This is a very good fantasy book. I loved it since I saw the wonderful cover and all my expectations were met.
There're great and strong female characters and you cannot help liking and rooting for them.
The book kept me hooked till the last page making suffer and fight with the characters.
I hope this isn't a standalone book but the beginning of a series as I would really like more about the characters.
Recommended!
Many thanks to Simon and Schuster and Netgalley for this ARC

This was a good YA fantasy standalone, following four women who deal in death. I enjoyed this book, although it was a little lacking in suspense. The plot has a lot of potential but it was never fully used. The lack of suspense meant that the story wasn't as engaging as it could have been. Other than that, the characters were well written, the concept is great and the world is an interesting one. Juniper was definitely my favourite character. Overall this was an enjoyable read and I would recommend reading it if you enjoy YA fantasy.

This was a really slow reading for me. I expected to be more action but i liked reading it too. It is a genderbent Beowulf story so that cought my attention. Synopsis was really promising. I really love reading strong female characters. I liked reading Frey's point of view but i liked to know other characters too. There were a lot to be told. I know it is a standalone but if there are going to be a book 2 i will gladly read it.

[this review will be up on my blog, acquadimore.wordpress.com, on November 5, 2018]

The Boneless Mercies is a genderbent Beowulf retelling and the third book I’ve read by April Genevieve Tucholke. I liked Wink Poppy Midnightfor its weirdness and had mixed feelings on Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, and this one might be my favorite one of the three.

The Boneless Mercies is, at its heart, a story about friendships. Mostly about friendships between women, but there are some relevant m/f ones too – the only thing that this book lacks is a romance, and I really did not miss it.
Even in YA books that are supposedly about friendships, the romance almost always ends up overshadowing the friendships. Because in YA fiction, friendships are static and boring and one-dimensional, while romance gets the development.
Not here.

This is the only book I know that not only doesn’t fall in the “this is just friendship” trap, but reverses it. When the main character is asked whether she’s in a relationship with a guy, she answers that they’re friends. And the other person answers “so it’s deeper, then” (or something like that) and it was so beautiful to see. It’s also a sex-positive story. There’s no romance, but the main character sleeps with a man she’s not in a relationship with, and again, I almost never see this in YA fiction.

The Boneless Mercies is the story of four women looking for a future in a world in which they’re forced to wander as outcasts. It’s about striving for more while never belonging, about seeking glory. The main characters aren’t forced to face peril by circumstances: they look for it. They find it, and they go through it together.
I don’t remember the last time I saw that in a YA book. Maybe I never did, especially not in a book with a mostly-female cast, and it was so refreshing. I hadn’t realized how used I was to passive main characters.

As I now expect from April Genevieve Tucholke, this book was beautifully written and atmospheric. It has the kind of writing that makes you feel the wind, the snow, the smell of saltwater; that makes you feel as if you’re getting lost in the marshes too, as if you’re wandering in the mist with the characters.

Some described this book as slow-paced and incomplete, and I see why, but I don’t think this story would have worked if it had been written like most YA fantasy books. It’s creepy and bloody and dark, but it’s mostly sad, and I think many didn’t like that. But this is not a story about defeating a beast and falling in love in the process, this is a story about looking for your place in an unwelcoming, changing world, about the uncertainty of it all. The way it feels so distant and so close at the same time is exactly what made it feel like a myth and not just like another retelling that kept the bones of the story but not the heart of it.
There’s something nostalgic about it, and I think that’s the way it should be.

For something that felt very distant, it sure made me feel a lot of things. It’s been a long while since a character death affected me this much, as I find most of them cop-outs. Also, the characters were great and I loved all of them:
🐺 Frey, the narrator, a girl seeking glory in a world in which glory is a man’s thing. I loved her a lot.
🐺 Ovie, a warrior girl with a mysterious past. Probably the least developed of the five, but still great.
🐺 Runa, an archer with a very abrasive side. She went through a lot, she just wants to leave. An awesome character.
🐺 Juniper, Sea Witch, the youngest and most magical of the group. Deserves every good thing.
🐺 Trigve, the only guy in the group, a Soft Boy between warrior girls.

