Not Even Bones (1) (Market of Monsters) Hardcover – September 4, 2018

Rebecca Schaeffer’s Not Even Bones is a bloody romp which explores morality in a world that has little room for things like mercy. Nita has spent years dissecting bodies and helping her mother sell various parts of “unnaturals”, humans with strange abilities that can be both deadly and odd, on the black market. Nita finds conversing with the dead far easier than with the living, but this way of life has kept her in part ignorant of the world outside. When her mother returns from a hunting expedition with a living, breathing young man as a prisoner, bent on selling his body parts one piece at a time, Nita must decide what kind of person she is going to be. If you’re easily squeamish when it comes to blood or severed body parts, Not Even Bones may not be the novel for you. But if you’re like me, you’ll appreciate that Schaeffer takes her gloves off in this one, so to speak, embracing the gruesomeness of the story and testing her characters at every turn. There are no clear-cut good and bad characters in this one. Though you may root for someone like Nita, she isn’t without her flaws. But she like many of the other characters are very human. They show selective empathy, making good and bad decisions in equal measure. Sometimes they are forced to ignore other people’s pain and sometimes they even delight in it. In the end, they are just trying to survive in a world that decided they are less than human. Not Even Bones is the start of a unique and deliciously disturbing series that challenges both its characters and its readers.

Nita’s mother is a sociopath. She kills “unnaturals” and brings them home for Nita to dissect and package for sale on the black market. Nita enjoys her work until one day her mother brings home a boy her own age and expects Nita to help her with vivisection. Nita defies her mother and liberates the boy. But her mother punishes her by letting her be kidnapped for sale of body parts. Lots of suspense. Nita is making friends with another sociopath who is a “Zannie.” Zannies are unnaturals who feed on the pain of those they torture. But Nita has the ability to modify her body and make it immune to pain which means she is safe from this sociopath—or is she?

So before I start with anything, this definitely should not be in the YA section. It's full of gore and scenes of torture that I believe adults would be more adapt to handle. I can read quite a bit of anything before it crosses a line. Nothing in here really crossed a line for me so nothing really bothered me. I just would not want my teenage child to read a book like this imo.Anyway, this book is just dull and boring. I have no issues with violent, gory books. In fact, for the most part, I tend to enjoy them when it makes a point. In comparison, I read a book recently that had more gore than this book (descriptive to the point I could taste the blood on the pages) and even that didn't affect me. This book just drags on and on and goes in circles without making a point to the story. It's also paced quite strangely and doesn't flow very well. Nothing makes sense in Nita's world for the reader to connect. I wanted to connect to this story and root for both Nita and Kovit a lot. I really wanted to enjoy their arcs for what they were (I've read the second book hoping to achieve that clarity and was sadly disappointed).Here's what I liked about the book: it's different from a lot of things out there. It deals with morality, right and wrong, the grey of inbetween and what is means for those characters. It doesn't try to paint these characters in a good light but it does try to make you want to root for them (regardless of how bad they are as people). I like books like this that make me really try to answer difficult questions regarding the value of lives.What I didn't like: there was no impact to these decisions. Nita is too back and forth all of the time with herself without really having a reason to kill people. I really liked reading her conflict with injuring a live person compared to a dead one she was so familiar with, but then it's like a switch was flipped after her first real human kill. And the consequences as to why they bothered her weren't written well. The idea was there, it wasn't executed properly and the delivery fell flat. I get where the author was trying to go regarding Nita and her need to survive, but I actually related to Kovit's inner conflict more. He was written better than Nina and I understood his lines, his rules, his thoughts and decisions. I think it also has to do with that Kovit saw himself as a monster regardless of everything and so he was more distinct from Nita.Anyway, I just wish there was more to the story because in the past two books I've read, it just drags and has things happen for no real reason and it hasn't built up Nita imo. I haven't seen her really grow as a character in a way that makes sense to me. Kovit has grown a lot and changed in a way where I feel for him and his crazy persona. I like Kovit and this may have been done better from his point of view because at least the author got him right. Such a shame because the idea behind this story is amazing.

This book was SO BORING. The writing was choppy, simplistic and the prose was much more inline with a middle-school read. The heroine was silly, boring, hypocritical and overall unlikeable. She rants early about the evils of (insert one of the MANY political issues brought up here) then laters burns a village to the ground, but it’s okay, because those innocent people had a better time being burned to death than living as slaves. The book and it’s author (because it’s clearly her voice and not that of the characters) both come off as conceited and way too full of themselves.

I've been reading the web comic version of this book, when I realised there was a book I bought it right away. I wasnt disappointed, dark, gritty and murky its fast paced and well worth reading

Upon reading early reviews of the book which described it as 'deeply messed up,' filled with body horror and gore, and suggested that the author probably needed psychiatric help - I knew I needed to read it.This book is probably one of the most disgusting books I have ever read - there were several scenes where the MC described her injuries in a very detail, and completely detached way, that creeped me out right to the core of my being. There were several occurrences where I genuinely had to put the book down and walk away.I loved it. Cannot wait till the next instalment of depravity and gore.

Found out about this book from the Webtoon series. I haven't enjoyed leisure reading this much for a long time. Thank you author for writing this. The content is light despite of it being grimy & gory at times, I'd say it's a good book for young teens to transition from childish stories to something darker, or for adults like me to read something that don't require too much thinking. Pure entertainment! The language is easy, not too much difficult vocabularies. The story is engaging & makes me curious to flip the pages. I think I'll get the sequel.

A brilliant read! Rebecca Schaeffer's characters are so flawed yet so amazingly complex. I loved how her main character could be like the monster from your darkest dream butwith the real life treachery of a true villain. The front cover reminded me of a dated Hitchcock movie and the Thrill intrigue and fantasy just did not disappoint. When is her next book. Please give us more Rebecca, The best thing I have read in along time.

Didn't really hit the mark on this one. Good ideas but the whole thing felt as though it was the middle of the book and didn't really get me excited to find out more