This is a very wordy, slow moving descriptive novel. This is the first book in a trilogy and it spent a lot of time world and character building. There was not a lot of action going on, which I had expected.

This book tells us the story of Tea, a girl who was born as a dark asha or better known as a bone witch. When she accidentally raised her brother from the dead, she was hated and feared. She was sent to the capital city to be trained to use her powers and serve the kingdom. This story shows how she overcomes obstacles, deals with disappointments and learns about her powers. The story is told from two points of view, Tea and a person named Bard who talks and hears Tea’s story. In the present, Tea is living alone in a cave. What happened to her debut as an Asha, why is she living alone?

I did like several of the characters. Lady Mykaela, Tea’s mentor, Tea's brother and familiar Fox, Kalen and Kance were all very interesting. Their lives were not really their own, but the way they dealt with things was interesting and left me wanting to know more about their past and future. Tea was a great MC. I liked how she stayed strong and true to herself, despite the demands and expectations. She was also very stubborn which got her in trouble a few times, but she always had good reason for it. I loved her relationship with her brother, Fox. It was such a true love and one of the best things about this story. I am not sure if I will read the rest of the trilogy or not. I do want to see what happens to Tea and the others, but the story is so slowwww. If you enjoy fantasy, character and world building and descriptive stories, then you will love this one. Be warned, the story does not end with this book, in fact, it is only the beginning and there are two more to come.

I love books about witches and was super excited to read this one, but just couldn't get into it. Unfortunately I could not finish it. It had a lot of promise, and might be other people's cup of tea but it just wasn't mine.

I enjoyed this book more than I expected to! With mixed reviews from friends , I went in with low expectations and an open mind. This story to me , was unique with an excellent fantasy world that the author did an excellent job weaving with words. The premise of magic and good and bad witches has been seen many times and I was impressed with this different angle. It is a great start to a series that I will pursue.

I finally got the chance to start this around Halloween, and I was reading with a friend. Unfortunately, it just wasn't doing it for either of us. I was never engaged enough to want to pick this up and finish it, and it just ended up sitting in my app while I read other things. I like the idea, and it could have been a product of mood/season/whatever, but it wasn't for me at the time I was trying to read it.

Unfortunately I was not able to get into this book. I never made it past the first 4 chapters and had to put it down. Maybe I will try again later.

Will no longer be reading or reviewing this book due to lack of interest in the title, and the fact that the title has been archived.

I completely enjoyed this novel and the magical characters and world in which it takes place. It is the first book of a series by the same time, and I will most definitely be looking for further titles. Imagine being possessed with a talent to bring the dead back to life. Would this talent earn you praise and respect, or animosity and fear? Find out by reading this entertaining novel.

I've tried multiple times to read this book and unfortunately this book is just not for me. I could never really hit my stride with it and make it very far into the book before putting it down and forgetting to pick it back up. I wish that I could've gotten into this book but was unable to.

In this dark fantasy, The Bone Witch, Tea can raise the dead but for a price. Like most things, the good doesn’t last long. Tea finds help with her brother through a new land by another witch. Tragic events surround Tea, yet she finds a way to persevere through it all!

The first lines drew me in but it didnt keep my attention to want to finish the book, unfortunately. Maybe not the same for most

Wow! The Bone Witch is originally, interesting and thoroughly suspensful. I enjoyed the perilous and stroughtful plot of this story. This was a vividly-told story that I recommend to all readers who enjoy fantasy, suspense and a touch of romance!

This book was interesting but wasn't really my cup of tea. I just couldn't get very far in it because it didn't hold my attention.

I liked the description? And I absolutely loved the present-day narration of Tea's life because she seemed more of a put-together character who's about to undergo some BAMF shmat with the army of daeva she just raised. But...I don't know. It was hard not to compare this to The Name of the Wind...REALLY HARD. The whole flashback episodes, a chronicler taking in the past, a school/learning setting...I mean, yeah. Unfortunately not much else happens. Just school, living life, and occasionally doing something spontaneous like raising dead kings or whatever.

Summary
Tea is a bone witch, a magic user capable of raising and controlling the dead. She finds this out by accidentally raising her brother during his burial. Another traveling bone witch finds out about her and takes her under her wing, and together they travel to the Willows, a section of a city dedicated to training and housing asha. There she undergoes asha training and learns how to control her powers, how to fight the monsters that only she and other bone witches like her are capable of effectively defeating.

All this is told through a framing device of a seventeen-year-old Tea recounting how she became banished to a traveling bard, while dropping hints of catastrophic events yet to come.
Mixing such disparate topics can work...it just didn't here
So, when I said in the title "Memoirs of a Geisha meets monsters" I mean that exactly literally. Asha are geisha. Just...geisha. They entertain people in tea houses and parties for money and trained in arts like music and dance and scintillating conversation. Everything about Tea's training and work as described in the book could have been lifted out of Memoirs. (Well, except for the magic parts.) But also they fight monsters? They're trained in physical and magical fighting as well as all the geisha arts, but it feels very tacked on. There's almost nothing in the way of trying to meld these two concepts. Instead they're just smashed together. "These ladies are pretty and dance and parties and wear fancy dressed and shit. Oh, right, also there's monsters sometimes."



