The Other Half of the Grave

The Other Half of the Grave is one of Jeaniene Frost's most interesting publishing experiments. It is a retelling of her debut novel Halfway to the Grave, but written from the perspective of Bones rather than Cat. Frost worked on this version for more than a decade, sharing chapters with her newsletter subscribers as she finished them, before finally publishing it as a complete novel. For longtime fans of the Night Huntress series, the book was a chance to see the famous first meeting between Cat and Bones from the other side, and to learn what the four hundred and fifty year old vampire was actually thinking during the events Cat narrated almost twenty years earlier.

The trick with a retelling like this is that the writer cannot just transcribe the same scenes with new pronouns. Frost had to figure out what Bones was doing during the chapters where Cat could not see him, what his motivations were before she ever appears, and how a man with his history reads a young half vampire who walks into his bar one night looking like trouble. The answer turns out to be richer than a lot of readers expected. Bones has more vulnerability and more strategy than the original book had room to show.

This is not a book to read first. The Other Half of the Grave assumes you know Halfway to the Grave well, and it works best as a companion piece to the original. For readers who have followed Cat and Bones through ten plus novels and novellas across the wider series, it is one of the most satisfying late additions to the Night Huntress universe Frost has given us. The romance is foundational to the entire series and seeing its origin from both sides feels like a gift.