
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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She Who Knows
- She Who Knows, Book 1
- By: Nnedi Okorafor
- Narrated by: Yetide Badaki
- Length: 4 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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When there is a call, there is often a response. Najeeba knows. She has had The Call. But how can a 13-year-old girl have the Call? Only men and boys experience the annual call to the Salt Roads. What’s just happened to Najeeba has never happened in the history of her village. But it’s not a terrible thing, just strange. So when she leaves with her father and brothers to mine salt at the Dead Lake, there’s neither fanfare nor protest.
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fantastic addition to this story
- By W. Rainier on 08-22-24
By: Nnedi Okorafor
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Jade Shards
- Stories
- By: Fonda Lee
- Narrated by: Andrew Kishino
- Length: 3 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Fonda Lee returns to the acclaimed Green Bone Saga with four prequel short stories that delve into the personal histories of the Kaul and Ayt families.
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Listen to these prequels only after the series
- By 🔥 Phx17 🔥 on 07-13-24
By: Fonda Lee
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The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories
- By: Ken Liu
- Narrated by: Corey Brill, Joy Osmanski
- Length: 15 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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With his debut novel, The Grace of Kings, taking the literary world by storm, Ken Liu now shares his finest short fiction in The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories. This mesmerizing collection features all of Ken's award-winning and award-finalist stories.
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Fantastic collection, great stories!
- By Renee Tang on 05-17-18
By: Ken Liu
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ILLBORN
- The Illborn Saga, Book One
- By: Daniel T. Jackson
- Narrated by: Nathaniel Priestley
- Length: 22 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Long ago, The Lord Aiduel emerged from the deserts of the Holy Land, possessed with divine powers. He used these to forcibly unite the peoples of Angall, before His ascension to heaven. Over eight hundred years later, in a medieval world which is threatened by war and religious persecution, four young men and women begin to develop supernatural abilities. These forbidden and secret powers will shatter the lives that they have known, and will force each of them to confront the mystery of the ethereal Gate which haunts their dreams.
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A Fun and Compelling Story
- By Benjamin on 06-12-25
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Anji Kills a King
- The Rising Tide, Book 1
- By: Evan Leikam
- Narrated by: Moira Quirk
- Length: 10 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Anji works as a castle servant, cleaning laundry for a king she hates. So when a rare opportunity presents itself, she seizes the chance to cut his throat. Then she runs for her life. In her wake, the kingdom is thrown into disarray, while a bounty bigger than anyone could imagine lands on her head.
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Decent book
- By Tyler R. on 06-06-25
By: Evan Leikam
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Once There Were Heroes
- A Time of Dragons, Book 1
- By: Philip C. Quaintrell
- Narrated by: Steven Brand
- Length: 25 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Dragons Riders: The last noble warriors in the realm. Only heroes can embolden the ordinary. For centuries, millennia, the Dragon Riders galvanized generation after generation, adding Riders to their ranks and birthing dragons from their eggs. But there are no more heroes. War with the Andarens is like nothing the Riders, nor the armies of Erador, have ever faced. In the place of heroes, there are only soldiers now. Fodder for the machine of war. This time of twilight is set to be the crowning hour of the dark when the light is losing its grip.
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No Dragons Here
- By Connor on 03-29-24
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Forge of Darkness
- Kharkanas Trilogy, Book 1
- By: Steven Erikson
- Narrated by: Daniel Philpott
- Length: 31 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Forge of Darkness takes listeners to Kurald Galain, the warren of Darkness, and tells of a realm whose fate plays a crucial role in the fall of the Malazan Empire and surrounds one of the Malazan world’s most fascinating and powerful characters, Anomander Rake. It’s a conflicted time in Kurald Galain, where Mother Dark reigns above the Tiste people. But this ancient land was once home to many a power...and even death is not quite eternal. The commoners’ great hero, Vatha Urusander, longs for ascendency and Mother Dark’s hand in marriage, but she has taken another Consort, Lord Draconus.
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A Precursor Epic Fantasy - A Rewarding Beginning!
- By Michael on 11-08-12
By: Steven Erikson
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Ship of Magic
- The Liveship Traders, Book 1
- By: Robin Hobb
- Narrated by: Anne Flosnik
- Length: 35 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Bingtown is a hub of exotic trade and home to a merchant nobility famed for its liveships---rare vessels carved from wizardwood, which ripens magically into sentient awareness. The fortunes of one of Bingtown's oldest families rest on the newly awakened liveship Vivacia. For Althea Vestrit, the ship is her rightful legacy unjustly denied her---a legacy she will risk anything to reclaim.
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Horrible Narrator
- By CP on 10-07-10
By: Robin Hobb
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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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Warm Up
- A Tor.Com Original Prequel to Vicious
- By: V.E. Schwab
- Narrated by: Jeremy Arthur
- Length: 24 mins
- Unabridged
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It's been 297 days since David died - and came back. He may have survived the avalanche, but the aftermath has been far worse. His wife moved out, taking his son with her, and a devastated David hasn't left his house since, terrified of the mysterious new power that followed him home from the ill-fated expedition. After months in seclusion, David's ready for a fresh start, and ventures out, determined to keep his power in check. But David's power isn't the one he needs to worry about.
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you could see the right on both sides
- By James white on 06-10-25
By: V.E. Schwab
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Elantris
- By: Brandon Sanderson
- Narrated by: Jack Garrett
- Length: 27 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Once the godlike rulers of the capital of Arelon, the inhabitans of Elantris have been imprisoned within themselves, unable to die after the city's magic failed years ago. But when a new prince falls victim to the curse, he refuses to accept his fate.
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What if your body could never heal?
- By Lore on 09-12-13
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Written on the Dark
- By: Guy Gavriel Kay
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 10 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Thierry Villar is a well-known—even notorious— tavern poet, familiar with the rogues and shadows of that world, but not at all with courts and power. He is an unlikely person, despite his quickness, to be caught up in the deadly contests of ambitious royals, assassins, and invading armies. But he is indeed drawn into all these things on a savagely cold night in his beloved city of Orane. And so Thierry must use all the intelligence and charm he can muster as political struggles merge with a decades-long war to bring his country to the brink of destruction.
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Stale and formulaic
- By JVerkuilen on 06-02-25
By: Guy Gavriel Kay
ties it all together fantastically
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It was a pleasure to bring this story to life
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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.
Rich Fantasy
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great ending to the series
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really good after book 3
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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.
An Epic Fantasy SF Novel of Ideas
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the focus on engineered solutions and how creative the characters were.
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Epic series
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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.
4.5/5 One of the best series I've read, but complicated to recommend.
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I think the third book in this four-part series was the weakest, but it was still decent and I'm very happy I trudged through the difficult parts of that for the immense reward of this final book. Speaking Bones is a grand romantic epic, ever curious, satisfying, unexpected, and deftly told.
Masterpiece
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