In the captivating start to a new, darkly lyrical fantasy series for readers of Leigh Bardugo and Sabaa Tahir, Tea can raise the dead, but resurrection comes at a price…Let me be clear: I never intended to raise my brother from his grave, though he may claim otherwise. If there’s anything I’ve learned from him in the years since, it’s that the dead hide truths as well as the living.When Tea … living.
When Tea accidentally resurrects her brother from the dead, she learns she is different from the other witches in her family. Her gift for necromancy means that she’s a bone witch, a title that makes her feared and ostracized by her community. But Tea finds solace and guidance with an older, wiser bone witch, who takes Tea and her brother to another land for training.
In her new home, Tea puts all her energy into becoming an asha—one who can wield elemental magic. But dark forces are approaching quickly, and in the face of danger, Tea will have to overcome her obstacles…and make a powerful choice.
Memoirs of a Geisha meets The Name of the Wind in this brilliant new fantasy series by Rin Chupeco!
A Publishers Weekly Most Anticipated Young Adult Book of Spring 2017!
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Besides the gorgeous cover, what’s inside is worth your time as well! This novel is engrossing, I love the world building and the alternating timelines. Chupeco doles out details as though you are already familiar with the history of this world, which usually frustrates me, but works in this case. The protagonist is a young girl that exhibits powers that are rare, despised, and desperately needed all at the same time. You know from the beginning that something happens to cast her out of society, I never lost interest in finding out what exactly happened. I can’t wait for the next book, definitely on my watch list for release!
I couldn’t put the book down! I love Chupeco’s world-building, character development, and descriptions. Tea’s relationship with her brother Fox is well done. The story is told by an older Tea, and every chapter jumps back and forth from past to present. I really loved whenever I got to future Tea’s passages because it would essentially be her commentary on the previous/next chapter of her past.
The only complaint I have about this book is while the past/present jumping back and forth is interesting, the overall story that is told moves a little too slow.
I have also seen others mention that there is special snowflake syndrome in this book. While it is definitely in this book, I personally did not feel that it was an issue. I felt it was necessary/made sense considering how scarce bone witches are in the world.
There only other complaint for me is that the story ended on a cliffhanger that was vague and left me with a lot of questions. I know this will be a series, but had I known that the ending would be this way I would’ve waited for the second book to come out before reading the first one.
Overall it’s a great read, but if you don’t like having to wait for an ending, and you don’l like having a ton of questions at the end without ready explanation, I recommend waiting for the second book before starting this book.
Rin Chupeco is one of the best authors I have ever experienced! She makes me feel like I am the main character and am going through the same thing; it’s a scary but amazing experience!
In ‘The Bone Witch’, there are two narratives which seem at first to be separate, but eventually reveal themselves to be interwoven to create a vast, rich tapestry of storytelling that binds the listener in its magic.
This magical dark fantasy is a spellbinding story in which fate and magic balance one another as Tea discovers her destiny and learns to use her powers and make important choices wisely.
’The Bone Witch’ is a brilliant fantasy coming of age story suitable for YA and older readers.
I was involved from the very beginning to the end. The intrigue, interesting characters, it was great!
Amazing can’t wait to get the second book
The first thing that attracted me to this book was the cover. It was so stunning and detailed that as soon as I saw it, I was immediately drawn to it. Then I read the summary. The doubt sat in: a book about a 12 yr old? Hmm…I agonized for days…but inevitably, I couldn’t resist. I was drawn to this book like a lamb to slaughter. I got the book and immediately started reading. This book sets two different time frames for Tea: One as a young girl from the beginning, and the other (as you’ll see when you read, it is very noticeably different in type-set, so you will know the difference between the two time frames) as she’s a few years older and telling the story of what happened. The detail of her scenes and characters are so intricate and breath-taking.
Some books are like recipes, you must do it JUST RIGHT or they will turn out bland and unsatisfying at best. However, THIS novel was perfectly orchestrated. So well-written that you almost feel as if you’re in the story WITH Tea as she’s on her journey with her brother, Fox, and the Asha. You feel her fear, her sadness, her anger, and you’re dancing her steps along with her. Fighting along-side her. There are so many things I want to say about this novel, but I won’t…I will let you read for yourself. This book is a must-read. I dare-say you will be missing out if you do not read this book.
