Book 1), The Bone Doll's Twin (Tamir Trilogy

This is a well balanced inventive fantasy. It is refreshing with a unique story line that held up well through the whole series. Good dialog, interesting and very human characters. Great balance of action, character development, motivation and plot. The twist of a girl hidden as a boy is refreshingly different. The world is full of practical and well researched detail. The use of magic feels very natural in this work. The author is now on my list of "read everything they have written."

Tobin is a truly tragic character. Living in the wrong body since birth, he never really settles into being the boy that he is outwardly, but doesn't even know that he was born (and is expected to change back to) a girl.

Everyone around him tries their best to keep him safe and protect his place in the kingdom - doing horrific things in the process - but it is unlikely that he will ever get fully out from under the cloud under which he was born.

This is a wonderfully original book, well written with fantastic imagery. I don't think I've ever come across a fantasy book that gave me that creepy feeling so well. I won't do any spoilers, so that is pretty much all I can say. GREAT STORY!! The whole series is fantastic!

After reading many new books in this market that I have found to be boring and/or repititious, I picked up this title because of the reviews in the front. What A great choice I made!!! This is one of the best books by far that I have read lately, and I am eagerly awaiting the forth-coming volumes. Her characters come alive, to the point that you feel that they are real and that you know them personally, and the story-line was magnificent. This was a hard book to put down!! I will definetly go out and purchase other titles by this author.
The Bone Doll's Twin is a book that I will read over and over again, and I rate it up there with my beloved Raymond Feist, (The Magician series), David Eddings (All books regarding Belgarath and Polgara), and Stephen R. Donaldson novels (The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant)!!!!!!!!!

Wonderful and rich story. The characters are real and beautifully crafted. The author grips the reader from the first chapter. I have also read the second book in this series. I needed to know what was going to happen.

Readers you know what I mean. This book makes you wonder what they(characters/story) are doing when are not reading it. Sadly I will have to wait for the third installment. If you liked "Luck in the Shadows" series you will love this book and second in the series "Hidden Warrior"

FOR more! This is my first book from Lynn Flewelling, and I will be buying the rest because she has the ability to write a tale that has story lines that seem so different yet they are all running down the same course of the river, perhaps one is caught in an eddy or another rushing in the middle of the rapids! Being pagan I truly loved how steeped in symbology and magic and honor!
A book to read for sure! I cannot wait to find out what is on the plate for Tobin now that ... well I will leave that to you when you read the tale...

This novel was an excellent, stay-up-all-night, read! When I first started reading it, I got bored by the first two chapters and put it aside for a while. When I had some extra time, I decided to give the book another chance, and pretty soon, I was so engrossed into the novel, that I finished it in one and a half days. To me, my interest was captured when Tobin started telling his story, the situation he is in could hardly be called boring. I am very interested in finding out what happens in the next book, Hidden Warrior. I didn't know that this book wasn't a stand alone, so I was mad that the story ended at such a crucial point. Now, I think I am glad to have a break from reading, otherwise I would still be reading and I really need to get on with my life, especially with the teacher strike.

This book is a masterpiece. I have read Lynn Flewelling's previous books, but this goes far beyond them. It is deeply disturbing and meaningful. Each character in this book is painfully real as they wrestle with internal struggles. Tobin is a character so intricately woven that you lose yourself in his world of rumours and whispering. The Bone Doll's Twin drew me into the Three Lands and I am anxiously awaiting the second installment.

I confess to having bought this book as recommended by a reviewer of George R.R. Martin's "Game of thrones". That reviewer had been outraged because of the numerous ordeals George R.R. Martin makes his feminine characters go through.
Indeed, "Bone Doll's Twin" is far from that. I've read some of the reviews here, and tend to agree to those not-so-favorable. Besides, influenced by the mentioned reviewer, I've noticed some aspects that suggest a strong feminist orientation of the writer.
The plots are carefully shaped so that all abasements of women frustrate the reader. The leaders have to be females (queens); if this does not happen, all kind of disasters happen to the country (Skala). The army contains equally men and women. We are led to consider reproachfully the current situation, when the king disallows this: unhappy, the warrior-women find shelter by the hearths. Iya, one of the most important characters, is an old female wizard; it so happens, that she has a male apprentice, whom she teaches wizardry wisdom. And Iya is the one to forbid or recommend to Arkoniel, the apprentice, to have sexual experiences.
Lhel, a fascinating character by all means, is a female witch initiated in nature magic. She is the sexual partner of Arkoniel. She chose him, hunted him, and eventually rode him in an explicitly depicted intercourse.
Apart from all these, the book offers a rather pleasant reading. I'm mildly interested in the next installment.

I liked the Nightrunner series. When this first came out I didn't want to read it because I didn't think it would be any good. But seeing it in the library, I decided to give it a shot. It was incredible, surpassing the Nightrunner series by tenfold. Now I'm dying for the next book to see what happens next. I won't give away any detail because it's a book you'd want to savor.

Gripping, compelling, engrossing...the reviews that were written on the jacket are correct. I found all three books of the Tamir Trilogy to be just that. The Bone Doll's Twin and the two others in the series all deserve 5 stars, in my opinion.

The characters are all believable and well developed. All struggle with the rights and wrongs of things. It reminds me in a slight way of the Thomas Covanent series, in that the "good guys" are certainly not your stereotypical heros. As other's have mentioned, there is a strong theme of "does the end justify the means". It doesn't lay out any answers, but it asks very interesting questions.

This entire trilogy was excellent. The characters were interesting and I hated to see them go. Throughout the story I found myself go from loving to hating to feeling sorry for many of the characters. I only wish that the author would write more stories.

No words of praise adequately describe The Bone Doll's Twin! I literally could not put it down. Just when you think the plot has settled into a predicatable outcome, the author delivers a blow that seems to come from out of nowhere. A fantasy that will keep you on the edge of your seat!

I bought this book because it came with an incredibly high rating, and had several reviews (including one by one of my favorite authors, Robin Hobb) that were well-written, coherent pieces of praise. Which leaves me with one question: Which book were they reading, and could they please loan me a copy? What I got was several hundred pages of...nothing. Nothing punctuated with random, gratuitous, and unnecessarily graphic...liaisons. The story was interesting in concept, but poorly executed. There were no sympathetic characters, and little action. I'm ashamed to say I hung on until page 330-something, thinking that surely it got better. Perhaps the sequels improved it; I'll never know.

All in all, I've read better and more interesting Star Trek spin-offs than this uninteresting if "original" book. If there was a zero-star rating, this book would've earned it. Now where's that used book store?

I was drawn to this work from a recomendation from George RR Martin, who is my favorite fantasy writer. But, I was bitterly disappointed in this book. The writing is competent, the atmosphere chilly and she tries to build up momentum for the main story, a few subplots, and fills in a backstory. But, very little seems to get accomplished in the first 250 pages. There were no characters that I actually cared about and no sense of wonder at any mystery that made me want to turn the page. By way of contrast, GRRM's works by that point had at least 5 characters that I wanted to learn much more about and had started half a dozen story lines that captured my interest. Bone Doll seems to put almost all its eggs in one basket with its main story, and it's not as interesting as one of the top 3 of GRRM's subplots. A very competent writer, but there are better books.