Review originally posted on The Book Adventures of Annelise Lestrange :)

I received this copy from the publisher through The Fantastic Flying Book Club in exchange for an honest review. Let's go :D

The Review
Just remembering that those were my impressions and opinion as a reader =)

The Bone Witch is, hands down, the most beautifully written book I’ve read in 2017. The lyrical narrative, rich in descriptions and feelings, gives the reader that sensation of being with Tea as soon as we close our eyes. The characters are well built and in constant grown, which was really nice. The magical aspect, world building, it all was fantastic. My only critic is that this book could have been about a hundred pages shorter – sometimes, the description went a little over the top and dragged the plot. Still, I can’t wait for the next book and give this one four proud stars =D

The narrative is majorly first person styled, from Tea’s point of view, but there’s a catch: Tea is telling the story when she’s older and we can see glimpses of the “present” Tea as she introduces us to her past. I found this to be ingenious, as I’m not a fan of first person narratives overall exactly because the main character tends to get overwhelmed by things (not their fault) and irritate me. As Tea is older, wiser, she tells us about her wonder alright without all the “OMGs”. It worked wonderfully for me, haha! Also, Chupeco’s writing style definitely won me since page one, even when I wanted to slap her for losing time in some weird descriptions and forgetting the plot, haha!

And talking about the plot. I must warn you guys that this book is HIGHLY introductory. Seriously. You learn about Tea, the kingdoms, the world, the functioning of things, the magic, and theeeen we move on to a spark of plot just to be left hanging and wanting the second volume. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, but if you, like me, is an anxious wrack, wait for the second volume to come out before picking up this series or you’ll end up frustrated ;)

The characters are very tricky on this book, to be honest. They are so real that I found it hard to understand their motives in an overall manner until it was “too late”, haha! I think Fox and Mykaela were my favorites, because to this moment, I feel like I haven’t figured both out? Oh, Fox is Tea’s undead brother and the coolest thing ever, if you ask me and Mykaela is her mentor in the asha world. Tea herself isn’t a bad protagonist, but as the book has this heavy introductory feeling, I found it hard to connect with her and feel her personality. Maybe we can try again on book 2, hahaha!

I also need to make a note on the magic inside this story. Chupeco did A HELL OF A JOB creating all of this and omg, I’m so in love. I wish I had my own heartglass, I wish I could be a Dark asha like Tea (I always liked the dead better than the living; they’re quieter and never let me down), I wish I could have breathed the magical air and fought the daevas and other monsters. Seriously, Chupeco, can I be inside the next book?

And now, the moment you all were waiting for: QUOTES TIME! This book is filled with wisdom that we can take for life, so I had a really hard time choosing my favorite quotes among everything I highlighted, ugh!

“You think in the same way men drink, Tea. Far too much – under the delusion it is too little.” – Tea’s father

~*~

“Sometimes, you can’t help who you love or for how long.” – Rose, Tea’s sister

~*~

“You can’t make the better of the dead, sweet child, though I reckon death could make the better of us.” – Mykaela

~*~

Only then did I see how terribly old the woman was. Not from the passage of years, but from seeing too much of what most would rather see little of. – Tea’s thoughts

~*~

“Sometimes, it is good to remind ourselves how bitterness tastes.” – Tea

*~.Cover Analysis.~*

This cover is magical. All the golden swirls, the shades of purple, the girl alone in the mountain, the center of the skull… I’m in love. There’s magic, there’s mystery, danger, beauty… Everything! Also, the simple font used in both the title and the author’s name did the rest of the magic, as a flourished font wouldn’t go well with all the swirls in gold. A master piece in covers!

~*~

Overall, if you like beautifully written books, fantasy, witches and slow paced books, you just can’t miss The Bone Witch! =D

What a world. If there is one thing The Bone Witch does not lack, it is world-building. There is so much happening inside this gorgeously covered book. From decadent food and gorgeously woven hua to mapped out kingdoms and dangerous monsters, I was enveloped in this fantastical, beautiful, and daunting world. And I want to read more about these Bone Witches, Heart Forgers, and dangerous beasties that Tea is meant to rid the world of.