Although I received an advanced copy of this e-book from the publisher via netgalley, all opinions are my own.
This book took me a long while to get through. The first three quarters moved at such a leisurely pace, I didn’t feel compelled to read it all the time like I do with some books. I loved the new (at least to me) idea of a bone witch. Kind of reminded me of final fantasy 10 with the raising of the daevas.
Tea, the main character doesn’t even know she is an asha until she unwittingly resurrects her dead brother at his funeral. She is then thrust into the journey to become an Asha.
Overall, this was a good one, just not a great one for me. I am quite anxious to see what the next book brings.
PS I also loved how it goes back and forth from the past to the present. You don’t know who you are hearing from until the end. That part I really enjoyed!
I thought the description of the book sounded amazing. A girl raises her brother from the dead by accident. She learns she is a bone witch, and is sent for training, far away from her family. It sounded like exactly the sort of book I love. Unfortunately, the book did not live up to my expectations.
Tea is 12 years old when she raises her brother from the dead. He is now essentially a zombie, and is bound to her for life. Another bone witch, Mykala, comes to take Tea away for training, and her brother, Fox, follows them. And that is the end of Tea’s involvement with her family.
Tea is being trained to be a dark asha, the asha’s being similar to geishas. They wear clothing that sounds like kimonos, and have an elaborate social structure. She is trained not only in the use of her witchcraft, but also in the arts of singing, dancing and entertaining. Why? These are very powerful witches. Why are they treated as little better than prostitutes?
Even though this book has an interesting premise, I didn’t find it that exciting. The book is super descriptive. Things happen very slowly, and I didn’t like the patriarchal society of the book. I also felt this book would have done better if it was set in the contemporary world. I know this is the first book in the series, but I don’t feel the need to read any more about these characters.
I received a free copy from NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
The Bone Witch by Rin Chupeco
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars!
Start with an open mind and open heart – great series debut!
Keywords that came into mind about The Bone Witch:-
– ominous, mysterious, gripping suspense
– fascinating, enchanting, engaging, mesmerizing characters
– wanderlust escapism to lands anew
– consuming angst and drama
– vivid imagery
The Bone Witch is a spellbinding journey into the mystical and forbidden through the eyes of an apprentice witch named Tea – the long road to self-enlightenment and control to power that the Eight Kingdom has not seen for years.
Plucked out of her home by a mysterious yet powerful Asha named Lady Mykaela, Tea travels across the lands with her new teacher as she discovers her powers and learns how to control them. It is only later that Tea realized how vast and immense her powers are and the lessons taught are very different from what real-world shows – beyond the books offered. Thrown into a world of magic, demons, and the undead, Tea soon finds out that sometimes, the monsters are not as who we assumed them to be.
The story is a feast to fantasy buffs and urban legend fanatics, but even if you aren’t – this book will pull you in with stunning revelations on each page. It portrays the complex life of people in this fantasy world, The Eight Kingdoms, wherein there is a set order of law, hierarchy, and power. The human aspects of love, joy, pride, jealousy, lust, deceit, etc., amplify the already with people wielding magical powers that use it for good or bad. It is a growing-up tale relatable to anyone – young or old, with many lessons and teachings that are applicable, witch or not.
The events happening in Tea’s story are exciting yet dangerous at the same time. There are too many questions running through Tea’s head as she finds her path as an Asha while wanting to help the kingdoms by getting rid of the monsters riddling the kingdom. How can she speed up her learnings and stop the deaths going on around here, etc.? Ironically, she doesn’t realize that others are working behind the scenes that are out to get her. It did not help that simply being a Dark Asha / Bone Witch causes loathe, limiting Tea’s journey.
