Literally Leander discussion

Our featured book for the shortest month of the year (made one day longer because Leap Day!) was The Bone Houses by Emily Lloyd-Jones. Please be aware of major spoilers for the novel within this thread.

This month, our discussion prompt questions were written by a staff member. Most of you know the drill, but if you don't: please don't feel pressured to answer any of these discussion prompts; you're not in school and this is not a book report! However, we like to offer the prompts to those that would like to have them. Otherwise, we'd love to see any thoughts you had on this book, including any questions of your own!

1. This book has been tagged as “fantasy” and as “historical fiction.” Which one best describes this novel?

2. Ryn, Gareth, and Ceri are orphans struggling to make ends meet. How were the relationships between the siblings? What roles did they take in their family? Did you find them realistic or not?

3. How does this novel measure up to other stories about zombies or zombie-like creatures? What were the major similarities and differences?

4. Do Ryn and Ellis make a good pair? Do you think their romance improved the story or took away from it?

5. Did you suspect Ellis’s true identity? If you did, what clues led you to that conclusion? If you didn’t, is it more obvious in hindsight?

6. Chapter 31 consists of two sentences: “This was how the bone houses were defeated. With a whispered name.” Do you think there is truly power in a name?

I loved The Bone Houses! I've had my eye on it forever and was super excited that it was picked as a book club read. I very much enjoyed this mash-up of fantasy and horror. I couldn't help but feel like this would be in line with a Grimm Brothers tale, featuring magic and mayhem and gore all in one. I mean, the zombie goat was a major plus, too.

1. This book has been tagged as “fantasy” and as “historical fiction.” Which one best describes this novel?
If given the choice between only these two genres, I would definitely pick fantasy. I've been calling this a mix of fantasy and horror, with heavy influences of Welsh mythology. So I suppose I could see where people would call it "historical," but feel like setting is not fleshed out enough to categorize it as such. I don't recall any definitive historical markers; I don't remember any references to leaders, famous artisans, or well-known locations within the novel.

2. Ryn, Gareth, and Ceri are orphans struggling to make ends meet. How were the relationships between the siblings? What roles did they take in their family? Did you find them realistic or not?
I actually liked the dynamics of these sibling relationships. I liked that Ryn and Gareth both seem to rotate around their littlest sister. I liked how Ryn and Gareth traded in traditional roles: Ryn was the bread-winner, the adventurer, the one who took large risks for her family. Gareth, on the other hand, was softer, a homemaker, a listener, the one you go to to feel comforted. Ceri was great, too, equally parts young and deceptively astute.

5. Did you suspect Ellis’s true identity? If you did, what clues led you to that conclusion? If you didn’t, is it more obvious in hindsight?
I did realize that Ellis was the child of the queen, saved by the cauldron, before the characters made the realization in the novel. However, it wasn't that far in advance. I was actually thoroughly excited when I put together all the pieces and was definitely able to see the clues in hindsight.

Ellis had so many hallmarks: he came from the woods at a young age, he had no family name that he remembered, and he had a mysterious injury that couldn't quite be accounted for. The big red herring was that the child in the story was thought to have died. Many believed the story was just that, a story, but those that believed took the child's death as fact instead of possibility.

6. Chapter 31 consists of two sentences: “This was how the bone houses were defeated. With a whispered name.” Do you think there is truly power in a name?
For some reason, this chapter and those two lines really impacted the story for me. I think it was because it was such a poetic yet simplistic end for such a large oral history. And it's a very final ending that echoes that of the great stories and legends.

Historically, names have been thought to have a lot of power. In folktales, mythology, and even religion and theology, you have beings that can be magically controlled.

In contemporary times, there are still names with meanings. They might look towards attributes, they may have religious ties, or they might not have any known meaning at all, except the meaning in receiving the name from parents/caretakers. This is something that people in psychology and sociology are looking at right now; take this New Yorker article, for example.