I didn’t think this book was perfect – I thought that changing words like “Norse” to “Vorse” and “Valhalla” to “Holhalla” felt more cheesy than anything – but I’m glad I found a book inspired by Norse mythology about female warriors I actually liked.

I did kind of want this book to be gayer. Listen, there was so much sapphic subtext here, but as there was no romance at all, I’m not even mad it just remained subtext. Also, at some point the main character says she wouldn’t be mad if Trigve decided to spend the night with a healer girl because she’d do the same thing and… I know, I wouldn’t recommend this as a queer book as it’s a blink-or-miss thing, but there’s no heterosexual explanation for this. Frey is totally bi.

I loved reading the Boneless Mercies. This book is splendidly written and I fell in love with the world building. Although I didn't connect with any of the Mercies I loved the feminist vibes this book exuded.

This book is a standalone but I would love to read more about Frey and her friends.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an eARC.

Thank you to Netgalley, April Genevieve Tucholke and Simon & Schuster for my arc of The Boneless Mercies.
This was a fairly short story which I'm really struggling to review. I'll do my best...

The Boneless Mercies follows four girls in the made up country of Vorse. It's fairly clear that this is based on countries such as Denmark, Sweden and Finland and it has a real Viking feel to it. The girls; Frey, Juniper, Runa and Ovie and a boy Trigve (he just travels with them) are Boneless Mercies, basically people can hire them to kill their loved ones if they're sick or dying and need a help along. But the girls are tired of mercy killings and want glory, so they travel to Blue Vee where there's been rumours of a monster, intent on slaying it and getting their names in songs.

So what I really liked about this book was the characters and the world building. Well, I say characters, I liked Frey. She is the narrator and quite fierce and cool to say she's only 17. The other characters with the exception of maybe Juniper never really felt three dimensional for me. The world building was great but felt really unfinished for me. I felt that the book needed to be longer in order to really expand on what was going on. I loved the ideas of the Sea Witches, the Cut Queen, the giants and the Quicks but we never really learnt anything beyond the basic outline of who they were. Had the book been longer there would have been far more room to expand on their history. Instead this ended up reading more like a Five Go on an Adventure book.
I don't think I will be likely to read the sequel. A lot of potential but it just didn't follow through.

There was so much to love. The Norse basis of the Mercies’ world, the strong female friendships, the concept of euthanasia as a trade, gender-bent Beowulf. And yet I didn’t love it.

Several things were done very well. It was hugely refreshing to see such an effortless presentation of close, affectionate platonic relationships, within and between the sexes (in fact I would have preferred it if the one romantic relationship had been absent, by the time it emerged it seemed to be more like a box-ticking exercise than a development necessary to the story). Beowulf, that ancient archetype of masculinity, is seamlessly populated with women and manages to tackle some of its more distasteful elements such as the glorification of violence, the connection between heroism and killing. The Mercies are as vulnerable to these vices as the men in the original but Tucholke interrogates them and (mostly) has her characters do the same as they consider the difference between mercy killing and glory-hunting. Her take on the Grendel/Grendel’s mother analogue (they appear to be assimilated here) is particularly interesting.

Unfortunately, the novel’s problems are closely related to its strengths. The relationships may be a breath of fresh air but while the characters work well as a group they just don’t stand up to individual scrutiny. It’s clear that they have been created in order to form an ensemble. They only come alive when interacting with one another, their differences deliberately chosen to contrast with one another rather than exist alone. As a consequence their interactions and personalities are limited to a few repeated patterns that reveals a frustrating lack of depth. This is true even for our first-person narrator, Frey, who role is primarily to tell us what the narrative fails to show.

I had a similar issue with the world-building which seemed oddly under-developed for having such a strong model in the Norse and Anglo-Saxon tales on which it is based. The Sea- and Marsh Witches in particular just didn’t fit comfortably because too much was left unexplained, particularly with the repeated references to the significant threat of a new Witch War. Perhaps a future book will delve into this but it wasn’t developed enough to justify its place in this one. In fact the relationship between the Witches was one of the most intriguing aspects and the Cut-Queen definitely the most interesting character but the exploration of these aspects was cut short for the sake of the action-adventure plotting that took over in the last third. It is unfortunate that while there is very little action in the rest of book it emerges just in time to derail some of the most interesting aspects of the story.

