"Bone" Reflection: Part 4

Smith, Jeff, "Bone" Book 3, p. 102.

My strong reaction to Fone Bone’s decision at the end wasn’t a result of bottling up my thoughts and feelings along the way, only to let it out at the end. In fact, I’ve been reacting and feeling ever since I bought book 1 a few years back. But my reaction was to what I saw as the culmination of all my energies in the saga as I went along. After all the escapes, battles, near-death experiences, moments of bonding, moments of truth, moments of challenging one another and encouraging one another, along with every new wrinkle and new challenge along the way, and ultimately emerging victorious in the end…

Not to mention, everyone who survived to the end (which was most of the top fifteen or so characters that mattered) — grew. Fone grew up. Smiley grew up. Thorn grew up. Rose healed of several deep hurts and wounds. Even Phoney grew and changed some, if not entirely.

And Fone still chooses to return to Boneville over getting to spend the rest of his life near Thorn! (And I would also say, with Thorn.) I still say Thorn had come around. I was really rooting for them. And, the way that it ends up happening — well, I know what that’s like, all too well.

I’ll say this: it was obvious that she was crushed when Fone announced his decision. It was also obvious that it was hard for him to make that decision. He loves his cousins, Phoney and Smiley. It wasn’t just choosing Boneville over Atheia, but choosing his cousins over Thorn, Rose, and the others. And at the final goodbye, when the Bone cousins are about to leave the mountains bordering the valley to traverse the same desert they walked in on, we see Fone’s goodbyes with the others as rather informal and short, considering they spent the last year-and-a-half together. That was surprising. But Fone’s goodbye with Thorn was heart-rending.

I get it: Fone isn’t a human; he's a Bone creature. In Jeff Smith’s world, I’m not clear how things worked. It seemed obvious that Bones are different from humans. But, throughout the saga it also seemed possible — to me — that maybe they weren’t so different after all. Maybe physiologically it could’ve worked out. We will never know. I’m not even sure Jeff Smith himself knows.

But as someone who gets crowned ruler of the land, Thorn needs a partner with whom to have children and to continue the royal line. And, from what I’ve been learning over the years and about what makes a good partnership in marriage, who better than with Fone to make it work? (If it could have worked out physiologically, that is…)

They went through so many things together over that year-and-a-half (even though the war took up only nine months of that time), that the time they shared together uncovering truths, escaping from rat creatures, fighting wars, and making strategic military choices, it forged the template for a potential lifelong partnership.

Maybe Fone genuinely gave up. I doubt that, though. It’s just hard reading it, and then re-reading it all over again. What I was rooting for was not only for Fone to live in Atheia with Thorn (and Rose), but for Smiley and Phoney to stay in the valley as well. Why not have the best of both worlds? As far as I’m concerned, they’re all heroes. Besides, as the reader I don’t ever see Boneville at any point in the saga.

Other bullet points:

1. Reading through the “Bone” saga reminded me of "The Lord of the Rings."
2. The war in the “Bone” saga between good and evil is very much like the very real spiritual war that is ramping up in our world now.
3. Seeing Fone and Thorn together in jail — among other near-escape situations — reminded me of Apostle Paul and how he often was in prison, and how he also had several near-escape situations.