A Tree of Bones (Hexslinger, #3) by Gemma Files

A Tree of Bones (Hexslinger, #3) Reviews

• 
  Kate O'Hanlon

  I've probably said it before in other reviews, but my idea of a good ending, especially for series, is that it should be not at all what you were expecting, and at the same time, when you look back on it, seem completely inevitable.
  
  
  
  The more of Files' stuff I read the more I love her. She clearly delights in writing horribly screwed up characters who do terrible things, sometimes for the right reasons and sometimes not, but she never lets them off the hook, ever.
  
  I'm trying to open a new paragraph without spoilers for the previous two books, all I can really say is, shit is all fucked up and our guys are on a mission to unfuck it.
  
  The female characters kick all sorts of ass, both literally and figuratively as they police the crack in reality, try to bring back a man from hell, and figure out a way for hexes to work together that doesn't require a blood engine. For a series whose first book didn't even pass the Bechdel test it's amazing how much I want to squee about Yancy, Songbird, Clo, Grandmother, Mrs Love, Yiska, etc.
  
  And that isn't to say that the boys aren't still awesome.
  In some ways I think of this as Asher Rook's book, in the same way that the first book is Ed's and the second book is Chess's. I shouldn't feel sorry for Rook, he wanted it all and he screwed up everything attempting to get it. But it's hard not to sympathise with his motivations. Love or Power? Wouldn't we all like to answer, 'both'. I think Files sympathises too. Rooks the bad guy, but he's not The Enemy.
  
  And so to endings Redemption = Death. I should have expected it, it was inevitable. But I didn't see it coming. The scene of Chess raging against Rook's absence and being held by Ed and Yancy as he cried broke my heart. Poor Chess. Poor stupid Rook.
  
  I have two problems with this book that are defiantly my problems and not the book's problems. Number one is that I am a bad reader of action sequences, my eyes glaze over and skim past them. This is a very action packed book, which means that I probably skimmed at least half of it. Number two is that I have a terrible memory for tertiary characters, we spend a lot of time here in camp Pinkerton, I don't have a clear idea of who these guys are and why I should care. I'm pretty sure I can over come both these problems on a more evenly paced reread so I'm awarding 5 stars anyway.
• 
  Katy

  Book Info: Genre: Weird Western/Supernatural Horror/Steampunk
  Reading Level: Adult
  Recommended for: Fans of Weird West, horror, those interested in Meso-American religious practices
  Trigger Warnings for Book 3: killing, human sacrifice, bullying, non PC language
  
  My Thoughts on Book 3: This really is a most satisfying conclusion to the trilogy. Watching Chess's evolution has been quite amazing, and I've also quite enjoyed seeing how Yancey and Ed and Songbird all grew and changed through the course of the trilogy.
  
  These books are very LGBTQ oriented, with a number of characters from the QUILTBAG included, as well as the inherent hostility toward them of the time. Still, it was refreshing to see a piece set during the late 19th century that was open and honest about the existence of all types.
  
  Ultimately there is not a lot I can say here without there ending up with spoilers, so I'll just say that I really did enjoy this book—this whole trilogy—quite a lot. Watch for my review of the omnibus, which also includes a bonus short story.
  
  Series Information: The Hexslinger Series
  Book 1: A Book of Tongues,
  review linked here
  Book 2: A Rope of Thorns,
  review linked here
  Book 3: A Tree of Bones
  
  Disclosure: I received a copy of the omnibus from ChiZine in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.
  
  Synopsis: New Mexico, 1867: Months have passed since hexslinger Chess Pargeter sacrificed himself to restore the town of Bewelcome, once cursed to salt by his former lover, "Reverend" Asher Rook. Now a coalition led by Allan Pinkerton's Detective Agency lays siege to reborn Mayan goddess Ixchel's notorious "Hex City," the one place on earth where hexes can act in concert, and the desert just outside Bewelcome has become the front line in what threatens to become a new Civil War—one in which wild magic and black science clash headlong, producing carnage like nothing the world has ever seen!
• 
  The Novel Approach

  3.5 Stars ~ I loved the first two books in this series, loved them like a word baby conceived and birthed just for me to gather close and bask in its beatific abundance of perfection… Then, that word baby grew up. And where the storyline had once pleasantly gorged itself on Gemma Files imagination and mellifluous prose, that gift for inflated allusion and nuanced captivation took a wrong turn somewhere for me in A Tree of Bones, and has left me with that feeling so many of us devoted readers have experienced at one time or another—I think this book would’ve been twice as good if it’d been half as long. While I can’t say that the end to the Hexslinger Trilogy is a complete disappointment, not at all, I do find that I’m left somewhat underwhelmed by its conclusion given how deftly its author had crafted the story up to this point.
  
