The Entropy of Bones

Starred review from May 4, 2015
This spellbinding novel shares a setting—the present day, layered with magic—with Jama-Everett’s The Liminal People and The Liminal War, but it stands well on its own. “Normal” is not part of protagonist Chabi’s world: she was raised on a houseboat in Sausalito, Calif., and has been mute from birth, but she discovers she can push her mental voice into people’s minds. Faced with public school and its hazards, she asks a local martial arts master, Narayana, to teach her to fight. Narayana makes Chabi a weapon: a superhuman bar fighter and brawler. She’s able to shatter skeletons with her understanding of the powers of entropy. Chabi uses her deadly skills first to protect a likable trio of marijuana farmers, then as a security guard for an impossibly rich hotel magnate who’s as dangerous in his own way as Narayana. Rooted in Chabi’s voice, the story is spare, fierce, and rich, and readers will care just as much about the delicate, damaged relationship between Chabi and her mother as the threat of world destruction.

August 1, 2015

Chabi would never be like other teens in the Bay Area. Her black-Mongolian heritage, her lack of a father, her mother's alcoholism--those make her unusual but what really sets her apart is that she is liminal, able to do things that normal humans simply can't. Although mute from birth Chabi can push her thoughts into the minds of others. Trained from a young age to be an unstoppable killer by a man with shady motives, Chabi falls into a dangerous crowd led by the charismatic Rice after her mentor disappears. Before she can fall completely under Rice's sway, a man familiar with liminals tries to tell her the score. VERDICT In this follow-up to The Liminal People and The Liminal War, Jama-Everett focuses on an outsider character who can show us more of the powers at play in his world. When the novel succeeds, it does so mostly on the strength of Chabi's voice.--MM

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