#ndbook

Point 1: the plot

So the center plot is these three brothers called the Bone brothers are run out of their town and traveling the desert. They get separated and find their way to another town that has never even heard of their kind. At the same time, a girl named Thorn and her grandmother Rose meet the Bones at different points and uncover secrets about their family as they try to figure out how to get the brothers home and why all these dark creatures are showing up.

Pretty basic plot of finding home and all these secrets. It’s not all that special of a plot, either. How often have we heard about lost main characters, family secrets, or dark forces rising up out of nowhere and gunning straight for the central characters? Pretty often, I bet, but not in quite the way Bone does it.

What sets familiar tropes and stories apart is how they are structured. If a story has all the same elements in the same order with just a few things changed, it gets pretty old. Eragon got away with it by including a unique world with dragons and magic (especially the sequels, when Christopher Paolini wasn’t fifteen years old), but the structure is basically a dressed-up Star Wars plot. 50 Shades of Grey is the most embarrassing example of this, being exactly like Twilight but with actual sex and a few minor changes to get past the masses that don’t know better. You can look at Bone’s story and think it sounds like a lot of fantasy stories that you have read, but at the same time, it is unique. Sure, all the tropes are there, but in their own unique order and spin of them. 

All in all, I award the plot with 1 point out of 2.

Point 2: the characters

This is where the story shines the most. Again, many character tropes are included, but with a good spin of things. Let’s start with the Bones. Fone Bone, Smiley Bone, and Phoney Bone are just as you expect them to be. Phoney is fake, Smiley is always smiling, and Fone is... a good listener? (because phone). However, as the story progresses, you see character progression and several parts to the characters that you would not expect from just meeting them. Fone is a nerd that loves to read, simply enough. He gets all lovey with the main girl, Thorn, and doesn’t tell her how he feels ever. Typical nerd behavior. When Fone gets thrust into this world of adventure, he takes up arms and becomes a hero like in the books he reads. However, even if he is shown as a sweet nerd, there are times when he acts really entitled because of how much better he is than his brothers and how he believes he cares for Thorn more than anyone else. So, basically, like real life nerd boys.

Thorn is my favorite female protagonist of any media. She is a very strong feminist character and she doesn’t show it by being radical or going into “women can do anything men can do” rants that some writers feel the need to put in at some point to make female characters important. Thorn reacts like any girl would in her situation, but makes it 10x better. Meets a weird creature (Fone Bone) in the forest that claimed to know her? Is suspicious but also sasses him. Fone tells her that he’ll handle the chores because he’s a man? Proceeds to do all the chores when he couldn’t even lift an ax to cut wood with. Dark rat creatures break into her house and run her into the woods? Picks up a stick and tries to fight them off. Finds out she’s actually a princess? Gets mad and becomes a badass with a sword.

I can go on and on about the characters. There’s a dragon that makes Fone Bone look like he’s crazy on purpose, there’s Fone Bone’s brothers who are a good duo and have the most character development, there’s Grandma Rose who’s literally a cow racer that kicks ass and is actually a queen, etc. Thus, I think the characters deserve 2 full points.

Point 3: Setting

The world established within the world of Bone is a little all over the place. You cannot tell where anything really is. Bones lived in Boneville and no one seems to know what that is except for the Bone brothers and the so-called “villagers”. It’s apparently a mountain and a desert away from the village Thorn lives in. It is a medieval setting... somewhat. Currency works on a barter system, there is/was a royal family, and there are no technological advancements that I can make out. Magic is a thing, but it’s not prominent; it only works with the bad guy and the royal family. Dragons exist but are semi-extinct. No one actually knows they exist except the Bones and Grandma Rose. There is a lot of traveling in the stories, but you’d need a good map to be able to tell.

As the setting isn’t a good selling point for this story, it gets no points.

Point 4: Misc.

The author said, in his forward, that the comics were released by chapters at first and then were compiled into volumes. Most readers did not know they were a full story with plot and reoccurring characters until the volumes came out. This is a good thing because it means that the story can stand on its own in separate chunks without confusing the reader. I myself picked up the second volume of the series, which starts with Fone Bone already with Thorn away from his brothers, at a school library and I had no problem understanding what was going on aside from knowing characters from the moment they are mentioned. 

The art style is very simple but quite beautiful. The Bones just look like little deformed skeleton people (side note: when Undertale came out, I didn’t know where Sans and Papyrus came from, so I thought they were OCs from the Bones or something). Thorn and the other humans were incredibly drawn. The main villain, who works with bugs, was masterfully drawn with all the tiny bugs surrounding them. The scenery was also crafted nicely, despite the setting not being set correctly.

I would give it 2 full points for the above things.

It has its moments of dark tones, with death and necromancy at work, but it also has a nice balance of humor and adventure. It does not need to kill off characters, include rape or violence, and introduce great tragedy to be a great and realistic fantasy story. There is love and drama; there is death and sadness; there are dragons and rat creatures that love quiche. It still manages to be a very good fantasy story.

Overall: 5/8