This book was not what I was expecting to read at all! I thought it was about a group of female assassins... It is not.

This story follows a group of females who find work basically putting people out of their misery... Sick and old people mostly. They have killed lots of people and are sick of it! Especially when it comes to the children. They are fed up of working just to get by and not going anywhere with their lives other than killing sick frail people. The main character Frey craves a chance for fame and glory. So when they hear about a monster that every man has failed to kill they decide to give up the live of mercies and go slay the beast.

This book was generally a good adventure story but it was very slow to start and could be a little boring. I did like reading this book and I have heard other people who really loved it but I just couldn't get into it. I found it slow paced and took a while to go anywhere. I liked the idea that this book was about females being badass and they were but they kinda blew threw every problem with too much ease. Females being badass is not enough for me to really like a book. But saying all this the story was interesting when it picked up pace and the characters were all interesting in their own ways and stood out as their own people. They were a group of people who had no place in the world but they did try to improve their lives and you gotta respect them for that!

Overall, it was a good read with good characters and the story wasn't bad just not really exciting! I would recommend that you read this if you like fantasy or just females being badass.

From reading the synopsis, I was already very intrigued! I enjoyed reading this book, but it wasn't as action-filled as I would have wanted to. However, I really liked all the characters and the setting! And everything that happened toward the end definitely made it worth-while for me :)

The Boneless Mercies had a timeless, classical feel to the writing that made it an absolute pleasure to read.

This is a tale of a legend in the making, with a rich tapestry of characters and settings, a mythological history and an imaginative coming of age for women that works beautifully.

Frey and her group of mercies travel around bringing a merciful, or occasionally vengeful death to those that seek it – but Frey and her companions tire of the death trade and Frey especially feels destined for greater things. So when a desperate call goes out to defeat a monster, the group head into danger and into history…

I loved this because the world building was fabulous, the group dynamic of our main protagonists highly engaging and the beautiful layered prose just sets the reader right at the heart of things.

From the Sea Witches to The Quicks, from the Cut Queen to the monster in hiding, all the elements work extraordinarily well to create a page turner of a fantasy novel with a cleverly woven history that sets the scene for a real adventure.

Lots of thought provoking themes at play here, for me it had a strong feminist narrative whilst never once declaring itself such or indeed ever becoming preachy- the strong, predominantly female cast just IS and they are all beautifully drawn and fascinatingly compelling.

Friendship, love, loyalty, loss it’s all in here plus it’s a damn fine piece of storytelling with a thrilling melancholy finale.

It’s described as a standalone and stand alone it does- but the door is open so let’s hope more will be forthcoming and further legends will be born

Recommended.

I really enjoyed the rich and vast world Tucholke has created in this book. Drawing on Norse legends and folk tales there was so much lore here that I found super interesting. I liked all the references to the different beings and cultures which inhabit the realm from the old Gods to the legendary warriors long dead, it makes for such a good story.

I found the whole concept of the 'Mercies' so intriguing and such a unique one. The Mercies, are either groups or lone women who answer the calls of people seeking death - which they then deliver. However they have a code of honour, whereby they only deliver mercy kills, not for vengeance or personal gain. While this is definitely a dark and quite sad job, the characters in the story -  Frey, Ovie, Juniper and Runa - bond together and become a family.

Each of the main characters; Frey, Ovie, Juniper, Runa and Trigve were sort of simplistic in my opinion. They're not complex enough for my liking and kind of surface level so I was mostly disinterested in them. I didn't find myself really rooting for them, you know??

I liked that the novel centres primarily around the importance of friendships and specifically female friendships, so many books seem to focus purely on romantic relationships and ignore any others. This was my favourite aspect of the book for sure.

The ending is tied up but in a way where there's definitely room for a sequel - but the book also works as a standalone novel.

Overall, while I appreciated the folk tales and lore in the novel and the focus on female friendships - there was just something missing for me in The Boneless Mercies. Unfortunately I probably wouldn't pick this up again.