
Speaking Bones
The Dandelion Dynasty, Book 4
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Narrated by:
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Michael Kramer
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By:
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Ken Liu
About this listen
The battle continues in this silkpunk fantasy as science and destiny collide against the will of the gods in this final installment in the epic Dandelion Dynasty series from the “genius” (Elizabeth Bear, Hugo Award–winning author of the Eternal Sky series) Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Award–winning author Ken Liu.
The concluding book of The Dandelion Dynasty begins immediately after the events of The Veiled Throne, in the middle of two wars on two lands among three people separated by an ocean yet held together by the invisible strands of love.
Harried by Lyucu pursuers, Princess Théra and Pékyu Takval try to reestablish an ancestral dream even as their hearts grow in doubt. The people of Dara continue to struggle against the genocidal Lyucu as both nations vacillate between starkly contrasting visions for their futures. Even the gods cannot see through the Wall of Storms, for only mortal hearts can decide mortal fates.
Award-winning author Ken Liu fulfills the covenants first laid out a decade ago in a series delving deep into the connection between national myths and national constitutions in this “magnificent fantasy epic” (NPR).
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About the Creator
Featured Article: Best of the Year—The 12 Best Fantasy Listens of 2022
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- By KBergin on 10-03-20
By: Guy Gavriel Kay
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Tigana
- By: Guy Gavriel Kay
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 24 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Eight of the nine Palm provinces of the Peninsula have been overcome by warrior sorcerers Brandin and Alberico. But the sorcerers don't know that a small band of survivors is plotting their removal. With tensions mounting, the sorcerers become increasingly at odds as each decides where his own path - and that of the land - should truly lie.
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A little self-indulgent
- By Diana M. on 05-31-20
By: Guy Gavriel Kay
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Musashi
- By: Eiji Yoshikawa, Charles S. Terry - translator
- Narrated by: Brian Nishii
- Length: 53 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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The classic samurai novel about the real exploits of the most famous swordsman. Miyamoto Musashi becomes a reluctant hero to a host of people whose lives he has touched and by whom he has been touched. Inevitably, he has to pit his skill against the naked blade of his greatest rival.
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Good Historical Novel
- By The Walking Dude on 08-11-19
By: Eiji Yoshikawa, and others
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Empire of the Vampire
- Book One
- By: Jay Kristoff
- Narrated by: Damian Lynch
- Length: 27 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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It has been twenty-seven long years since the last sunrise. For nearly three decades, vampires have waged war against humanity; building their eternal empire even as they tear down our own. Now, only a few tiny sparks of light endure in a sea of darkness.
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So good
- By donna on 09-16-21
By: Jay Kristoff
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The Shadow of the Gods
- By: John Gwynne
- Narrated by: Colin Mace
- Length: 18 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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After the old gods warred and drove themselves to extinction, the cataclysm of their fall shattered the land of Vigrio. Now, power-hungry jarls carve out petty kingdoms, and monsters stalk the shadow-haunted woods and mountains. A world where the bones of the dead gods still hold great power, promising fame, and fortune for those brave - or desperate - enough to seek them out. As whispers of war echo over the plains and across the fjords, fate follows the footsteps of three people. All three will shape the fate of the world, as it once more teeters on the edge of chaos.
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Not for me
- By John on 05-31-21
By: John Gwynne
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The Water Outlaws
- By: S. L. Huang
- Narrated by: Emily Woo Zeller
- Length: 19 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Lin Chong is an expert arms instructor, training the Emperor's soldiers in sword and truncheon, battle axe and spear, lance and crossbow. Unlike bolder friends who flirt with challenging the unequal hierarchies and values of Imperial society, she believes in keeping her head down and doing her job. But then a powerful man with a vendetta rips that carefully built life away.
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Good listen!
- By Kristi Bach on 10-19-23
By: S. L. Huang
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His Dark Materials: Once upon a Time in the North
- By: Philip Pullman
- Narrated by: David Harewood
- Length: 2 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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In this prequel episode from Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials universe, Lee Scoresby—Texan aeronaut and future friend to Lyra Belacqua—is just 24 years old, and he's recently won his hot-air balloon in a poker game. He finds himself floating North to the windswept Arctic island of Novy Odense, where he and his hare daemon Hester are quickly tangled in a deadly plot involving an oil magnate, a corrupt mayoral candidate, and Lee's longtime nemesis from the Dakota Country, a hired killer with at least twenty murders to his name.
