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The Bone Shard Daughter is the first book in the Drowning Empire fantasy trilogy by Andrea Stewart. It is her debut novel, first published in 2020.

The plot is split among the points of view of the various characters, winding from one to the next, and eventually connecting. The setting is an empire consisting of many floating islands upon the Endless Sea.

Lin is the daughter of the tyrannical emperor of the Phoenix Empire, but must compete to become his heir with Bayan, his foster son. The Sulai dynasty rules the empire by wielding bone shard magic, using skull fragments from their citizens to harvest their life force in order to animate constructs that fulfill various roles in running the island empire. Four major constructs that use hundreds of shards are the empire's ministers, while simpler constructs serve as dock clerks or spies. Lin is struggling to recover her memories, lost after contracting a mysterious illness brought to the palace by Bayan. She and Bayan vie to become the more adept bone shard magicians and thereby receive the emperor's favor. Because the bones must belong to a living person in order to work, the emperor gathers what he needs through tithing festivals, where the young members of his empire are trepanned, some dying in the process. Not all bone shard donors will power a construct, but those who do will have their life force drained and die early.