The Road of Bones by Demi Winters

Tropes, Quotes and Spicy Notes

What makes you pick up a book?

Is it seeing it on Bookstagram or Booktok?

Maybe your favorite audiobook narrator is who tells the story?

Is it the cover and summary of the story?

And maybe it’s something else entirely.

I’m a cover and summary person usually. I have many memories of looking through used bookstores and new and picking up an interesting cover and seeing if the summary catches my eye.

The Road of Bones was not one of those books.

I was looking for a book to get out of my reading slump. I poked around Booktok, looked at my Amazon to see what it recommended and finally went to Reddit to see what fantasy novels were being discussed.

There was where I found The Road of Bones by Demi Winters. The post really just talked tropes and mentioned that it had an interesting magic system that was different from others they had read about recently.

It was free on Kindle Unlimited which was a bonus for me. So down onto the Kindle it went and after I finished the last bit of a book I was on I started it.

It was not what I was expecting in the best way possible.

First, let’s talk tropes.

I like twisty plots and found family tropes. They are amoung my favorites.

And trust me, this book is twisty! I usually feel like I can call a twist. This book definitely proved me wrong.

Silla Nordvig lives with her father on a Jarl’s Homestead. (Jarl is a Scandinavian title that refers to a noble who ranks below a king and rules a territory in the king's stead.) The book opens hard and fast, throwing you straight into the world, it’s religion and structure.

Silla’s father decides that it’s time for them to move on. There is a shield-house that he wants them to move on to in Kopa.

And of course, this is where everything starts to fall apart. Her and her father are attacked, and her father dies telling her she must follow The Road of Bones.

All poor Silla wanted was a home with a yard and some chickens.

Now she is on the run from mercenaries sent by the Queen of Íseldur, trying to make it to the shield-house her father told her to go to…to find safety there.

She ends up in a wagon with a group that may be as dangerous as the mercenaries chasing her.

Can she earn their trust? Or will they kill her first?

One of the reasons I like this book is that not only is Silla an amazing character in her own right, and her story through the book shows her battling her own demons…but that all the characters around her are just as nuanced and built out so that I personally felt like I could reach through the book and join them in a drinking hall.

I rated this book as a 5 star read, one of my top books of 2024. I personally would say this book is a high fantasy novel with a romantic subplot…and the spice rating is around 2 chili peppers.

The Blood Axe Crew is full of friends who would protect each other to the end. And Silla is a ball of sunshine who is having to touch darkness for the first time without her father, the one person she thought she could trust.

I have two quotes I want to share to hopefully encourage you to read this book and get hooked as much as me.

“Let them think us lambs, when truly, we are wolves.”

“Tell me she did not just apologize to a rock?”

The Road of Bones is the first of 5 books in The Ashen Series, and the second book releases in hardback on 02/04/2025. It releases on 11/05/2024 at bookstores nationwide and online. If you want to see it in your local bookstores you should definitely request it!