While I thoroughly enjoyed The Bone Witch, I found the novel to take quite some time to read through. Chapters were long not in page length, but in copious amounts of detail attributed to every hua the asha wore or every piece of food that graced a scene. I found these details were taking away from other elements of the story, and even the plot. There came points in my reading where I didn't want to read about another beautifully crafted hua,  I wanted to know more about the lore, the Faceless and False Prince whose names keep getting dropped, the daeva, Tea's homesickness, her family, her relationship with her undead brother, her relationship with the Prince. I just wanted to know more than what I was being given. To which I hope book two provides more of.

The Bone Witch is gorgeously crafted when it comes to passages and quotes. But my favorite parts of this book were the exchanges between Tea and the bard. The anti-heroine I want to see and read more from could only be found in the short snippets of present day, when told through the eyes other than Tea. I enjoyed the juxtaposition to watching Tea grow up through her own eyes while reading how an outsider perceives her in the present-day, after events undisclosed had unfolded. But I wanted more, because I found out so much more about Tea and the world-of-story from these chapter preludes. And I have high hopes that book two brings more of present-day Tea into the narrative.

LOVE horror for teens! This is one of the most popular genres at my library and there aren't nearly enough books to satisfy my YA readers. This is a great, magical & spooky read that will find a lot of fans at my branch.

The Bone Witch suffered from a few cliché tropes here and there but overall, I quite enjoyed it. It’s not the best fantasy book I’ve ever read, but I would be interested in reading the sequel.

Tea was a fairly likeable main character. Okay, at times she was a bit boring and a stereotypical overpowered heroine dithering over what to do, but I was really intrigued by her story, and how she ended up having a black heartglass in present day. We got a few hints (the chapters were set up in a way where bits from the present day were matched with what was happening in past – think The Name of the Wind) but a lot was still left a mystery, and I do want to find out what exactly happened. For example, Tea stated that she had visited the Oracle 28 times, but we only saw a handful of visits in the book. I am wondering when the rest occur (and why!), because there isn’t that much of a time gap between the present day and the story from the past.

I have to say I wasn’t a fan of the romance, but luckily, there wasn’t much of it. There was a hint of a love triangle with Prince Kance and his cousin? Guard? (I have honestly forgotten his name), but I wasn’t really interested. I’d rather have learnt more about heartglasses. The whole idea of giving your heartglass to someone else if you loved them seemed entirely too risky to me, especially since there wasn’t really a benefit, and I would have liked to have learn more about this practice, as well as more about heartglasses in general and the different colours they could be.

Plot-wise, admittedly, not a lot happened. As I said before, the book was split with some scenes from present day, and some in the past, and I was reading mostly for clues as to how Tea changed from a seemingly innocent girl who was just trying to bring back her brother, to a killer who had no qualms about hurting people. Present day Tea was a lot more interesting that past Tea but we didn’t know what caused her to become that way or how things changed so drastically. Not a lot actually happened in the past scenes to show why this occurred, but there were some signs that got me interested. While I had a lot of issues with the pacing of this book and some of the characterisation, I think I’ll read the next one purely because I want to know what happens to Tea to change her so much.

Overall, this was a fun read to pass the time, and while it had its issues, if you like this sort of split narrative with a continuing mystery, you may enjoy this book.

Uniquely Mesmerizing…
free copy

The Bone Witch is the first book in an exotic new YA fantasy series by Rin Chupeco, author of the recently adapted to movie – The Girl from the Well. Set in Odalia, a kingdom that reminds me of medieval Japan, the story follows the life of Tea; a teen who unexpectedly discovers her ability to raise things from the dead when her favorite older brother is killed by one of the magical creatures roaming the world. This act earns her the title of bone witch, a person who is both revered and reviled.





The Bone Witch is a fabulous example of painting visual pictures to tell a paintstory. Rin’s rich imagination permeates each line of the book and builds a unique experience for the reader. bone witchIt was easy to follow the context of the story and understand all the new customs and objects and I was quickly swept into this foreign world. Rin tells the story from two perspectives; the minstrel – who finds Tea as an 19 year old banished to a bone laden beach and Tea – who shares with the minstrel her recollections of the events that led to her present state. Her writing style is so fluid and natural that I was easily able to immerse in the story and fascinating characters, even while jumping back and forth between these two settings.