The ending is E-P-I-C! There is a great scene that is beyond the magic. Although the book answered my many questions at the end, more come popping out even after the book did. For every question answered, two or three more questions will pop up like the mythical monster, Hydra. Within the story’s recounting, serious things are happening beyond the first impression. By the time the reader realizes this, it would be too late but to face it head-on – acceptingly or not. There is no denying that a war is brewing, and the author bridges this message nicely into the trilogy’s second book.
Readers can enjoy storytelling at its finest with flashbacks between past and present. The writing technique is primarily transparent, with some ambiguous ones when a lesson is to happen.
Fair warning that this book is a trilogy and tells a very complex story – a long path of endless learnings, raw and new emotions – wherein everything is uncertain for Tea. Expect the unexpected, and somehow, the ending comes full circle to realize how special Tea is as a human being and as a mystical witch.
My best advice is to approach the book with an open mind, open heart, and enjoy the fantastic ride!
This is an amazing story. A lot of thought went into the world building and I really appreciate that! My biggest criticism is that the book starts off really slow and is, at times, agonizing to get through. The author does this to lay the groundwork for the world and the characters in it. Overall, it is a great story and I definitely recommend!
Interesting book. I like the concept. But I still have many questions. The book has a lot of confusing names! Why was Tea put in exile? Who did she supposedly kill? Why is this bard telling her story? How is she controlling all these deva? What will she do with them? I must go on to book two to find out!
Rin Chupeco shows us a masterful use of worldbuilding, in creating a massive setting that is expansive, diverse, and fascinating. The Bone Witch is a second world fantasy that revolves around Tea, a young woman in a land where people wear their hearts not on their sleeves, but on a necklace, and the color of your heart can determine your destiny. When her brother Fox, enlisted in the military, dies fighting a daeva, an undead creature cobbled together from the pieces of different animals, Tea sets her destiny in stone when she unwittingly raises him from the dead and her heartsglass turns silver. Once a girl in a small town, further dwarfed by her massive family, now she’s become a bone witch, one of the few witches in the land who can raise the dead, control their corpses, and most importantly, kill the daeva. Her powers, strong even for a bone witch, make her valuable and allow her to enter a program to become an asha, a Geisha-like role where she plays the part of a historian, doctor, entertainer, and fighter. But her work with the Dark magic also means that when she and her fellow bone witches put down daeva, they kill themselves piece by piece as well.
Alongside Tea’s personal struggles in the world of the asha, her undead brother following her around with his own agenda, and the knowledge she’s essentially being raised like a cow for slaughter, a war rages on in the background. The Faceless, users of the Dark magic who have waged war against the people of the world and who can, like Tea, control the daeva for their own purposes, lurk in the background. And the novel is told in a split timeline, every other chapter focusing on Tea’s life as she grows up in the asha-ka and the others focusing on a future, seventeen year old Tea who has been exiled and is telling her story to a wandering Bard. This older Tea has a dead lover and is no longer a regular asha, instead, she’s spending her time on a beach of bones, building her own daeva and raising an army of corpses. From my description you might think this book is abnormally busy, with too many plot lines going on, but the problem I had was actually the opposite: very little happens in this book. Despite the numerous storylines and unique world, the longer chapters were not about this future badass Tea, but about Tea as she is growing up in asha training. That’s it. Tea’s asha training is interspersed with petty dramas among the other asha, her own almost-romantic tangle with the prince of the nation, fights with his cousin, but the action of the Dark magic, the daeva, and the war are all on the distant horizon until about three hundred pages in, in a novel that’s just above four hundred pages. Three hundred pages of very little happening.
The setting is the most original and engrossing part, and we get so close to interacting with it on a deeper level before the author skates away to something less interesting. There are a few character points that could’ve been delved into deeper for a more interesting middle: there is a gender nonconforming boy who wants to be an asha, Fox’s unknown relationship with the princess of the land, a flurry of ashas and other characters with charming personalities. Instead we are subjected to a day-to-day explanation of Tea’s life, and while it did make for good worldbuilding, with lessons in history, the lifestyle of the ashas, and types of dancing and singing, it wasn’t interesting. We are led to a climax that is almost perfect: a demonstration of Tea’s powers, the first steps towards this second timeline where she is dark and exiled, a surprise cliffhanger to set up the next novel, but for over two hundred pages we get almost no build up to these events. The climax feels shockingly sudden, unearned. I like Tea as a protagonist, I like her world and her job, but the larger plot here is very shaky. I’m not even sure what the war was about, why these Faceless do what they do.