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Great story
- By Wendy Strgar, sagebrushbooks on 10-04-24
By: Philip Pullman
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The Forgetting Moon
- By: Brian Lee Durfee
- Narrated by: Tim Gerard Reynolds
- Length: 30 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Welcome to the Five Isles, where war has come in the name of the invading army of Sor Sevier, a merciless host driven by the prophetic fervor of the Angel Prince, Aeros, toward the last unconquered kingdom of Gul Kana. Yet Gault, one of the elite Knights Archaic of Sor Sevier, is growing disillusioned by the crusade he is at the vanguard of just as it embarks on his Lord Aeros' greatest triumph. While the eldest son of the fallen king of Gul Kana now reigns in ever increasing paranoid isolationism, his two sisters seek their own paths.
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alright-ish
- By Matthew on 05-10-19
By: Brian Lee Durfee
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Stalking Jack the Ripper: Booktrack Edition
- By: Kerri Maniscalco, James Patterson foreword
- Narrated by: Nicola Barber
- Length: 9 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Seventeen-year-old Audrey Rose Wadsworth was born a lord's daughter, with a life of wealth and privilege stretched out before her. But between the social teas and silk dress fittings, she leads a forbidden secret life. Against her stern father's wishes and society's expectations, Audrey often slips away to her uncle's laboratory to study the gruesome practice of forensic medicine. When her work on a string of savagely killed corpses drags Audrey into the investigation of a serial murderer, her search for answers brings her close to her own sheltered world.
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Such a delectable, enGROSSING tale that leaves your heart pounding (or stolen)!
- By kristias on 09-07-18
By: Kerri Maniscalco, and others
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The Lions of Al-Rassan
- By: Guy Gavriel Kay
- Narrated by: Euan Morton
- Length: 19 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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The ruling Asharites of Al-Rassan have come from the desert sands, but over centuries, seduced by the sensuous pleasures of their new land, their stern piety has eroded. The Asharite empire has splintered into decadent city-states led by warring petty kings. King Almalik of Cartada is on the ascendancy, aided always by his friend and advisor, the notorious Ammar ibn Khairan - poet, diplomat, soldier - until a summer afternoon of savage brutality changes their relationship forever.
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Lots of drama
- By KH on 10-12-12
By: Guy Gavriel Kay
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The Farseer: Assassin's Apprentice
- By: Robin Hobb
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 17 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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With unforgettable characters, a sweeping backdrop, and passionate storytelling, this is a fantasy debut to rival that of Robert Jordan. Filled with adventure and bloodshed, pageantry and piracy, mystery and menace, Assassin's Apprentice is the story of a royal house and the young man who is destined to chart its course through tempests of change.
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Not a waste of 83 hours...just the 60 I spent.
- By Sean on 01-07-13
By: Robin Hobb
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The Children of Gods and Fighting Men
- Gael Song, Book 1
- By: Shauna Lawless
- Narrated by: Aoife McMahon
- Length: 14 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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981 AD. The Viking King of Dublin is dead. His young widow, Gormflaith, has ambitions for her son – and herself – but Ireland is a dangerous place and kings tend not to stay kings for long. Gormflaith also has a secret. She is one of the Fomorians, an immortal race who can do fire-magic. She has kept her powers hidden at all costs, for there are other immortals in this world – like the Tuatha DE Danann, a race of warriors who are sworn to kill Fomorians.
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Characters hard to follow
- By Brittany on 08-14-23
By: Shauna Lawless
What listeners say about Speaking Bones
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- Reece Palmer
- 11-12-24
ties it all together fantastically
plot was well thought out and I'd like a little more at the end of Sarah's reign but it all tied together fantastically
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- Sarah Meiselman
- 08-04-22
It was a pleasure to bring this story to life
You have already come this far. Do the most interesting thing, and give this tale a listen.