Rin does a great job with the ending; there’s still so much to find out yet the reader doesn’t feel shorted or distraught in any way. The Bone Witch is the beginning of what looks to be a fantastic new YA series. It is appropriate for teens but so well done that adults will love it too.

Sorry! This one did not live up to the hype. It was rambling and difficult to follow.

This book was easy to read. Rin Chupeco has a very nice, readable prose style. If her writing style wasn't so lovely, this book probably would have bottomed out at one star. While the concept of the book is interesting, and the plot grabbed my attention, the execution was, at best, dull, and at worse, really hard to swallow.

Most of the book was about Tea's training. That's about it. We only got the barest glimpses of plot, with one or two notable scenes. But the rest of it was pretty boring. I think the book spent more (way more) time on describing the asha's clothing than it ever did explaining what exactly the Faceless were or what they could do. And even when we finally found out what the Faceless could do, it was at the very end of the book.

Furthermore, the fusion of magic with Geisha-styled culture didn't make much sense. Why would someone who mostly concerns herself with raising and putting to rest undead creatures need to learn flower arranging? Why would someone who is a royal bodyguard need to learn dance and conversation? There are ways the magic could have worked, but making them typical elemental mages and trying to force extra careers into what is a fairly narrow career in the real world doesn't make much sense and it ended up making me more confused than anything. It's a romantic idea, but in the end the book muddled the entire concept.

I didn't connect very well with most of the characters. Even though it was narrated in first Person, Tea was pretty boring and I didn't really get any strong personality from her. Her brother Fox was even worse. Some of the side characters were a bit more intriguing, like Polaire and Zoya, but that's because I felt they had actual motivations. I didn't feel any great warmth between any of them and Tea. And considering how much time the novel spent on her training, we didn't get to see enough of her interactions with Kance to believe that she'd be romantically interested in him.

In the end the novel was just boring. I wanted more out of this plot, and I got Memoirs of a Geisha with barely touched upon plot. There was a decent amount of cultural worldbuilding in the different countries, and some of the politics, but it's kind of ridiculous that I know more about Tresea's culture than I do about the villains and even what their goal is. Or even what the heck they're supposed to be able to do. I know literally nothing about the Faceless except they can use dark magic.

The pacing was terrible, and I did not get any proper sense of passage of time. Two years passed and I hadn't even realized it because of how summarized so much of the training was. One thing that stuck out at me was when the azi attacked the performance, and Tea went to fight it. After the fight, she rests for a few days and goes before the elders to discuss what she did. Then a week later her friend Likh goes before the elders. It isn't until well after Likh's meeting that we discover that asha actually DIED in the azi attack, including an asha that Tea knew. It was a weird mood whiplash, and it felt very odd placed so far after the incident when that's something that should have been remarked upon long before. Even though it was in the same chapter, it felt like something that an editor should have caught.

I will say I did enjoy the alternate bits with the bard's narration. It was really heavy handed but I felt there was more of a sense of motivation and mystery than there was in the rest of the novel.

DNF
I had been anticipating this book a lot. The cover was kick-ass and the plot sounded absolutely intriguing. Necromancy gone wrong!? GIMME!!!! I started reading it the moment I got it. But then I found myself starting new books, and reading this book went on the back burner. "I'll finish it next week...next month. Finally I decided to give up a little more than half way. It wasn't that it was bad, it just wasn't a page turner. You felt no need to pick it up in the evening when you got home or open it on the commute to and from work.

The MC herself is likeable and actually pretty fun. Chupeco has a talent for humor, but it wasn't enough for me. The pace itself alternated between fine, too fast, and too slow. I'm pretty sure I got whiplash trying to speed up or slow down. The world really needed more development. funny quips and a good plot are nothing without the plot and world actually being developed.

That being said, I may try this book again in a couple months if I'm in a reading slump.

I wanted to like this book, I really did. But I had SO MUCH TROUBLE getting into it. The plot felt a bit empty and I must admit I got a bit bored. I read about 2/3 before throwing in the towel as it already was taking far too much of my time.

