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3.63 AVERAGE
3.63 AVERAGE
adventurous
dark
emotional
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Audiobook- I definitely would have given this book a higher rating if I’d read the paper copy! The audiobook version was absolutely not as good. The voice actor was barely audible when voicing the FMC, but too loud for the other characters, and the voices that she gave them were.. not great.
The story is split between two perspectives: Tea (FMC) as a younger girl, and her life as she learns how to be an Asha, and Tea several years later, having experienced more and been jaded by what she’s seen.
There is heavy Asian influence throughout the book which is really beautifully and intrinsically written into the characters and the world build. It can get a bit detail heavy at times, and the story is slow to unfurl, but the attention to detail is really well done. The Asha and their traditions seem to be quite heavily inspired by Geisha practice, which was a really interesting part of the story.
The first book is an obvious jumping off point to the rest of the series and makes a slow start towards what might end up eventually being a fast paced story. I’ll definitely add the second book to my to read pile, but may end up reading the physical copy rather than opting for audiobook again.
The story is split between two perspectives: Tea (FMC) as a younger girl, and her life as she learns how to be an Asha, and Tea several years later, having experienced more and been jaded by what she’s seen.
There is heavy Asian influence throughout the book which is really beautifully and intrinsically written into the characters and the world build. It can get a bit detail heavy at times, and the story is slow to unfurl, but the attention to detail is really well done. The Asha and their traditions seem to be quite heavily inspired by Geisha practice, which was a really interesting part of the story.
The first book is an obvious jumping off point to the rest of the series and makes a slow start towards what might end up eventually being a fast paced story. I’ll definitely add the second book to my to read pile, but may end up reading the physical copy rather than opting for audiobook again.
IDK if it was bc I listened to this rather than read it, but I couldn't really get into it enough to commit to a whole series.
Disclaimer: was given an ARC from NetGalley with encouragement for, though not in exchange for, an honest review.
I'm going to have to label this a DNF, despite adoring the language and the world building. I'm not sure exactly why, but this just never clicked for me. Ultimately, my ratings end up something like:
Writing Style: *****
Characters: ***
World: ****
Pacing: **
Plot: ***
(This would be about a 3.3, so I didn't round up.)
The world is lush and well thought out, though I did want either a little more or a little less originality, as the melange of Asian cultures (heavy and transparent Japanese influences but also lots of Indian and some vaguely European High Fantasy) left me wondering how things came to be. However, when I set that aside I enjoyed the world and the author definitely knew it well.
Character wise, I liked but didn't love young Tea - she seemed to be used as a point of view to the world for the reader, sometimes. I got a sense I WOULD love older Tea, but the story took so long to get to how she came to be the way she was that I put it down.
Overall, I really enjoyed the writing when I read the book, but never ended up wanting to pick it up again when I took a break, or found it a book I couldn't put down. So, a good story for someone with more stamina I think. I am POSITIVE there are lots of people who would love this (and clearly are!), I just wasn't that person.
I'm going to have to label this a DNF, despite adoring the language and the world building. I'm not sure exactly why, but this just never clicked for me. Ultimately, my ratings end up something like:
Writing Style: *****
Characters: ***
World: ****
Pacing: **
Plot: ***
(This would be about a 3.3, so I didn't round up.)
The world is lush and well thought out, though I did want either a little more or a little less originality, as the melange of Asian cultures (heavy and transparent Japanese influences but also lots of Indian and some vaguely European High Fantasy) left me wondering how things came to be. However, when I set that aside I enjoyed the world and the author definitely knew it well.
Character wise, I liked but didn't love young Tea - she seemed to be used as a point of view to the world for the reader, sometimes. I got a sense I WOULD love older Tea, but the story took so long to get to how she came to be the way she was that I put it down.
Overall, I really enjoyed the writing when I read the book, but never ended up wanting to pick it up again when I took a break, or found it a book I couldn't put down. So, a good story for someone with more stamina I think. I am POSITIVE there are lots of people who would love this (and clearly are!), I just wasn't that person.
slow-paced
Mostly interesting. Ashas seem to be partly sorceresses and partly like geisha? The author mashed up a whole bunch of cultural references (Asian? Hispanic? European? Polynesian? make up your mind, already!) but I think the imagery would have been stronger if she had picked just one or two to focus on. The twist at the end was telegraphed a mile away, so it wasn't much of a surprise.
adventurous
emotional
mysterious
fast-paced
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.
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.
“There is no greater strength than the ability to understand and accept your flaws.”
Spice:
Spice:
An interesting world with complex characters. Tea inadvertently raises her brother from the dead and is realized to be a Dark asha, or bone witch in more derogatory terms. She moves to the Willows in Ankyo to study, but even amongst peers is seen as threatening and dangerous, as she’s being trained to defeat the daeva. Each chapter is punctuated with exposition from a future time and I ADORE the teaser at the end explaining who her dead love really is.