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- Kendra
- 12-18-23
Rich Fantasy
It's unusual for me to read a multi-POV fantasy that makes me love (nearly) all the characters. Liu does an incredible job bringing you in to the heart of his characters so that even if you dislike (or loathe) what they're doing, even if you dislike them, you love them. I can tell this is a series I will return to in future because I will be continuing to revisit these characters and places in my mind for years.
I would recommend this to any lover of expansive, well populated fantasy novels. Although a novice to the genre might find it overwhelming, fans (like myself) will find a great story to sink our teeth into that will leave us wanting a bit more in the best, sweetest way.
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- Brad G
- 08-17-22
great ending to the series
Ken really stuck the landing on this series. I knew it was going to be a classic when the head orphan ninja lady made me cry.
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- Megan Gardner
- 05-16-23
really good after book 3
this book really picked up after book 3. I was pretty hooked the whole time and fell in love with the series again. The ending chefs kiss
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- Jefferson
- 08-08-24
An Epic Fantasy SF Novel of Ideas
Whew! The fourth and final volume in Ken Liu’s epic fantasy sf (“silkpunk”) series, Speaking Bones (2022), is massive—41 hours as an audiobook (well-read by Michael Kramer). It houses a large and varied cast of compelling point of view characters with conflicting motivations, contrasting situations, and interesting development arcs, from teachers, heroes, rulers, and gods to children, soldiers, traitors, and priests. They include several strong and intelligent women, and they come from multiple different settings on different continents and islands with different environments and geographical features and cultures and histories and gods and languages and so on. It is a fully realized secondary world.
Into that world, Liu writes several extended, suspenseful, big scale, high stakes battle scenes featuring new technologies/weapons, dragon-analogues, deception, and momentum changes. Into that world he incorporates many ideas about nature, religion, language, translation, calligraphy, logograms, tradition, classics, cooking, engineering, martial arts, music, poetry, philosophy (with moralist, fluxist, incentivist, mendist schools, and the like); violence and the use of force vs. pacifism and assimilation; the best and worst ways to wield political power (the grace of kings); the interlocking nature of all life; xenophobia and cross cultural communication; the degrees to which enemies become like each other; the destructiveness of revenge; religious and supernatural versus scientific and natural worldviews; and much more.
It often reads like an SF book of ideas at least as much as an epic fantasy. And adhering to the idea that “the universe is knowable,” Liu gives many detailed physical accounts of HOW things work (airships, ornithopters, wind-up mechanisms, logograms, fire-breathing “dragons,” giant bone constructs, “writing mirrors,” and more). There is more technology and science than magic and fantasy here.
The first of the four novels begins with a setting and situation inspired by Chinese history and wuxia and then the second one opens everything up to other cultures and situations from the other side of the world. This fourth book in the series begins with the abdicated Daran Empress Thera and her Agon Prince husband Takval and their small band of multicultural exiles on the run from the tyrannical Lyucu (more than nomadic barbarians) in the Lyucu and Agon’s continent of origin Ukyu-Gonde. As she is adapting herself to life in her adopted home, Thera desperately wants to unite the Agon to find a way to stop a second Lyucu fleet from being launched to complete the invasion of Dara, but she and her followers seem too few. Unknown to Thera and Takval, their young sons are far away, struggling to survive in the verboten City of Ghosts with a bunch of kids and a scholar and a shaman.
Meanwhile, in Dara on the other side of the almost always impassable Wall of Storms, Thera’s brother Phyro is preparing to lead a war to free two of their several home islands from the oppression of the Lyucu invaders while his aunt-mother and regent, Empress Jia, is working on her own secret, ruthless scheme involving smugglers and drugs and propaganda, while the Lyucu occupation leader Tanvanaki struggles to maintain control of the occupied islands, as her Lyucu officers have fractured into hardliners who want to eradicate the culture of the enslaved the local Darans and accommodationists who want to assimilate with the locals. The old wheelchair-bound Daran inventor Rati is developing programmable wind-up machines to help Phyro’s cause, while Savo, a half-Lyucu, half-Daran young man is trying to find a way to live in the world without taking sides against either of his parent’s people. That summary only scratches the surface.