When Tea discovers that she is a Bone Witch with powers over death, her old life ends in an instant; she is whisked away from everything familiar so she can learn to control her potentially destructive new skill. Tea trains, makes new friends and adversaries, gets caught up in political machinations, and begins to open herself up to potential love interests. Throughout this tale of new adventures, dangers and experiences, Chupeco also gives the reader plenty of warning of dark times to come- a jaded slightly older Tea also plays a part, and she is bent on bringing chaos and revenge to her enemies.
While this novel drags at times as Chupeco builds a solid foundation for her world, and Tea was not always an enjoyable character, this is a book I would recommend to my teen patrons, and for my own part, I plan on keeping an eye out for the sequel.

A fantasy book with diverse characters, skin tones, cultures and languages - huzzah! The rules of the world make sense and are different and compelling. I like the influence of Japanesd culture on this novel. The friendships and characters are compelling. The writing is beautiful. It's tightly written and you can tell a lot of time and effort went into crafting this story.

The structure of the novel is unique - half of the story is set in present time, and the other half, being told to a bard, is about her rise as a dark asha. It is a departure from standard fantasy novel. I was really into the book, the world, the magic, but the pacing of this story, due to the frequent flashbacks made it lose tension for me. I lost interest and I'm not sure if a teen would make it this far through the book. The ending was both expected and unexpected - but there were so many loose endings/plot threads that is was unsatisfying for me. I think it will take another novel to figure out what happened in the lead up to the current timeline.

So, lot of compelling elements, but the structure of the book didn't keep my interest up long enough. I would just start to get into a world or a storyline and then it interrupted by a return to the current timeline with the bars. I will definitely read future books by this author, but my feelings on this series remains mixed.

The Bone Witch

People keep calling Tea a villain, but I don’t think so. She’s a one-woman rebellion against her oppressors. Of course, villains think they’re the heroes of their own stories….I’m still on her side. BURN IT DOWN AND MAKE IT BETTER, TEA!

Yes, it’s long and slow and not action-packed but it is beautifully written and built. It still hooked me instantly. I flew threw it in a day or so.

This is a unique fantasy world that feels far more real than most. Yet I still hunger for more details, more exploration.

This is a young woman protagonist who is strong and standing up for her beliefs. Not in a boy-save-me way or dragging her feet. Nope, she’s got power and plan, baby. Watch out.

This is just the setup of amazing things to come. The next installment will be an auto-buy for sure. I. Cannot. Wait.



Dual POV: Curent Tea and Past Tea.

Past Tea follows her journey as a young woman in a family of witches discovering her power and her tutelage as an Asha.

Ashas are talented magical women living in different clans in one district. They are taught to look pretty, dance gracefully, give good conversation, and basically be performing monkeys for pay.

At least, that’s what it looks like. They’re also taught history, politics, fighting, and of course, using their magic.

The trappings of being an Asha makes them controllable. It makes them palatable. It makes them compete against each other instead of rising up as one. An Asha must be all things as they never know what role they will need to play.

It also makes them great spies, queens, and hones them as weapons….

Current Tea is living on the cliff pictured on the cover. She’s telling her tale to a bard from another oppressive society while he’s asking questions. She wants him as a witness to what she is doing and about to accomplish.

She’s raising “monsters” that never stay dead long. The very monsters she was trained to kill to save people. The very task that killed her predecessors. The thankless job she’s stuck with as the last one of her kind and shunned for doing by society.

With her they are quite tame, though I don’t think they’ll ever qualify as cute. There is of course one that has stolen my heart. Take a guess what type of creature that is….

If I didn’t love Tea before, her confrontation with this beast would’ve done it.

Did I mention Tea’s signature garb is adored with a three-headed dragon? Of course I’m on her side! Go get ‘em TEA!!

Plot:

There is A LOT of background. There’s so much world building and detail, it’s amazing. Yes, a lot of it is dresses and beauty and etiquette and dreary chore details. But it’s ALL important. For understanding the world, the Asha, the politics, the rivalries, why Tea is on her crusade.