  What had worked so beautifully for me in A Book of Tongues and A Rope of Thorns was Files’ gift for structure. Like an expository architect, she built this world from nothing but a band of outlaws and a post-Civil War untamed West; then she threw in some lust, greed, religion, magick, Pinks, a bit of a steampunk feel, and now, a creepy new species, and BOOM! She architected an alternate universe filled with some delicious imagery, a whole passel of conflict between some hell-borne Aztec gods, a collection of hexes of all ilk, a dead-talker, and the humans who fell into the line of fire—whether by design or by simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. This world is a glorious amalgamation of allegory and cautionary tale, all woven around an ex-Reverend whose fall from grace and ultimate betrayal had some seriously deadly complications for his lover, Chess Pargeter—gunslinger turned hexslinger turned god—a character who came full-circle, a character I loved so much and who ended up living up to his given name of Cheshire in a way Mr. Carroll might’ve been proud of. Until, in A Tree of Bones, he fell somewhat pale in comparison to his former self. Chess’s characterization as a prickly, contrary, ornery, sharp-tongued sumbitch was a thousand-and-one percent fabulous. I loved every single one of his heathen-ous and unapologetic ways—everything about him screamed antihero on steroids—but through a feat of exposition that evolved into a redemption story of sorts for our misbegotten hero, Chess softened and lost some of his mojo.
  
  For the first two-thirds of A Tree of Bones, the narrative reads more cumbersome and meandering than did the psycho-cool-crazy of its predecessors. At one point, Chess remarks, “Feels like tryin’ to swim a tub of molasses,” and I couldn’t help but feel a certain kinship with him because that’s what reading this book felt like at times. When he was dropped into English Oona Pargeter’s version of hell at the end of A Rope of Thorns, a Seven Dials slum in 19th century London, I couldn’t wait to see what the author did with it. The scenery was pretty to “look” at, without a doubt, and it provided the opportunity for Chess to be confronted by his multitude of past sins, but overall, the pages and pages of narrative ended up reading like an unnecessary detour that slowed down the pace of the book and didn’t add much in the way of revelatory or relevant storyline. There were several such detours, in fact—point of view changes that I felt detracted from rather than added to the story—which is why I said at the outset that this novel could’ve been twice as good being half as long. The verbosity that elated and mesmerized me in the first two books acted as foil to the plot progression in this installment.
  
  What did work in this novel, and truly, there’s a lot that did, were the characters who ended up Chess’s allies. Ex Pinkerton agent and Chess’s lover, for a time, Ed Morrow; Yancey Kloves; Songbird; Yiska, a two-spirited Navajo warrior; and Sophy Love, who’d begun an enemy but ended up, with her young son, becoming an integral cog in this brave new world. Their importance to Chess, to his death and resurrection, and to what would end up being a battle to save the country and its people from the goddess Ixchel, is undeniable and I’ll miss spending time with them in this diabolically brilliant wonderland.
  
  While I’m on the subject of characters, one who didn’t get nearly enough page time by my count is the Rev, Asher Rook. As the narrative ambled off in directions that were, for me, unwelcome, Rook’s lack of presence was a glaring omission which left me wishing this novel had been limited to his and Chess’s points of view. While probably not the most complex of characters ever designed—Faustian bargains have been a staple of fiction for centuries; and mythology full of men who have traded their souls for a lot less that godhood; and history is full of characters who have done the wrong thing for convoluted but what they think are the right reasons—Rook is nevertheless such a slick and charming character that I found myself wishing we’d have got a closer look into his thought processes through what became his own redemption story. This was, overall, Rook and Chess’s story to tell, theirs an ill-fated romance wrapped in a much grander package in which Rook’s lust for his red-headed hexslinger couldn’t conquer his lust for power and immortality. While the culmination of Rook’s arc was bittersweet and emotionally effective, I wanted more of him leading up to it. Did I cry when his storyline reached its climax? You bet I did.
  
