Friday Friyay: 'City of Bones' by Martha Wells

Happy Friday! I spent a lot of this week recovering from the last two weekends, as well as lowkey celebrating my birthday. I'm 30 now, go me! Very proud to have made it this far and looking forward to my thirties. But therefore I also got hardly any reading done as I just spent a lot of it trying to stay on top of the bare necessities. But one book I have been peeking in to every now and then is City of Bones by Martha Wells, which I'm very much enjoying!

Before Martha Wells captured the hearts of MILLIONS with her Murderbot series, there was Khat, Sagai, and Elen, and a city risen out of death and decay…

The city of Charisat, a tiered monolith of the Ancients’ design, sits on the edge of the vast desert known as the Waste. Khat, a member of a humanoid race created by the Ancients to survive in the Waste, and Sagai, his human partner, are relic dealers working in the bottom tiers of society, trying to stay one step ahead of the Trade Inspectors.

When Khat is hired by the all-powerful Warders to find relics believed to be part of one of the Ancients' arcane engines, he, and his party, begin unravelling the mysteries of an age-old technology.

This they expected.

They soon find themselves as the last line of defense between the suffering masses of Charisat and a fanatical cult, bent on unleashing an evil upon the city with an undying thirst for bone.

That, they did not expect.

Book Beginnings is at home on Rose City Reader, hosted by Gilion Dumas, and Friday 56 at Freda's Voice, hosted by Freda. I'll also be joining the Book Blogger Hop, hosted by Billy over at Ramblings of a Coffee Addicted Writer. All quotes are taken from an ARC and may be different in the published book.

BB:

'Chapter One

Somewhere else, in a room shadowed by age and death, a man readies himself to look into the future for what may be the last time.

The day was long, and Khat was bored with bargaining.' 1%

In the ARC the first sentence is in italics, while the rest is normal, so I tried to show that here by bolding it. The first chapter has like two different stories going on and intersecting and I honestly still don't understand what was going on there. I'm enjoying this story, however, and how straightforward Martha Wells tells her story.

F56:

'Elen didn't look up at him, still studying the winged relic intently, and her voice was grave. "But who wanted the relics stolen int he first place? XXX?"' 56%

Elen is a really intriguing character to me so far, although I've only just met her in the book. (Somehow I'm picturing her like Shin from Ahsoka, though I have no idea why!) I've also blanked out who she suspects regarding the relic thefts although the name meant nothing to me. I've also already forgotten what it even said, so yay for not spoiling myself.

BBH: 

This week's question comes from Billy himself: 

How long does it usually take you to finish a book?

The answer to this question really depends on the book, the mood, work, the weather, and the position of the moon. When it's the weekend, I'll race through a 400-page thriller in an afternoon. When I'm reading a big, 700+ page Fantasy book or something similar, I'll either take my time with it for weeks or read it in a few days at every chance I get. Non-Fiction books for work is usually a few days, because it's work so I have the time set aside for it, but I also have other things to do. 

There's also just the fact that I can really enjoy a book and then still get distracted. I have books in my "Currently Reading" shelf on StoryGraph and Goodreads which have been on there for over a year. And now cause I'm actively reading them at the moment, but because I started a year ago, forgot within 3 days, and am now still waiting to get back to it. With audiobooks it also just really depends whether I get distracted or now.

That's it for me this week! What do you think of City of Bones? And how long does a book usually take you?