It reminds me of Robin Hobb’s Elderlings Realm, which at one point in the beginning details naming conventions. Why? Because, what’s in a name?

That seemingly insubstantial boring information solidifies the Dutchies society as well as their neighbors allowing them to be 3-D in a way so often over looked. Names shouldn’t be picked from a generator and willy-nilly thrown about.

Did I mention Tea’s name is different and remarked upon several times? Did I mention the Elderlings Realm is my all-time favorite fantasy series EVER?



Things still happen of course. She raises her brother from the dead, has a crush on a prince, meets a heart render, helps a boy become an Asha, destroys a building...

Characters:

Tea is obviously my favorite. Second is her brother, the hilarious and protective soldier Tea brought back from the dead.

There’s Tea’s hardass, badass mysterious mentor and her hardass, badass mysterious mentor. There’s the trio of Ashas that help guide her. The boy who wants to be an Asha. The Russian bear of a man that designs and makes the best Asha dresses. (Shit, I forgot what they were called. Sorry.) The nameless? Bard that gives a wider perspective on the oppression in other countries and the audience surrogate. The dashing prince. The jackass sidekick of the prince. The competing Ashas in all their glory.

The Ending:

For romance, there’s hardly more than flirting and crushing from afar. But the ending holds a bombshell of a revelation.

Oh gods, this ending. I don’t know where to start. It felt like jumping off a cliff, but really it’s a clean break for this arc and perfect spot for the continuation. Is it satisfying? In a find the answers, get more questions, heart pounding, OMFG way.

I really seriously need the next installment. I don’t know how ya’ll are panning this and sleeping on it.

This book! What more can I say than wow! I had heard so many good things about it but it was even better than expected!

I am aware that this is the first book in a series. That being said, it took me too long to get through the first part of this book. It pulled me in very quickly in the first couple of chapters. I was really enthralled by the fantastical aspects of sisters' powers and what happened with Tea's powers. But after the first couple of chapters, it was too much to get through with very little action moving the story forward.

The Bone Witch is a great fantasy read that will keep readers entertained.

After accidentally, rising her brother from the dead, Tea discovers she's a bone witch and is forced to leave her town with another Bone Witch to learn how to control her powers as a Dark Asha.



This book was pretty unusual, awesome but unusual!

On a negative note i did wish we got more romance and that the pace was a little faster! Rin Chupeco has an amazing writing style, it's lyrical and super descriptive and that really slows down the pace a bit.

“Then perhaps we should carve a world one day where the strength lies in who you are, rather than in what they expect you to be.”



The format of the story was quite interesting, it felt like i was watching a movie. Basically it starts off with a Bard that meets a seventeen year old girl on a seashore full of skulls and sees her performing some weird magic and she has a black heartglass, he recognizes her as the Bone Witch who was supposedly a traitor and so she agrees to tell him her story. The chapters are from Tea's point of view, of how she came into her powers and her life thereon. We had a few short chapters that returned to the present from the Bard's point of view as he listened to Tea recount her stories. It felt like the beginning of the story and the end were being read in parallel and we were just missing that big middle that we're slowly working our way in to discover! I thought it was a really unique and interesting format!

The author does a great job at keeping up the suspense after each POV shift. You kept wanting to read to see why a young sweet child like Tea would be called a traitor and why she seemed so much darker and bitter. Like what the hell happened to this girl!? The present Tea keeps hanging around a grave so there's a lot of mystery on who's in the grave!

I thought this book was pretty much a buttload of originality and amazing world building! I did get a little confused with the world building but there was a super helpful guide at the end so thanks for that! But honestly, i loved loved the world, we had so many kingdoms, a False Prince, legendary heroes, Faceless traitors that followed the False Prince, dangerous beasts that had to be awoken and killed again once in a while, and a few myths thrown in!

I loved the originality of the heartglass which everyone wears. As a bone witch Tea's is silver but most normal people have red ones.