  In the end, my mad respect for Gemma Files’ wordsmithing is intact, even if my reading experience with A Tree of Bones offered a fair share of lows mixed with the highs. Was this the case of a world that had grown to such an expansive state that its author had a difficult time corralling all of it together to form a linear and structured conclusion? I don’t know, but I do know I still love this trilogy enough that all three paperbacks will make their way to a place of honor on my bookshelf.
  
  Reviewed by Lisa for
  The Novel Approach Reviews
• 
  Meredith Katz

  A Tree of Bones by Gemma Files is the third book in the Hexslinger trilogy, with the first two being A Book of Tongues (which I review
  here) and a A Rope of Thorns (which I review
  here). I'm not trying to avoid spoilers for the first two books, only the third, so if you haven't read the first two stop reading now.
  
  So, to begin this review: aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!
  
  Okay. Now that I've got that out, let's do this properly.
  
  After the horrifying outcome of A Rope of Thorns, the crew is left scattered across the land—and, in fact, across literal worlds. Chess Pargeter, last seen in hell, is trying to find his way back to his now Enemy-occupied living body, with only his abusive mother's ghost as company. Ed Morrow is back working for Pinkerton, but a Pinkerton who has become a horrific soul-sucking artificial hex. Yancey is working with an unlikely group of hexes, struggling to use her skills to speak with the dead to be put to an unusual use. And, of course, Asher Rook continues to make only the most dubious of decisions while working for the wife-goddess who he has come to loathe.
  
  If this wasn't a perfect book—and I'm sure it has to have flaws, though I'm hard-pressed to find them immediately upon putting it down—it was close enough to it that I can't even consider not giving it a 5/5 rating. The now-enormous cast all worked, everyone's motivations driving their actions and knitting a good dozen B-plots together into the A-plot in a way that left me guessing right up to, and in some ways even through, the climax itself. The first book started with a small band of narrow-minded white men telling their own story while Othering everyone around them, and blossomed, over the next two books, into a bigger picture where a wide array of humanity were claiming their own stories and clashing together however needed to do so. I've been reading on my lunch breaks, but the story was too intense, and I actually neglected doing my own writing in favor of just finishing it off in one go tonight.
  
  In almost every way—I'll get back to that in a moment—this is the story I had hoped it would be from when the first bad decisions began. I'm not a fan of grimdark, I think I said in an earlier review, but this story struck me as something that wasn't grimdark. It was grim, and it could occasionally be gritty, and by god, it was visceral, full of blood and guts and sex and pain. But all of that is fine, if the message of the story isn't hopelessness. And it's not. It's a story about redemption, a story where bonds are important from start to finish. It's a story where you know from the previous books that even death isn't the end to a person's story, nor what they're capable of—and by God, if you had any doubt in that despite Chess's first resurrection, Files makes sure to start you off on that foot with Chess's trip through the underworld and the chance to see the continuing stories, good or ill, of the people he meets there. Because of that, the stakes are able to be high and include death of a variety of characters without the usual problem of killing characters off—which is that death, in most stories, is the end. It can be a powerful tool in an author's arsenal, because a dead character causes the readers' shock at that character's potential cut short, but it also means broken storylines, never to see an end. Starting from a premise of underworld gods and souls that have their own business, just not with the living most of the time, means that the same thing can be used for the same impact in the story but without the same cost. It was still high stakes, and still worth mourning, but you-the-reader knows that some part of those characters may have some conclusion to their emotional story at some point, even if we don't see their personal afterlife journey.
  
  So ultimately it walks the edge of violence and pain and high stakes and loss without losing forgiveness and hope and redemption as possibilities for any of these characters.
  
