"There she could watch the children—their young bones laughing at winter's bite—and the sea beyond."

Who the fuck talks like that? Writes like that?

Nora Roberts does, an American author of over 225 novels, with over 500 million books sold globally.

I wonder, is it truly a bad sentence? Or am I just not fluent enough, not well-read, to see its genius? I refuse to believe I know better than such a well-established writer.

I can't imagine George R. R. Martin, for example, putting this line into the mouth of a character, let alone a narrator. (He's currently my go-to when it comes to quality noveling. I've only read his one book, the first one in the Ice and Fire series. I wasn't a fan of the genre, but it was unparalleled in terms of sentence fluidity, word choice, and the like.)

I guess that sentence could work in the right context. For example, "The grandmother was already *chilled to the bone*, but decided to climb the hill. There she could watch the children—their young bones laughing at winter's bite—and the sea beyond." But there was no such context. (Maybe it was lost during editing?)

I expect humans will provide roughly the same commentary as the AI did. Some will reinforce my concerns, saying:

"You're exactly right. The use of bones here is jarring and unconventional, and your instinct is correct—bones aren't typically associated with laughter or resistance to cold."

"This is an awkward and overextended metaphor."

Others will try to explain why this metaphor works and is perfectly natural.

Real contemporary writers, like George R. R. Martin himself, may be the only source of valuable insight, but I am not interested in that sentence analysis enough to bother such people. Instead, I want to ask my future self. My future self, I hope you are in good health. I hope you are far more literarily experienced and fluent than I am. What do you think of that sentence?