Five amnesiac children find one another in a magical labyrinth of memory and horror in Francis White's mysterious, harrowing dark fantasy novel, The Bone Door.
A boy awakens in a chamber where snow is falling, his only companion a skeleton. He remembers he is 11 years old and has long blond hair, but he has "a great gaping hole where a name should be." He meets a young girl with amber drops instead of eyes who also remembers nothing, and she names him Hop for his enthusiasm. A glowing doorway leads them to a chamber overseen by a human-size owl with eyes "the deep dark blue of galaxies," who tells them they are in a labyrinth made of memories with only one way out: the Bone Door. They can find it and escape the labyrinth by passing tasks set for them in a series of four rooms, but if they fail, their souls will meet a fate worse than death. They take on the tasks and along the way meet more nameless children, each missing a body part. They realize that the tasks relate to the history of a world they can't remember but whose horrific past is inextricably linked with the truth of their identities.
This meditation on inherent nature versus individual choice pits an extroverted, life-affirming hero against visceral horrors. White (Voyage of the Damned) counteracts violence and cruelty with friendship and humor as she excavates the memory of an ancient, noble love. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads