The Bone Witch is a fascinating book. I’ve read many reviews saying people just couldn’t finish it because nothing happened. It is true that it isn’t an action packed story by any means. But it drew me in after a few chapters because I wanted to know more. The book rotates between two different time frames; current Tea telling her story to a bard and then her actual story of becoming an asha. So we meet current Tea right away in short snippets, but truly get to know her throughout her tale of becoming a bone witch.

As I said, this isn’t an action packed book. What makes this book shine is the writing and the storytelling. I wanted to keep reading to try and figure out Tea. Because there is something fundamentally different between the 17 year old that is talking with the bard and the young teenager that we meet in the story portion. What made her this way? Why does it seem that she is going against everything that she learned as a novice asha? It is intriguing.

There is certainly more to Tea’s story that isn’t covered in this book. I feel like we got part 1 and part 3, but haven’t really seen part 2 yet. It will be interesting to see how Chipeco continues this story. Will it pick up at the end of this book and just move forward? Or will it be similar to this one and we will get to learn about part 2?

Overall rating
I really enjoyed this book and plan to read the sequel. Be ready to enjoy the world building and continually wonder “why?”.
4 out of 5 stars (just barely)

I wanted to love this SO MUCH and yet here I am, taking a nap. It felt like there was 97% description and 3% plot. I am disgruntled. I adored the author's debut The Girl from the Well, but The Bone Witch was practically a nonevent for my brain. But at least the cover is beautiful.

The story is basically about Tea who is a witch. At the beginning I really really liked her!! She raises her brother from the dead, accidentally, when she's a kid and -- BOOM -- a bone witch comes to take her away and train her. Also her bro comes too, who is now a nice polite zombie, comes too. (His name is Fox which is, actually, adorable.) But then it's like the plot is finished???? The storyline just comes to this clattering halt as we watch Tea grow from 12 to 15 and learn to be a bone witch. She gets to learn how to dance and sing and wear nice clothes and be a servant. Not..that interesting. OCCASIONALLY she does black magic with monsters. But that's hardly ever. I honestly felt detached and uninterested.

The description felt way over the top. World building and description is great! But this was far too much. There was a long detailed paragraph of description for every outfit..tedious much?

I fully expected to be in love with it because monsters + witches + Chinese setting + epic fantasy = my favourite things. But the description and tedious world building overtook what teeny tiny bit of plot there was. And Tea turned out to be quiet the passive character despite having the awesome skill of raising dead people.

This is an incredibly ambitious novel. On the one hand, the world building is extensive and unique and amazingly detailed. On the other hand it left me a bit confused. It clearly takes elements from a number of cultures to the point that I would get disoriented. First I thought it was Japanese influenced, then Indian, at one point I thought it was Russian. I get that it is a fantasy world, but it felt a bit like the author put most of Asia in a blender and hit puree.

My only other quibble is that this book feels like the world's longest prologue. I enjoyed it, but just when things finally started to happen it suddenly ends. Not exactly a cliffhanger, but not quite not one either.

Looking forward to the next one.

I know, you're not supposed to judge the book by its cover but in this case, the book cover drew me in and after reading the book description, I just had to request an ARC. Luckily, I got approved.

316 pages is quite frankly, long for world-building and introducing characters. But I get it that this is a Fantasy series. A lot of other early reviewers didn't enjoy the book because of it and I agree that nothing much happens, however, I believe that it is essential to read this book prior to moving on to reading the next books in the series as this book explains quite a lot in terms of the Asha traditions, hierarchy, and the world itself.

It is definitely very reminiscent of Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden in the sense that they have practically the same types of classes/training (as far as I can remember) and the same type of "job" description (i.e. Entertaining nobles with their singing, dancing, conversational prowess and skills at playing various musical instruments). The author's spin to this is the addition of the Asha's abilities for martial arts as well as their ability to wield and control magical elements using runic symbols, which is pretty cool. To make things a bit more interesting, she adds a category of Ashas called Dark Asha or Bone Witches because their power comes from the dark and they have control over death and their primary magical job is to resurrect and kill the various daevas before these daevas could wreak havoc on the towns and kill a lot of innocent people.

The entire book chronicles the slow journey of Tea from ordinary village girl to Dark Asha with very detailed description on clothing which for some reason, I still could not imagine how they were worn as there were a lot of wraps and layers, not to mention the hundreds of bejeweled hair pins an Asha wears on a daily basis. Based on the description, it didn't sound anything like the kimonos as described by Arthur Golden in Memoirs of a Geisha but then again, I could be wrong as it has been such a long time since I read that book.

Overall, I think fans of Memoirs of a Geisha who also appreciate magical fantasy will enjoy this book and by the end of it, I'm beginning to understand the workings of Tea's mind and therefore, I can't wait to read what happens in book 2.