  I said above that there was one thing that wasn't what I hoped it would be, and it's involving a specific romantic subplot. I'm going to avoid details for spoilers' sake, but the way it had concluded surprised me, given how it had been set up and was developing. I think it absolutely could have given me that payoff that I had personally hoped for, from what had come before. But—and here's the big but—just because it could have, and just because it was how I would have preferred it to end, didn't mean that the way it played out wasn't equally possible, taking all the circumstances into account. I'm sure some part of my heart is going to hope that some time in the unknown offscreen future, when things have been dealt with and settled more, the possibility could be there again. Pity my shipper heart! But at the same time, what did happen was fine too, and worked with what the story gave us, and on top of that, it opened other doors too. I was content with it, even if it wasn't the outcome I had personally hoped for. As Chess Pargeter would say, if things weren't the same, they'd be different.
  
  One of the themes of the story is that very thing—that there are multiple possible outcomes to situations, because people drive their own stories, and if things don't happen one way, they'd have happened another. The way everyone's stories come together and diverge, their lives playing out as their own motives push them forward, fit that perfectly; the author picked a hard, hard theme to embody through the story itself, but succeeded at it admirably.
  
  I feel like I have so much more to say—goodness, but I want to write an essay about Asher Rook and how his choices spun out of his traumas and fears!—but a review isn't the best place for that. So I think I'll just leave it at this:
  
  I'm glad I read this, and I highly recommend it.
• 
  Laura

  I initially bought the first book in this series on a recommendation from someone who knew I was desperate for more speculative fiction with queer characters. That wasn’t an accident. Maybe I would have picked it up even without that factor, but it’s what drove me to buy it, and I’m so, so happy I did.
  
  Queer readers, and general media consumers like me don’t have much in the way of representation, and what little we do have tends to be of the token variety. (“Okay, you can have a queer character, but only one! And that’s it!”) I remember back when I was in high school and encountered The L Word and went “this is unrealistic! how are all the women they’re running into lesbians!” I’d already internalized the idea that queerness was something that, if not doomed to misery, severely limited your choices and movements.) Even media that does have more than one queer character tends to be an Issue Show/Specialty Show, like Queer as Folk. Which is all well and good, if you like that sort of thing or are REALLY DESPERATE (and I’m not judging; I mainlined QaF in a month) but if you want to see yourself represented in genre fiction, you’re pretty shit out of luck.
  
  A series like Hexslingers, with so many queer characters I honestly lost count would have been unbelievable to me when I was sixteen. A series with a queer person as a protagonist and queer people as supporting characters who all come together to save the world- to be heroes? It would have been unfathomable. A series where all the queer romances are explicit, the straight couple is the odd one out, and their queernees is intrisically tied to their heroism, where it’s acknowledged that growing up queer in a homophobic world can be incredibly damaging but it’s not a sentence to be forever alone, that you can find love more than once, that you can build a safe place for yourself, that you can save the world- I can’t even begin to describe what that would have meant to me as a teenager. I don’t think I can begin to describe what it means to me now. When Charlie’s character showed up at the end of Tree of Bones, I laughed, but it was a laugh of familiarity- I think most queer readers can see a bit of themselves in him, who “knew early on that [he’d] never fit in, so decided to stand out,” and who idolizes Chess because HOLY SHIT! A QUEER PERSON! A HERO! A HERO FOR ME! And I think Chess does have some wish fulfillment potential for queer readers- I know he did for me- because here’s a queer person living in a society even more intensely homophobic than it is now, who looks around, shrugs, and says “fuck y’all; I am what I am.” Or someone like Yiska, who’s so thoroughly at peace with herself that she’s not afraid to go after what she wants, or Songbird who finds a sense of peace and self for the first time in her life in the arms of another woman. These are intimately familiar stories to me. I just never thought I’d see them side by side with a genre that I love, that I want to spend my life writing in, and that I’ve always felt shut out of.
  
