The Bone Shard Daughter takes place in a world of moving islands ruled by an emperor with an army of animal constructs. It follows four storylines: Lin, Jovis, Phalue and Ramani, and Sand. Lin and Jovis were my favorite points of view. 
Lin is the emperor's daughter. She lost her memories five years ago and is trying to win back her father's love. I enjoyed her character arc and her relationship with her foster brother Bayan. I thought the bone shard magic was very interesting, especially the moral struggles that come along with it and how it echoes the moral issues of empire. 
Jovis, and his lovable animal companion Mephi, are searching for Jovis' lost wife. I loved Jovis as a character, his inner voice was unique and I enjoyed how he struggled with his morals and his goals when they conflicted. Mephi is my favorite character in this book. 
Phalue and Ramani felt like a typical romantic rebellion against the empire story. 
Sand's POV was interesting, and I'm looking forward to seeing what she'll do in later books. 

This book was intriguing and captivating from cover to cover. Each character is so well written with unique qualities and a sense of narrative specific to them. The diversity, the depth of character, the personal growth, and the great questions this book forces one to ask relative to its plot make for a deeply dynamic and simply excellent book. 
I'm excited to read the next two books. 

The book definitely has some interesting plots and themes, and I felt the plot twists made sense and were well done. I managed to figure out a few of them before they were revealed, so those felt good to experience. I like how the 'magic' system is explained for the most part and the culture of this world with the Tithing festivals and bone shard magic (even if I am curious why it's only bones from the skull, but I may have accidentally missed that part while reading).

The characters were all very interesting to me except maybe one or two, even if I felt that five main POV characters were a bit too much. I would have personally preferred having either Phalue or Ramani not having POV chapters, as I felt they just took up space that could have been better used elsewhere. Having them be in a relationship is definitely interesting. Still, it just made me really dislike Ramani as a character due to how she treats Phalue. I just did not see any connection between them from Ramani's POV chapters. Sand, I just was not interested in, they brought interesting concepts but they felt a bit disjointed with the rest of the book, even more so with the ending of their arc.

This book definitely holds up as a standalone (excluding some minor things). I always prefer a book in a series that can be enjoyed just as a standalone and not have to rely on the other books in the series to have a complete plot.  

There are multiple characters with their own POV chapters, and mainly three different plot lines to follow (the Emperor's daughter Lin, the smuggler Jovis, and the governor's daughter Phalue with her lover Ranami). In the beginning I was skeptical whether I'd manage to keep my interest in all these seemingly separate plot lines, but Jovis's smuggler affairs and boating takes him from island to island, entangling him into the other's plots little by little, which makes the whole book more interesting.

My absolute favorite character is Jovis, and I think the book is worth reading just to get to know him (and he is not the only good thing in the book!). Jovis has a good sense of humour, a good heart and a lot of common sense. Even in the middle of long-lasting grieving he doesn't hesitate to spring into action. And on top of that, he is humble. He insist he is not a hero, but he keeps doing heroic things even if he is tired of getting sucked up into other people's drama and is in it only for a pay or a means to his own ends. Here are some of my favorite quotes from Jovis's thoughts about him doing heroic deeds:

Jovis also has a companion animal, Mephi, who is a chimera-like magical creature in it's cub stage, and he grows throughout the book while learning more. Mephi can speak and has magical skills, most remarkable of them being that

Mephi somehow shares a connection with Jovis and because of that Jovis gets superhuman abilities himself. See the next spoiler for Ranami's summary of the abilitites. Besides those, Jovis also seems to have some magical awareness of water.

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The worldbuilding is very intriquing with the unique magic system, and I couldn't wait to learn more about it throughout the book. The Emperor has bone shard magic and is very secretive about teaching it forward to his potential successors (his daughter Lin and his step son / Lin's rival Bayan). The bone shard magic has a resemblance to necromancy in the matter that the magic user builds a construct (a chimera-like body) from deceaced animal or human parts. What animates these constructs is a bone shard – or multiple of them –

from a living human's skull. When the bone shard is used for bone shard magic, it drains the human's life little by little until death to animate the construct. This necromantic and parasitic

bone shard magic is paired with a language system unique to the bone shard magic. The language system makes the magic user able to command these constructs through carving command symbols onto the bone shards. Towards the end there is a huge plot twist regarding this bone shard magic:

Lin and Bayan are both constructs made by the Emperor to be used by him in different ways

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Besides this bone shard magic, the book references ancient foes, god-like creatures called Alanga, who had very powerful magic completely of their own. They were defeated by the Emperor's ancestors a long time ago, and the Emperors since have sweared to keep the people safe from them. The Alanga have been gone for so long though, that the people have reduced them to myths and begun to question if they are a threat at all anymore. It is teased that the Alanga might come back; their ancient artefacts of statues and murals have begun to open their eyes, indicating a possible end to their absence. This is what might be coming in the sequels, besides the political intrique of a possible revolution or at the very least a need for a political reform by the current ruler. As it has been so far, Jovis seems to keep being in the middle of all of this, connecting all the different plot lines of the different groups or sides in this Empire;

he is made into a cover agent

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This was good. I liked the worldbuilding and the lore. I struggle to care about any of the characters and their plot lines. While I liked parts of this book, I did struggle to stay focused and engaged at times.

This book (and the whole series) is information-dense, so go in with your thinking caps on! There's a really unique magic system, questions of inheritance, mystery, political intrigue and unrest, examinations of class, environmental impacts of human behavior, and more. I'm really glad I was able to read all 3 books back-to-back because I don't know if I could have retained all the important information if I had to wait between books.