And though we see the character develop we still haven't seen how she reached that stage where her heartglass is completely black. Ugh so many questions! I really really cannot wait till the next book! It felt like this book is a novel-long prologue before the real story and action starts in book 2. For those of you who really need action then this may not be for you because not much happens, it's more of a gigantic build up to book 2 so i understand why some people wouldn't enjoy it. We do follow a young Tea so her life isn't that eventful. But if you're into awesome world building and amazing suspense and you're willing to put in the effort to read this despite the slow pace then i highly recommend this book because it looks like the next one will be action packed and our questions will be answered!

And that cover is just AMAZING!!!I really liked the love between Tea and her resurrected brother, Fox. They were always there for each other!

AND WHEN WE FIND OUT WHO'S IN THE GRAVE? I could not have been happier! It was a surprise but i was really really crossing my fingers hoping it would happen! Because i really liked that person and i can't wait to see more of that character in book 2!

I was really intrigued by the idea of this YA fantasy, but it fell sadly short in execution.

The novel opens with the bone witch of the title, Tea, being addressed by a teller of tales who wants to tell the story of how she wound up alone, despised and in exile. So Tea begins to describe how she discovered her magical ability to raise the dead and how she trained to be a special type of witch called an asha. The book moves back and forth with every chapter between the present-day conversations between Tea and the storyteller and Tea’s account of her past life as an asha, showing how her past has led her to where she is now.

At first, I was intrigued by both the structure of the book and the descriptions of the world of the asha. The idea that Tea was telling her story to someone else was an interesting device, because it interspersed her description of her life with his perceptions of her and her actions. Also interesting was the description of the ashas’ training. That training included singing, dancing, and the art of conversation, which made the asha seem something like geisha—but geisha with combat skills and magic. The descriptions of the ashas’ clothing and hair ornaments, as well as their paid meetings with influential citizens, also reinforced that similarity. Warrior witch geishas! What a cool idea!

However, as the story went on, I became more and more impatient because there was . . . so . . . much . . . detail. I’m normally a fan of extensive world building, and I don’t mind books that take a slower approach to unfolding the life of the main character. (Robin Hobb’s Assassin series is a good example of how that can be done well.) But so much was said about the minutia of Tea’s training, and so little of note actually happened, that I found myself struggling to keep reading.

The structure of the novel didn’t help, either. In part, that was because the framing chapters slowed the development of the main part of the story. The framing chapters also clearly indicate that something momentous happened in Tea’s life to lead to her exile, but then every chapter was more of the same with her training (with a little bit of action thrown in here and there). The reader doesn’t get an answer about what happened in this book at all, in fact; there’s clearly much more of Tea’s backstory coming in the next in the series. The only significant detail that the reader does learn by the end the novel is which young man she meets becomes her true love. (There are a few possible candidates.)

Between the overabundance of detail and the drag of the framing chapters, I had difficulty finishing the book. I’m actually not sure why I didn’t stop reading, except I wanted to find out how Tea wound up being cast out from the community of the asha—and then I didn’t get that.

You might give this book a try if you enjoy leisurely paced fantasy novels that are beautifully written in terms of the language used by the author. I wouldn’t recommend it otherwise.

An eARC of this novel was provided by the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

How can you be disappointed in a book that is beautifully written? I don't really know, but I've managed it with The Bone Witch. Honestly, the writing and world-building is superb, but there my praise pretty much ends.

This book is 400+ pages long and the only action in the whole darned book occurs at the very beginning when the brother is raised from the dead and at 90%. That's it. The whole rest of the book is Tea (pronounced as Tey-uh, as we annoyingly discover 67%) learning to be a geisha. Yes, she's an all powerful bone witch. The only new one in decades, the one desperately needed, as the deava (undead beasts that rampage and kill people) keep popping up and, well killing people and she's the only one who can do anything about them. But does she? No. In fact, when she asks to, she's told to not waste time "with any more of these foolish wildgoose chases." Instead, she learns to sing and dance and make pleasant conversation with her (apparently all) male cliental. That's right, she's basically just there for the entertainment of men, as are all asha.