  So: thank you so, so, so much for writing this. I don’t think I can ever explain properly why it means so much, so all I can say is “thank you.”
• 
  Mason Jones

  The end of the trilogy, and rather difficult to review thoroughly without giving things away. So I'll keep this brief, I guess -- what a wonderful trilogy, blazingly imaginative and with characters you come to really care about. I'd say that all of the characters more or less wind up where they belong, and it's all pretty satisfyingly wrapped up. If you've read the other two entries, you quite obviously need to read this one, and if you haven't read them yet, what the hell are you waiting for? You can't really lose with a magic-riddled western steeped in Aztec, Indian and other spirituality, with a queer-positive theme running through it and Gemma's gorgeous writing to make it all flow nicely. If I were to pick nits I'd have to admit that the book could be a bit tighter -- at 447 pages it takes its sweet time. But I barely noticed. This is quality stuff -- get to it.
• 
  A

  An amazing end to the series! Everything came together wonderfully and the character development was perfect (and had me in tears).
  The writing itself is also incredibly refreshing and unique. I never wanted to put it down.
  I highly recommend this series to anyone who is after a fantasy that has both an interesting and exciting plot AND characters that you get invested in.
  
• 
  Frederick

  what started out with Book 1 as true love has turned cold and empty. A Tree of Bones is missing everything that made me love A Book of Tongues - any displays of affection between two men or two women are treated as tolerable, but shameful and uncomfortable, as the author has the cishet characters turn away or pretend they don't see it. New secondary characters are added to an already long list of secondary characters, and every character who died or wandered off in Book 1 and 2 is resurrected, transformed, and/or encountered again in one of the underworlds. I personally found it hard to keep track of who most of these characters were, and even harder to care about them.
  Especially as every character's story arc seems to center on the theme of atonement and becoming right with THE LORD/christian god/whatever.
  And there is no sizzling hot cowboy sex.
  It took me a very long time to read this book. It was a slog for me, but i really wanted to read the end of the story, so i stuck it out.
  i would give this book 1 star if it weren't for the epilogue, where some of the playfulness and anti-homophobic ideas resurface, albeit too late to make this an enjoyable read.
• 
  Cristina

  A solid and satisfying ending to the trilogy. Dragged a little for me in the 'underworld' sections, but had enough character development, epic battles, and wild invention to keep me happy. Can't say this series is for everyone, but if the descriptions pique your interest, it's one of the most novel, imaginative, and compelling spec-fic I've read in a long time.
• 
  Abi Walton

  What a fantastic ending to a brilliant series. Files clearly delights in creating screwed up characters in awful situations who do terrible things for good and bad reasons but what I am in total awe of her writing is the fact that I sympathise and adore these not nice characters. This is a skill which Files paints in this whole series and made me care for two very screwed up men.
  In many ways I agree with one reviewer who stated that this book was Asher's, just like the first book was Ed's and the second was Chess'. From the second book ' A Rope Of Thorns' I completely fell for Asher Rook as We saw he motivations and I began to sympathise with his motivations, how to choose between Power or Love? I think most of us would agree that both is always the answer. I also think that the book less us to sympathise with Rook he may have made the wrong choices but he sees this and is sorry, in his head this was all for Chess, the man he loves.
  
  The ending! It really was leading all up to this moment I don't understand how I didn't see it coming. What is amazing is that the who books theme is Death=Redemption and Rook pays for his mistakes through his sacrifice just as Chess does at the end of the second book. The scene right at the end when Chess realises Rook is gone and being held by Ed and Yancy is heartbreaking but really shows the sacrifice Rook made.
  
  the whole series deserves 5 stars what a unique interesting amazing series that really stretches the imagination, I am sad to say that I have finished all three books, on to more of Files' work i think.
• 
  Leah

  I really loved this series, all-in-all. There's not enough books that feature gay romances that also have a solid plot that doesn't surround just the romance but this series is exactly that.
  
  I loved Chess' characterization as the protagonist; what with his hot-headness and irrational stubbornness. He felt real. I loved almost all the characters in this book, I felt there was a great mix of clashing personalities and motives that really kept the dialogue fresh and interesting.
  
  As far as the plot goes, I did feel lost sometimes. Book Two is probably my least favorite in the trilogy only for the fact that it was so Aztec-lore heavy. There was an extreme amount that both lends to the rich world-building Files has done but also at times lost me as a reader. Especially when it came to Ixchel and the Enemy. Book 2 gave so many different and confusing descriptions of them being both sister-mother-daughter/brother-father-son, not to mention they're 6+ other names each and they hazy background; it was hard to keep up. Book 3 was more successful in weaving the Aztec with the plot and solidifying exactly Ixchel and the Enemy as characters.
  
