Hello everyone! Today I’m overjoyed to host The Write Reads on my blog once again to introduce you all to the Merchants of Bone and Light by Erika Mckorkle. I am sadly in a bit of a reading slump at the moment which is making my hyper picky and I’m barely reading, but I have read a little and want to share a few thoughts with you.

So the first thing I feel is really important to note about this book is that it is tackling some very heavy subjects, namely child abuse, bigotry, grief over the loss of a child, and I’m sure there is more further on. But please check your triggers and look after yourselves. There is also some spice in here that was a little much for me, personally (I’m a 0-2 chili peppers kind of girl), but it explores the nuances of sexuality within a polycule. And of the other subjects, from what I did read, Erika has handled these subjects beautifully. The family dynamic feels so real, the characters and their interactions could be picked right from somebody’s life. And they are wonderful characters. Amiere is a lion-esque cat person, as is his wife, and they are in a polysexual relationship with their husband. They have several children, one of whom is autistic coded, another is quadrupedal and needs a lot of assistance to do basic things as he does not have opposable thumbs. The story follows Amiere through his grief over the very very recent death of his daughter, and how his family deals with the trauma, and when an old enemy comes back to their village he notices their daughter is showing signs of abuse and cannot stand idly by.

All of this in a high fantasy setting, with fantastical ancestries and magic. The village they live in is a tropical paradise beside the ocean, which is also their Demon God. Their buildings are created from bone and leaf. It’s actually incredibly unique and fascinating. If you’re in the market for a fantasy story that explores family drama that treads a dark path with animalistic races and an LGBTQIA+ positive polysexual family dyanamic, I wholeheartedly recommend this one. It’s a chonker, but I haven’t seen much, if anything, like this!

Merchants of Bone and Light by Erika Mckorkle

Genre: Epic Fantasy
Length: 819 Pages

Sorrow in paradise
A parent’s worst nightmare
When grief drives one to revenge

Living in a tropical paradise with his spouses and kids, Amiere is a merchant of light, a sculptor who carves glowing crystals into spectacular and powerful, demon-killing works of art. When the ground opens up near his idyllic village to reveal a massive supply of crystals, the whole nation of Aloutia celebrates. The merchants are guaranteed money for decades and officials predict Aloutia will be safe from demonkind for generations. But Amiere isn’t rejoicing—when the ground split apart, his seven-year-old daughter fell to her death.

Amiere’s grief turns to rage when an old enemy returns to the village with a young daughter displaying signs of starvation and abuse. Having witnessed his own daughter’s death, Amiere cannot bear the thought of watching another child die, especially when he can prevent it. Unable to ask police for help due to the village’s reputation of hostility toward authority figures, Amiere takes matters into his own hands, even at the risk of being exiled and separated from his family forever.

Goodreads – The StoryGraph – Amazon UK

Meet the Author

Erika McCorkle, she/her, lives in the Pacific Northwest of the USA. She is a creator of fantasy worlds and a voyager to the worlds created by others. She spends much of her free time writing, reading, watching anime, and playing video games, all usually of the fantasy genre. She has a Bachelor’s of Science in Biology and currently works the night shift at a blood bank, meaning she is most definitely a vampire.

You can find her on: Author Website – Twitter