Review--The Road of Bones by Demi Winters

 

A woman on the run. A crew of Viking mercenaries. A forbidden romance. And the secret which threatens them all.

Silla Nordvig is running for her life.

The queen of Íseldur has sent warriors to bring Silla to Sunnavík, where death awaits her. When her father is killed, his last words set Silla on a perilous quest: travel the treacherous Road of Bones–a thousand-mile stretch haunted by warbands, creatures of darkness, and a mysterious murderer–and go to Kopa, where a shield-house awaits her.

After barely surviving the first stretch of road, a desperate Silla sneaks into a supply wagon belonging to the notorious Bloodaxe Crew. To make it to Kopa, she must win over Axe Eyes, the brooding leader of the Crew, while avoiding the Wolf, his distractingly handsome right-hand man. But the queen’s ruthless assassin has other plans and hunts Silla obsessively.

Will Silla make it safely to Kopa? Or will she fall prey to the perils of the Road of Bones?

Featuring an immersive world blending fairy tale with Vikings, The Road of Bones leads you on an adrenaline-fueled chase with fun banter and a slow-building enemies to lovers romance. 

So I FINALLY picked up The Road of Bones by Demi Winters and oh boy, was this a mammoth of a book! Yes, I've longer ones on my TBR, but for some reason this one felt heavy to start my new year of reading out with, but Demi is coming here next month, so I thought I'd try to get at least this one read in time! Lol. This was a very thorough fantasy story that swept me up into a whole new world with new forms of magic, people, weaponry, and everything else in between and I cannot wait to get back to it!

This is definitely a book you'll want to jot down notes for unless you have the memory of an elephant and for that I envy you! There is so much history to this world, so much that happens, that a few bullet points might serve you well when it comes time for sequels and since I'm over 2 years late into the game, who am I to offer that kind of advice? Lol.

Silla's world is uprooted when she and her father are attacked on the road and he dies protecting her. With his last breath he tells her to go to Kopa to find safety and Silla is quick to take his dying breath advice. But Kopa is a long way away, many weeks of travel and she is a young woman alone and in this world, young women must always be accompanied by male family member or husband.

Silla ends up sneaking a ride in a wagon and learns very quickly just whose wagon it is, it's the Bloodaxe Crew. They are a widely known group of thieves/bandits who are highly dangerous, but we really get the inside scoop that they are muscle for hire. They take on dangerous jobs and when they are given a job to deliver something very important to another city, they take it, for the money of course.

Silver-tongue Silla convinces the group to bring her to Kopa or as far as they can manage and she'd work for them, doing whatever she could as payment. Their leader, Rey, is reluctant to allow this strange woman into their fold, but essentially gets outvoted.

Then this is where things get very interesting as a strange not quiet enemies-to-lovers romance starts between Silla and Jonas, Rey's right-hand man. They definitely have that back and forth kind of banter where you can practically feel the heat coming off of them! The tension was rife and I could not decide what I wanted to happen, but that is just something you will have to read for yourself.

This story is thick, massively thick. Yes, perhaps just cresting 500 pages isn't saying too much these days, but when you're a slow reader like I am, anything over 400 feels like a massive accomplishment! Lol. Keeping that in mind, I felt like the pacing was about what you could expect from a detailed fantasy story like this. There's always those pages where things get stretched out a little too thin. You wonder if perhaps we could've dialed back a bit here and there, but I digress. I can see where most of it was necessary but the occasional scene or two felt like a bit too much. 

The romance was very intense! The enemies-to-lovers vibe rang strong and burned fiercely, and you could almost sense a love triangle on the horizon. I feel like that might have fizzled out by the end, but it's still very early into this series. I can see now we have at least three plus a novella (yes, everything has been ordered and I await their arrival!) but I tend not to dive too deep into finding out facts about a series when I need to get caught up because there be spoilers in those blurbs sometimes! Learned that the hard way once upon a time. Couldn't tell you what book it was though, lol.

There are multiple points of view in this one which does help with such a hefty page count. It lets you get around the story more and see what's happening on all the fronts as there is quite a bit of groundwork to be laid out and much is happening behind the scenes that I feel will be very present in the coming tomes.

If you're looking for a breathtaking fantasy filled with action, violence, magic, romance, and a few surprises, then I'd be sure to add Demi Winters' The Ashen series to your TBR piles as it's not one to be missed!

Overall Rating 4.5/5 stars