But Chupeco creates a great world, even if the story it takes place in doesn’t have a strong backbone. The magic system in play here is complex but not complicated; magic users are separate from the magic sensitive and are further separated from non-magic users, all of this designated with the colors of their heartsglass, silver, purple, and red, respectively. Those colors can then be divided up further, the Deathseekers and Heartforgers and bone witches all in silver. We get tantalizing glimpses of these two other categories throughout the novel; one of Tea’s love interests is a Deathseeker, a great magical warrior, and the aforementioned boy-asha attempts to escape this dangerous life, while the Heartforgers can replace damaged or stolen heartsglasses at a great price, repairers of literal broken hearts. Even Tea’s asha training let us view a bigger life beyond the walls of her city, a deep and rich history, pieces of politics that all let us peek at something larger than her simplistic plot. All throughout the novel we see hints of this fascinating world, and yet I can’t help but feel like it is underutilized with the two hundred pages of drudgery we have to get to.
This novel is a lot of setup for what I’m hoping will be a better second novel. At the end of this book, Tea is older and closer to a more interesting future, and we have an extremely detailed world to play in for the next two novels. I did enjoy this book on some level, but it was more like reading an interesting exercise in worldbuilding than the excitement that I expected from a book that advertises itself as a gothic tale featuring a powerful necromancer whose first act is to raise her brother, who died in a massive war, from the dead. Where is all that excitement throughout this book? We have great characters, a great world, and I hope we complete the trifecta next book by getting a better plot. The Bone Witch is still enchanting, unique, and original, but overall it’s a book that hopefully is setting up a better trilogy.
review blog
I listened to this audiobook free on Audible as their promotion during the Corona Virus.
It was on my wish list for some time, so I was more than happy to listen as I worked on the computer.
It kept taking my attention away from whatever I was doing. Getting sucked into this story about Tea, this girl who accidentally brings her brother back from the dead.
I really love this concept of heart glass. Being able to read and interpret what anothers’ heart glass is feeling, that was cool to read about.
Almost as cool as the Asha’s! These Asha’s are powerful and work with dark magic. You just know there is excitement around magic, especially dark magic. This story definitely doesn’t disappoint. Tea’s training as an Asha is literally what enthralled me the most.
Then there is this;
Is chick pea dip the same as hummus????
I gotta know. When I heard about chick pea dip in the story, I was like….
Definitely an interesting and engrossing book. I look forward to more from this series and the author.
3.5/5
*I received this copy from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review*
Honestly I didn’t get very far. I usually love stories like this, but for some reason this just couldn’t seem to hold my interest. I also routinely come back to books I had trouble with initially and I revise or update the review I gave with the first try.
I stumbled across The Bone Witch by accident at my local library and after reading the back thought it might be an interesting read. I couldn’t but it down! Rin Chupeco’s story is original and absolutely enthralling! Her ability to bring her characters to life is simply amazing. The world building in this book (and in the following two books in the trilogy) is truly incredible, so often in books little details are left out, that isn’t the case with The Bone Witch. The authors attention to detail and strong voice build a world you feel like you are literally inside of while reading. I fell in love with this world and with these characters, so much so that I finished the book in a day and couldn’t wait to get to the next one!
This book was a beautiful start to the Bone Witch trilogy. I absolutely love the character of Likh, along with all the others. The world building is exquisite and all of the details sucked you in and led you to the world of The Eight Kingdoms.
The characters were developed to the point that I wanted to turn the page to learn more to see how their lives would intertwine with others. Interesting plot!
I loved The Bone Witch, it’s a YA fantasy that is truly original in a sea of copy-cats. Great world building, fantastic concept and well written.
This book was good,but,part was written like a third person,really odd…….No sure if I will by the next one in the series