  I'm very glad I found this series and I'm crestfallen that not a lot of people have heard of it. I don't give 5's that often but I believe this book/series deserved it overwhelmingly!
• 
  Juushika

  A Rope of Thorns was a middle book, cluttered and unbalanced. But the payout is worth it; A Tree of Bones is fantastic. It takes the established, diverse world to satisfying conclusion, and the highlight is the characters. If A Book of Tongues is about the fact that someone hurt whom they claim to love, A Tree of Bones is about the beloved's equally complex relationship with their betrayer. Chess's development remains a touch heavy-handed, but that Files gives him and the vast majority of the cast such depth and sympathy without erasing their sins is remarkable; there's no single character I didn't learn to love (even Songbird, even Oona). This saga was great fun, unique in premise and voice, satisfying in scale and execution; but I didn't expect it to be resonant, and that's the quality I admire most in the end.
• 
  the Kent cryptid

  I've just finished reading this series, and I don't really know how to start reviewing it. I'm just sitting here, mildly stunned, going "...huh." It's one of the weirdest things I've read in a while and in some ways kind of a hot mess, but I've been totally gripped by it over the last few days.
  
  I loved the mix of Aztec gods and Old West mythos, the lovely, flowing, writing style and the underlying theme of the triumph of outsiders. However, the plotting was often hard to follow and odd things (like the author's decision to write one character's dialogue entirely in dialect - always hard to pull off) grated on me.
  
  Also, I made the mistake of getting invested in a couple who weren't end-game and so was bummed out by the ending of the final book, but that isn't the series' fault.
• 
  Dana

  It has been so long since I read the first two books in the series I should have gone back and read them again. But I did not, I plunged right in and thought perhaps she would have written as a stand alone readable. But the first part of the book left me unknowing what was going on. Picked up everything later on. I really enjoyed the character Chess Parteger with his red hair and purple suits with the pistoleers. I even liked stodgy Ed Morrow and ended up liking English Oona. I would highly recommend this series if you like gods, hexation and don't mind a flaming gay bad ass. I am really going to go back and read all 3 again in a row this time.
• 
  Lauren

  Wow, what a trilogy!! The characters really came alive for me. I really enjoyed the back and forth between the "Gods" and "Humans," that all sides were played at all times, nothing ever certain until the words...The End. To capture the concept/idea that we fight and struggle with our "growth," no lesson is easily learned and patterns are hard to break. But the benefits to reap if we struggle through and on, sticking close to those that support and love us.
• 
  A.V. Shener

  What an amazing story!
  Just finished it. The first one was ok, but had a lot of problems. The second one was much better. The third one was fantastic in every way.
  The characters were so well developed, the plot so original and exiting. Not to mention the writing, which was just beautiful.
  
  This was a crazy trilogy, with a lot of violence and hard moments, but it was so very worth it.
• 
  Susan

  IM CRYINGGGG. THIS WAS PERFECT AND THE ENDING WAS PERFECT AND NNNhdjdghsjkakdhskl
  
  next long haul train ride im on imma type up a long review bc i have so many feelings about this series holy shit.
  
  TIME TO READ THE SHORT STORIES
• 
  Sarah

  Great read! I think the ending was not as blast-your-face-off amazing as the first book, but still an exciting book. Looking forward to her next book, whatever it may be.
• 
  Morticiawbbs

  A great third book in this series with much action. My favorite of the three.
• 
  Jonathan

  Excellent final book in Gemma Files's Hexslinger Trilogy. Peculiar, fun and exhilarating.
• 
  Peter Darbyshire

  bloodwhiskeysexmagic
• 
  Ghostrunner

  I love this series. Six stars. Thirteen stars. Vivid and visceral and rich. An anti-hero who's about as anti- as it gets.
• 
  Angela

  A fitting end to a wild ride.
• 
  Karl

  This is copy 67 of 150 signed numbered copies.
• 
  S.A.

  I'm too tired to explain why this series did not rate a five. Too much, too much, and too much sometimes adds up to not enough. Still, if you the reader love the weird, this is beyond weird.