Nita dissects supernatural creatures when her mother brings their bodies home to sell on the black market. She never asks where the bodies come from, how they were killed, or who they used to be. It's easier to go into her comfort zone when dissecting if she doesn't think of them as people. This all goes out the window when her mother brings a living boy home with the intent to cut off pieces of him to sell while he's still alive. Nita is faced with the worst part of her life and has to decide what she's going to do about it: follow her mom's lead and torture the boy or release him and face her mother's wrath. She decides to save him and, while hiding in a hotel room, she is abducted. Nita is imprisoned and put in the boy's place, a supernatural being about to be carved up for money.
Not Even Bones tackles relevant themes through a fantastical lens. The world building sucked me in. Different types of fantasticaly creatures are real and range from being rather innocuous and unrecognizable as different to extremely dangerous, feeding directly on humans. The International Non-Human Police controls information disseminated about these beings that on one hand leads to the protection of these people and on the other leads to misinformation and ignorance in the general public. The existence of supernaturals is common knowledge, but they typically choose to stay hidden due to fear and prejudice. They are legally treated as humans except if the being is on a list that has to feed on humans to survive. The black market is booming with supernatural byproducts with both legitimate and fraudulent, a reflection of the poaching of endangered animals for unfounded traditional uses. This world rings true on all levels due to how humanity acts towards people outside of societal norms and the treatment of people and animals on the black market.
Nita and her parents directly profit off of the exploitation and killing of supernatural beings, selling their wares on the black market. While her parents are enthusiastic participants in this, Nita is forced by circumstance and the cruel retaliation of her mother to work with them. She undeniably loves the dissections and would love to go to school to become a scientist in this field, which her parents would never allow. The one time she sabotaged their work, her mother retaliated in the most cruel way possible until it cost her money to continue due to Nita being unable to work. The living boy to be tortured makes Nita face all the things about her mom and her life she avoids by throwing herself into her work and by not seeing the dead she works on as people. To make matters more complicated, Nita and her mother are supernatural beings themselves who could suffer the same fate as the people they victimize. I feel for Nita since she essentially has no choice as a teen exploited by her parents, but she can't ignore that she is also complicit in exploiting others.
When the tables are turned and she is behind bars, Nita is faced with the reality of how she and her parents live. She is literally in the shoes of those she has carved up and how their bank account stays full. Nita regenerates and has the ability to manipulate her body chemistry, tissues, and organs. Whether it's true or not, people believe if they eat her flesh, they will become younger or live forever plus she has been actively supporting ideas like these with her work. Many of her preconceived notions are challenged through this experience, namely her hatred of zannies, people who feed off of pain. Is someone who commits immoral acts for survival more or less evil than someone who commits them because they choose to? Kovit, the zannie, befriends her and shows himself to be a normal person also capable of torturing someone to feed. She is also faced with more moral decisions that force her to see how far she will go to survive. Are her morals worth dying for?
Not Even Bones is a trip through the dark, seedy underbelly of a fantastical world. I loved every second of it. The world was so similar to our own with small but significant changes and deals with many of the same problems. It was unpredictable and full of moral ambiguity. In Nita's world, you can't think in absolutist black and white. There is too much nuance, too many exceptions, and too much at risk. I eagerly await the next in the series.
My rating: 4.5/5 fishmuffins
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