Nita, while she can’t witness Kovit’s enjoyment in torturing others without fear and disgust, also can’t break the connection she has with him. Crossing her line of when it’s acceptable to kill becomes easier and easier for her, so much so that even Kovit warns her about what she is becoming– and Kovit never lets go of the knowledge that he is truly a monster. And, as might be expected from a traumatized teenager raised in a home where murder is the norm, her impulsivity causes some serious problems, and her judgment is really, really poor. Where previously Nita was a complicit but passive participant in the murders her mother committed, then a desperate victim of a black market dealer willing to do terrible things to escape and survive, now she has agency. Many of the characters here tread questionable moral ground. Nita has some desperate choices to make, and feelings that she must come to terms with, about herself, Kovit, and who she can trust.

Video of Nita with her ability to heal has been shared on the Internet, and her anonymity has been compromised, leaving her in constant danger from bounty hunters.

Nita is unwilling to go back to the role her mother wants her to play in hunting and killing unnaturals, and leaves her, connecting with Kovit once again. Taking advantage of INHUP’s willingness to take her to her closest relatives, she decides to contact her mother in Toronto, who saves her from a police investigation.

In the first of many incidents in the book, Nita has to make decisions about whether vengeance, and death for those who threaten her, is worth the price. Shortly thereafter, she discovers that the boy she freed from her mother,Fabricio, who betrayed her to the Death Market, is also the son of someone high up in a mob family, and is on the run from them as well. Kovit, a former mob torturer, goes on the run, and Nita turns herself over to INHUP, the international organization charged with policing “unnaturals” and eliminating the dangerous ones. At the beginning of this book, Nita and Kovit have escaped from the Death Market, leaving chaos and over a hundred deaths in their wake. Only Ashes Remain is the follow-up to Not Even Bones (previously reviewed here). Available: Hardcover, Kindle edition, audio CD

Not even bones only ashes remain