There are things I appreciate about the book. There is some diversity in skin tone and culture. Some gender norms are purposefully challenged, though FAR MORE are passively reinforced. Again, the writing is beautiful. The reveal at the end piqued my curiosity, but I kind of saw it coming. It's enough to interested me in the next book. But I spent a lot of this one being frustrated with the lack of pace and betrayal of a promise of a strong female lead. She's stubborn and she is powerful, but I thought that every surrounding detail of the book—from the fashion to the families, to the political structure—undermined female autonomy and strength and reaffirmed women's (or girls') secondary position, even when possession an overwhelming ability. Which is not uncommon is fantasy, but I felt I'd been promised something different here. What's more, I kind of sense the author thought she did write something different.

The Bone Witch is a beautiful book, telling the story of Tea as she discovers that she is an asha, one with very rare abilities. The writing is lyrical and descriptive, allowing you to see the world through Tea's eyes. It is written in two alternating points of view and the voices are very different. The first voice is that of Tea, telling her own story in a voice that, while a bit haunting, feels somehow lighter and more hopeful. The second voice is set at some point in the future, as Tea tells her story to a Bard who has sought her out. The tone of that voice was much heavier, much more bitter.

The mythology of this story was so beautiful, a world where, instead of on their sleeves, people wear their hearts around their necks in heartsglass. The color of your heart sometimes determines your entire future, as it did for the main character Tea. After accidentally raising her brother from the dead, Tea's life changes dramatically. She's an asha, a Dark asha. The Dark asha are the strongest of their kind, but also the most feared and usually the most reviled. It is not an easy road that Tea finds herself on.

The worldbuilding was the most stunning aspect to the book, in my opinion, along with the mythology that surrounded it. The mythology is influenced by geisha culture, Zoroastrianism, and Persian culture, woven together a complex world. Despite the fantasy elements, the world felt very authentic with its threads of social classism, politics, sexism, and racism. Those elements exist in all societies and their inclusion, while not positive, helped to create a world that was believable for the reader.

This is a book that I truly loved. A sequel is coming and I am waiting breathlessly for it!

The Bone Witch is the first in a new YA fantasy series by Rin Chupeco, who I had never read before. While by age, I am unlikely to be the target audience, I have been wanting to read more fantasy and this sounded really interesting.

There are a lot of different things going on in this book. The most obvious is the two timelines - present day and history. In italics, present day shows us Lady Tea (pronounced I think as Tay-uh) exiled to a beach and telling her story to a Bard. Because of the two timelines there is a pervasive and constant sense of impending doom. Something bad is going to happen; it's just a question of when.

At 17 years old, Tea is already in exile for crimes we do not yet know. The bulk of the book is Tea's story from about age 12 to age 15 or so. Note the age gap there, because I did. And it is true that by the end of the book, the ages and therefore large portions of the reason why Tea is in exile, are still unknown. I'm assuming because there is already a second book listed for this series that some of those questions will be answered in that book.

Tea is a Dark asha or bone witch (which is considered a pejorative term by some and not by others). She and her family discover this when she accidentally resurrects her older brother at his funeral. She is discovered by another Dark asha because of this and taken to be trained. When she enters Ankyo, the city where she will be trained, she encounters - as she puts it - the two people who will most influence her life. With her brother Fox, now her familiar, protecting her, she embarks on her journey to training as a Dark asha.

And so the journey begins... But the story is told by Tea and as the book continues, she essentially becomes an unreliable narrator. Considering that Tea is somewhere between 12 and 15 or 16 and she is currently 17, it is important to understand that Tea looks at the world through the eyes of a child. Every slight is magnified out of proportion; every injustice is the greatest injustice. She is the one who is right and all the elders are wrong. Only she is strong and only she can do what must be done.
And this is where Tea loses me. It is obvious since Tea is the main character that her cause is noble, her quest and grievances just. And yet, I see an angry, willful, and lost child who is willing to destroy all those who lifted her up because she disagrees with them. It bugs me that she has so little idea of the world and is so contemptuous of those trying to teach her. It bothers me that she is so self-righteous in her anger, even while she knows nothing. And it makes me question what she hasn't said or how much she actually understood about what was going on or how much she may have thought she knew but in reality had no clue.

I am curious. The questions left unanswered bug me. But emotionally, I just want to say forget it to them all. Am I likely to read the next book? Yes. The unanswered questions bug me too much!