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Drown the bones
Author: Alexandra KenningtonPage Count: UnknownPublication Date: Expected publication 2026-11-03 APL Another day, another stack of advanced reader copies shoved across my counter by some overly enthusiastic sales rep who thinks I give a damn about courtly politics. Let me grab my reading glasses for this mess. Drown the Bones by Alexandra Kennington is hitting shelves next November, and according to the back-cover blurb, we are supposed to tremble before a slow-burn romantasy where the spare heir teams up with an enemy prince. Groundbreaking. Truly, I can barely contain my flat-white-induced tremors. Necromancy For Beginners And Other Bad Ideas Let us dissect this premise, assuming the marketing copy isn't lying through its teeth. A spare twin named Merridan gets her royal brother murdered, gets stonewalled by her local deity, and accidentally summons the wrong ghost. Classic mistake. She ends up bound to Phoenix Darragon—an arrogant crown prince from a rival land who dabbles in the aesthetic of false deities and necromancy. Naturally, there is a bargain. He helps her solve a murder; she drags his incorporeal backside back to his homeland for a patch-job resurrection. The Slow-Burn Boredom And here is where my horror-addled brain checks out completely. Give me blood. Give me rotting flesh that stays rotten. Instead, we are looking down the barrel of an undeniable attraction blooming between two people whose main bonding activity is corpse disposal. Kennington apparently thinks we want romantic tension while dealing with homicide investigations and theological betrayals. Yet I suspect the sharp edges will get filed down for the TikTok crowd. Where is the actual rot? Where is the visceral dread of messing with the dead? If you are going to write about necromancy, stop beating around the bush with spicy eye-contact across a ritual circle and let some actual monsters off the leash. If this reads like a diet version of The Cruel Prince crossed with half-baked ghost lore, I am going to throw my apron in the trash. Readers currently drowning in the endless tide of fae royalty and obligatory enemies-to-lovers arcs will undoubtedly eat this up. Personally? I prefer my fictional corpses to stay violently uncooperative instead of doubling as sarcastic love interests. But what do I know? I just pour oat milk and listen to indie horror podcasts all morning. Final Pour The synopsis stays frustratingly vague on the actual mechanics of this Goddess relationship and what the theological betrayal costs Merridan in the end. Vague world-building is the plague of this genre. Show me the teeth, Kennington. Stop hiding behind brooding princes and give us something that actually bites. I have to go clean my disgustingly dirty sneakers.