Bone Dance

Bone Dance

First paperback edition
Author	Emma Bull
Cover artist	Jean Targete
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre	Fantasy novel
Publisher	Ace Books
Publication date	May, 1991
Media type	Print (paperback)
Pages	278 pp (first edition, paperbound)
ISBN	0-441-57457-2
OCLC	23612899

Bone Dance is a fantasy novel written by Emma Bull and published in 1991. It was nominated for the Hugo and World Fantasy Awards.

Setting

Although the city in which Bone Dance is set is not named, it appears to be a climate-modified Minneapolis, the author's setting for her first novel, War for the Oaks. This makes it an urban fantasy, one specifically hinged on Tarot (each of ten sections is named for a card) and Louisiana Voodoo. Nonetheless it is subtitled "A Fantasy for Technophiles" and the central place of devices generally, and electronics specifically, justifies that label. Since the time is a post-nuclear-clash future following a war between the Americas, North and South, skill at maintaining and repairing salvaged artifacts is valuable. So are pre-collapse artifacts themselves. Sparrow, the point-of-view character, makes a living by bartering such skill, along with occasional sales of scavenged artifacts. It is equally relevant that this main character is a bioengineered human, though that case is not plainly stated until half-way through the story.

Synopsis

In the opening scene, Sparrow cannot recall what took place in the preceding 36 hours. Awakening yet again in a novel place with new hurts, the urge to fix the problem is intense. On the way to enlightenment comes a cryptic Tarot reading from friend Sherrea, abduction by a dead man animated by what might as well be a Loa, and introduction to a Vodun-based community that is dedicated to replacement, and if necessary to overthrow, of the status quo in the city. The latter has the individual most responsible for the inter-continental war near its power apex, a character who is also the revenge target of another survivor from his kind. Those are the "Horsemen," modified people who can move their consciousness from body to body, much like the central figure in Mind of my Mind by Octavia Butler. The second half of the story shows Sparrow's awkward progress toward a fully human condition and becoming a valued member of a community, and is capped by a closing conceit: that the whole telling has been an autobiography.