The Bone Witch Review

I picked this book up and read it years ago, and it had been long enough (I hadn’t finished the series) that I thought I would give it a good ole reread. I found as I started to read it, I only remembered about half of the story from my half-hearted reading years earlier (Big reading slump, bad relationships. I’m better now). I love this book; I just want to put that out there before we get into this. While reading I felt like I was in the world of Mulan with magic, demons, and hearts glass. This book has a whimsical feel to it while still having dark imagery, death, battles, and monsters. 

Synopsis, As found on Goodreads:  

A story of scorned witches, sinister curses, and resurrection, The Bone Witch is the start of a dark fantasy trilogy. 

When Tea accidentally resurrects her brother, Fox, 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. 

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I love the world our author has built for us. The cities have depth in their culture, different types of clothing, and customs. Chupeco did a great job creating these places for her characters and creating the depth necessary to make them different. 

Her description of people leaves enough for imagination while still giving us enough to go on, and she uses language that is almost Tolkien-like while being light. It is a vivid contrast the lightness of the language and the descriptions to the darkness of the story of a girl who walks hand in hand with death. Our main character Tea has a mentor named Mykaela who is also a Necromancer/Bone Witch/Dark Asha. At the end of her description of Mykaela is one of my favorite quotes that I think describes how Tea saw her best, “She was soft and willowy, and comely, and everyone in Knights cross was afraid of her.” (pg. 11). Again, showing us the contrast of the light description, and the almost menace hiding behind it.  

Necromancy is one of my favorite super powers, it’s interesting to see how characters react to having that kind of power. The descriptions of the dead being raised, and how the powers flow well with the story. As a reader you can watch them grow stronger as the time goes on in the story. The story being the one that present Tea is telling the Bard. The perspective of this book is also interesting because we are being told the story by Tea, but through the present chapters we are seeing it through the Bard’s eyes while the past we are seeing through Tea. She’s planning something, but she hasn’t shown us what it is yet. I think I understand why she has a Bard with her (Cya iykyk), but she’s raising deva and I thought those were the things that they would be fighting against. 

My Rating: Five Stars! 

I cannot wait to read the rest of this series; I’ve already started the second book. I’ll let y’all know what I think of the next. This was definitely a great choice for spooky season. The world and the story have an almost spooky/whimsical spooky feeling to it while still being interesting and having some action.