and let’s hope you don’t get an infection. Although an infection could be the least of your problems as the soul of the dead warrior fuses with you. Who is this guy? You don’t get to choose who it is. “Is that Todd? He was an asshole. I don’t want to be part-Todd forever. And he was a sucky warrior, he died during training by tripping over his own feet and falling on his own sword. Who else to you have in that bucket?” They just have a bucket of bone slivers from dead warriors, and this person’s personality becomes part of yours but we aren’t getting any choices or backgrounds on these people. It’s not like the bucket is full of bones from their greatest warriors. I don’t think I would want to risk it.
The first thing they do to make sure Lyra is the melder they have been searching for is shatters the bones of her BFF, Kael. Lyra has been hiding her whole life and doesn’t even know how to meld. Thankfully, she has a natural talent for it and fixes him but what a way to earn the loyalty of your new, forced-into-service melder, making her rebuild her friend in a panic. Really?
Lyra also goes into a trace as she melds but mentally she is in a dream realm where another cloaked warrior appears (definitely not Roark) who is threatening to kill her for doing her job–which she doesn’t even want to do–because she is stealing souls. So she has the King making her meld these bones onto warriors and then this guy in her dream world threatening to take a soul for each one she steals.
And as long as I am ranting, this nutty king also has his mender take a sliver of bone from each of his warriors (Each!!! How many does he have 1,000? 10,000?) and he has that sliver of bone attached to his skull as a show of loyalty, but it also seems to force that loyalty. That’s 1,000 or 10,000 cuts into his head! Now what happens when that warrior dies? Does it slough off in his head? Does it hurt? Does he get a sharp pain or a headache when 100 warriors go out and die in battle?
While menders have the most coveted (only by the King) gift, there are also bone crafters, blood crafters and soul crafters. Jorvandal has bone crafters. They can make bone weapons or armor–usually out of animal bones–but they can also reach over and shatter the bones in your body. We don’t even hear much about the soul or blood crafters, at least on the first 60 percent, and I am guessing they will be part of future stories as this is Book #1.
This was a tough one and what I felt was a terrible waste of characters since they were wonderful charactes but unfortunately, I am not overly excited about the world-building and the whole using soul/blood/bone magic. As much as I liked the characters, I just couldn’t keep reading and I certainly wasn’t going to invest the time in a whole series.
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