I have heard so many good things about this book, so I thought that it was about time that I started reading it. So I downloaded it on Audible and dove straight in…

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.

After listening to The Bone Witch for about half an hour, I felt like I couldn’t connect with the narrator, because her voice was really off-putting (I know that sounds really mean… But, I just found it really hard to concentrate because of her voice).

I really want to enjoy this book, but I just couldn’t. There wasn’t enough happening in it for me to connect with the story, and I even considered DNFing this book at one point. I think that I was about 30% of the way through the audiobook?

 

 

“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.”

― Rin Chupeco, The Bone Witch

 

 

The Bone Witch actually starts out SO STRONG! Tea resurrects her brother from the dead and it just goes a bit crazy for Tea and her family. I found it such an amazing way to start a story as I was instantly hooked (it’s just a shame about the narrator, but I DID get used to her voice after a bit). This book is actually told from two perspectives. We have the Bard, who meets an older version of Tea, and she then tells him her story. Which brings us to the second perspective of the younger version of Tea. Think of it as the ‘Little Tea’ perspective is the story that ‘Big Tea’ is telling the Bard. The perspectives switch every chapter, or every other chapter so that you can see what ‘Big Tea’ is doing and what the Bard makes of the story that she is telling. The ‘Little Tea’ perspective is pretty much the back story. We learn from the ‘Big Tea’ POV that she is now considered an outcast among the Asha, and that she is basically living her life in exile.

This was actually the bit of the story that was spurring me on. We KNOW that when Tea is older, she is feared among people, she uses dark magic constantly, and she’s lonely. But what we don’t know is HOW she got there. And that’s pretty much what the ‘Little Tea’ POV is doing: telling us how she became like that.

 

 

“We can endure any amount of sadness for the people we love.”

― Rin Chupeco, The Bone Witch

 

 

To be honest, I really did enjoy the descriptive writing. I’ve read a lot of reviews where they say that the descriptive writing was too much, and a lot could have been cut out to make the book shorter. But I disagree. I think that it’s the description that conveys SO STRONGLY what the world looks like, how the characters act, and how both of those things weave into one another. There does become a point where the book pretty much just becomes the description though, because nothing else is happening in the book. And this is where the negatives come in…

For a good 60% of this book, nothing really happened. There was no action, nothing to keep the reader engaged, so all you were reading about was the small, menial tasks that Tea had to do whilst she was working in the houses. When you’re writing ANY kind of book, you need to make sure that you’re including captivating plot points along the way so that you are keeping your audience hooked on the story. In The Bone Witch, we had the big burst of action at the beginning, and then we also had it for about the last 30%… with the rest of the book completely flat-lining.

I also had a bit of a love/hate relationship with the magic system. On one hand, I thought it was such a different magic system, with the heartsglasses that people wear (that pretty much act as a mood ring), and that Tea can read the emotions on them. So I do think that the magic system has a lot of potential to be explored further in the next two books. However, the magic of the heartsglasses wasn’t built upon enough in the book, so it was just kind of… there… with no real explanation.

 

 

“There is no greater strength than the ability to understand and accept your own flaws.”

― Rin Chupeco, The Bone Witch

 

 

Just two quick points to wrap up this review then, because I’ve just noticed how long it’s getting. But one of the things that I liked about this book, was that there was no romance. Sure, there was a little bit of flirting here and there, but there wasn’t a full blown romance and relationship. Chupeco focused on the relationship between Tea and her brother.

My last point is that the ending was probably the best bit about The Bone Witch. A little sliver of information is released and you’re like WWHHHHAAAAATTTTTT??!!! If you read my YALC Haul, you would know that I bought The Heart Forger whilst I was there, which is the second book in the series. So I think that I’m going to start that soon, so that I can continue learning about how Tea became such a dark Asha.

Overall, this book was ok… It definitely has A LOT of potential, but for a first book in a series, this was a little bit drab.