Again, I'm not saying these two concepts can't be mixed. I'm fine with that idea! But...mix them. Don't just have them randomly sitting on a shelf together. I was left with soooooo many worldbuilding questions stemming from the various ways these two things just didn't go together.

The importance of scene selection
The plot of The Bone Witch covers several years, from when Tea is about 12 (I think) to 15. Consequently, there's a lot of time spent in montages, where months and months will be described and only a few moments will get picked out to get fully developed scenes. And they all make Tea look really whiny.

Now, to be clear, I am not saying that Tea is an overly whiny character. Every individual scene makes perfect sense in isolation for why she'd be confused, crying, protesting, etc. But the cumulative effect of having only the scenes with negative emotions developed, while everything happy is relegated to a montage/summary, is...exhausting. I could not connect with anything positive going on in the story, because none of those aspects were fleshed out. This is especially bad when it comes to Tea's various relationships with people, where we get a lot of either animosity or crying, and then several chapters later we're told that these people are so close and have such a bond and just...



(Okay to be fair there's a few positive scenes, but they are few and far between and definitely not enough to showcase some very important things, most notably Tea's relationship with her brother, Fox. I'd go whole chapters forgetting Fox even existed because of how absent he was, and then suddenly we'd be assured that Tea is very close to him, no really, I promise, just so very close.)
Let's talk about that framing device

The book is told within a framing device that has Tea relating the story of her life to a Bard who she has magically called to her. Interspersed in the chapters of the main narrative were chapters in the future/framing device of Tea and the Bard hanging out and talking and doing things with monsters. So we find out through this device that she's been banished, and theoretically we're hearing the story of the events that lead up to her banishment.

Except. We're not. The end of the story doesn't match up with the start of the framing device. Near as I can tell, a temporal order of events will go Book 1 -> Book 2 -> Frame -> Book 3? Which, okay, that's a decision you can make, but it was quite jarring for me when I reached the final pages.

A large reason that was jarring for me, though, was the way the framing device was constantly used to tease us that something exciting was about to happen, no really, I promise, it'll get exciting, just keep reading for the exciting parts, it's coming, really, promise! Every chapter in the frame was like this, with Tea ominously talking about "oh, if only I'd known how bad things would get" and stuff like that. It was effective, I'll give the book that, because I really did want to know what was going to happen next. But what happened next was always far underwhelming compared to the anticipation, and after a while that rather ticked me off. I thought at least, at least we'll get a whizbang of an ending and then....nope, it's just more tease to keep reading.

Will I read this author again? Maybe.
Will I continue this series? Not after that ending.

More Reviews for The Bone Witch

(un)Conventional Reviews - Review: The Bone Witch
The Moonlight Library - The Bone Witch by Rin Chupeco
The Bandar Blog - The Bone Witch Review

Definitely a great adult read, as well as YA. It is a well written book with plenty of action and excitement. I think Fox, Tea’s brother, is my favorite character although there are plenty of other ones that I love also. The ending (and discovering who Tea’s love was) was a total shock, although now that I’ve had time to think about it, I really shouldn’t have been surprised. I didn’t realize this was part of a series and will have to continue on with the next book to see how Tea’s “love” came to be killed.

(I received a free copy of this book from Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.)

This book was way too long and took me a while to get through. The plot dragged too much and the past and present back and forth point of view didn't feel complete. It could have been 100 pages shorter and condensed so that the whole book did not feel like exposition and back story.

(I received a free copy of this book from Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.)

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 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.

*2.5 stars*

I remember reading the first book in the Girl from the Well series and feeling disappointed. I remember that the story really never gave me anything back for the time I invested in it. The MC just stood around and watched or followed characters around. It was dull and boring...

This book is almost a copycat of that - in a way that is easy to compare. This story, while filled with some great scenes, brilliant ideas and a character you want to know more about, essentially the only thing that happens in this book is following Tea through her two year apprenticeship of necromancy. Not much of any significance actually happens - it was one of those stories where lots of things "almost happen" and that is okay for a chapter or two - not a near-450 page book...

Like I said, this book did have some positives but the lack of impetus is what kept this rating down.


Paul
ARH

I loved the authors other books and I wasn't able to read this one before it archived. I will be reading it later, though, and will return with a review.

Beautifully dark and thrilling. This books easily captures the otherworldly and makes one seek it to find the magic within.

I loved this book as well as the sequel characters are well written and deep. The head character really stuck with me and even through her flaws I thought about her.