Like his father before him, Daniel Blackland is an Osteomancer (someone who attains magic by ingesting bones) At the age of 6, Daniel's father fed him his first set of bones hoping to make his son strong. It is a strength Daniel will need in days to come if he is stay alive. Daniel remembers all to well the sound of the Hierarch eating his father. Until now, Daniel has focused on staying alive but now that he and his crew are tasked by his crime boss Uncle to break into the area where the Hierarch keeps his collection of magical bones, and a sword fashioned from Daniel himself, it's going to take every ounce of magic to Daniel has to survive.
In many ways California Bones could be described as a dark fantasy. Some scenes are gritty and horrifying like when Daniel's father becomes a meal for the Hierarch. What Daniel remembers most is the sound of the Hierarch chewing. That one detail gets repeated several times in the novel and it never gets less creepy.
Van Eekhout does a great job setting up the Blackland universe and the rules of magic are clear and easy to understand. I love the idea of magic evolving from the bones of animals - sometimes even mystical animals because it invokes powerful imagery. Every time Daniel invokes his Kraken magic, I found myself picturing the mystical beast and what powers it might have.
That said, one of the major problems with this book is that part of it really feels dialed in. For instance, Daniel gets tricked into pulling a job for his criminal boss uncle. How many times have we seen the "good guy" forced to work for a bad one to get the end result he needs or to save someone close to him? From the beginning, there's never a doubt that the uncle will betray Daniel and lead to an escalation of the problem. It means there's no twist to figure out; it's all so very obvious.
I also found that Van Eekhout really needs to show and not tell in his work. In California Bones, we are told repeatedly how tight Daniel's team is and how they would do anything for their fearless leader. Each of them can benefit if the job goes well but apparently, the reason they all say yes is because Daniel asked them. A tight knit group breaking into a government vault makes sense and I don't need to be hit over the head with how close they are. In fact, what Van Eekhout should have done is given us examples of them displaying their closeness to each other, caring for each other. Van Eekhout barely pulled back from this by creating woo woo reasons for the teams loyalty to Daniel but it didn't make up for the constant reminders about how close the team is without an evidence to back it up.