Liu’s writing through all of the above is clean and clear. He writes plenty of culturally and situationally apt similes, like when an old man’s hair looks “like a dandelion’s puffball blowing in the wind.” And when Liu gets excited by something like food preparation (he is really into food as it reveals culture and satisfies the body and soul), he rises to the occasion:
“The kitchen was preparing something he hadn't tasted before, and his mouth watered at the delicious aromas. There was a fruity scent—maybe a rose-pip-and-monkeyberry coulis—as well as something richer—perhaps roasted pine nuts sprinkled with sea salt and Faca lantern peppers stuffed with stone ear mushrooms and cacanut flakes. His stomach growled in anticipation. The summer breeze carried other scents that painted vivid pictures in his mind: flat bread pockets filled with taro paste, lotus roots, and dried berry chunks; lightly toasted seasonal wild vegetables; hearty soup made from eight types of gourds and four herbs…”
I like Liu’s major themes:
—Where doubt ends evil begins.
—We have a duty to reduce suffering for all life forms.
—Cultural interaction and hybridization are preferrable to war.
—To make life interesting and to adapt to new conditions is more rewarding and constructive than following tradition and rejecting change.
—Like the string of a kite, history should tether us to the ground while helping us fly.
—The divine may be experienced through the mundane.
—There’s nothing more mysterious and complicated than the human heart.
He also thoughtfully explores real world problems like the difficulty of former victims and oppressors coexisting without continuing cycles of reprisal and revenge.
I think the four-novel series could be a bit shorter (each book is longer than the previous one, and I felt a sense of relief when I finally finished), but I am glad to have read the whole thing. My favorite sequence in the four novels is the wonderful multi-chapter epic cooking competition between rival restaurants in the third book, but this fourth one also has many remarkable and or moving and or devastating moments.
The ending of the novel is satisfying. I keep hating and pitying Empress Jia: is she a villainous heroine or a heroic villain? The (same sex) relationship between separated Thera and Zomi is sweet and potent. The sequence where Thera has to make Takval’s spirit portrait is fascinating and heart breaking. The speaking bones of the title are a wonderful conception.
Fans of intelligent, vividly imagined epic fantasy that is maybe really science fiction would probably like these books.
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- Tyler
- 04-24-24
the focus on engineered solutions and how creative the characters were.
I really enjoyed how plausible the poor decisions made by characters were. How you can be like no that's so stupid but still understand how someone would make that same decision.
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- snorts
- 07-05-22
Epic series
Combining all of the genre's and real old world history was awesomely awsome. Thank you for such a glimpse into the Dandelion Dynasty.
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- Misty Magda
- 05-09-24
4.5/5 One of the best series I've read, but complicated to recommend.
I'll try to summarize. if you love a slow pace, excellent prose, well developed world, with not one, but a world full of excellent charecters and charecter development and some of the finest example of long form writing done recently, and an interest in a story rooted in a different culture, or fantasy/steam punk that touches on relevant topics and issues thar can be applied to todays world, check this series out and do it now.
If you don't like any of the above, or are a very adherent reader to a quicker pace with a lot of action, mindless steamy sex interwoven in, or don't have the patience for large reading times, sadly you would be best served to avoid this series.
But I know for me personally, this series going to stick with me long after I've distanced myself from it, it was an experience that shouldn't be missed.
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- Tkinsey3
- 03-15-23
My Favorite Series In Decades
Although I finished Speaking Bones nearly two weeks ago, I have found it very difficult to come up with the right words to construct a review here. Both because I don't want to spoil those who have not listened to this audiobook (or series), but also because I genuinely have no idea how to categorize or describe the experience I've had with the Dandelion Dynasty over the last six months.
So I will keep it short and sweet. I loved this audiobook, and I loved this series.
Although there was heartache and loss (far more than I expected, to be honest), the ending was cathartic and exactly what the series required.
Perhaps the highest compliment I can pay the story is to repeat what I wrote in my review of the previous audiobook in the series: I never wanted to stop listening.
Despite how dark things sometimes got, I never wanted to leave. Not just because I needed to know how things would be resolved, but because I love this world and these characters, and became so entranced by Ken Liu's addictive writing style.
Dandelion Dynasty is a masterpiece - thematically, stylistically, and substantively. It has impacted me in a way that only a few other works - probably only Lord of the Rings, ASOIAF, and Wheel of Time - have before.
I would recommend it to anyone and everyone, and I plan to listen to again it for many years to come.
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