I was really surprised to end up DNF-ing The Bone Orchard – it was one of my most anticipated releases of 2022, and I really enjoyed the beginning of the book. The prose was compared to Jacqueline Carey’s in the pre-release materials! But something didn’t quite work, and when I got to the halfway point and realised I had no interest in how it ended – well.

It’s really hard to explain what about this didn’t work for me. It’s specifically the prose – it’s…too fast-paced? I don’t know the technical terminology, but reading it was like…a paragraph would abruptly change halfway through to focus on a new thing. Or there would be a jump in topics between one paragraph and the next, with no transition. Details were shared in random places, jarring the flow of the writing. It’s kind of subtle; it took me forever to realise what was making me uncomfortable and disinterested.

Plot-wise, the story seemed to be packed full of All The Things, with not a whole lot of room for any of those things to get much emotional development – so I really didn’t care about almost any of it. Also, even once I was halfway through the book, I still had no idea who the Emperor’s murderer was – I didn’t have even the most tentative theory, it felt like there was no evidence one way or another on any of the suspects – and the book kept introducing new characters and issues and objects and expecting me to be immediately invested in them, despite not giving me much to work with. There were so many little sub-plots or threads going on, but even though I could follow most of them, none of them felt important, and most of them didn’t feel very relevant to the main story. (Possibly it would all have come together in the second half of the book, in fairness.) I had no idea why x, y or z was supposed to matter, which was frustrating in the extreme when the characters treated the thing as Very Significant.

The premise of Mistress Charm and the bone-ghosts, the true nature of them all, was very cool, but the execution felt a little clumsy to me, particularly the dynamic and interaction of Charm and The Lady.

I probably could have put up with all of that if the prose was actually Carey-esque, but as implied, it was not. The jerkiness especially was just not something I could put up with – it was incredibly grating, and the effect just got worse as the book went along.

2.5, rounded up

The Bone Orchard is a brilliant adult gothic fantasy book with magical worldbuilding, fascinating characters, and a thrilling & dark story that explores women's place in society, the treatment of sex workers, power, and powerful women who manage to fight & win against all odds.

It has a magical horror/thriller feel and is a story that talks about a lot of themes that can be triggering for some including rape, death, & abuse. Despite all that, it's also surprisingly entertaining, beautifully written, and a rare fantasy book that'll make you think. Can't wait to read more of Mueller's works.

Thank you for the ARC!

my rating: 3.5 of 5 stars.

Overall, I enjoyed the unique concept created in The Bone Orchard. Dark, full of political machinations and necromancy, Mueller’s debut is filled visually with decadent descriptions and intrigue.

Imagine a courtesan, who is also a necromancer. One who grows and regrows her children—pieces of her she names: Shame, Justice, Desire, Pride, and Pain, in order to appease the many dark desires of her customers.

In this world, Lady Charm is also the favored concubine of the Emperor and is unexpectedly summoned to his deathbed where he charges her with choosing which of sons will carry on the empire—only first she must discover which one is responsible for his murder.

The beginning is a bit confusing as you try to separate and understand the workings of Charm and the Orchard House. Bone magic and conspiracies combine for a subtle unraveling of the mystery.

Although I really enjoyed the dark atmosphere and writing, my one complaint is that even though readers become familiar with Charm and her boneghosts, the concepts felt confusing and vague, especially in the beginning. It may be that this was done with the purpose of creating a mysterious atmosphere but in the end, it left me feeling somewhat underwhelmed.

Overall, an enjoyable debut that I would recommend to dark fantasy readers looking for something new and unique.

This one caught me by surprise!. Despite my confusion during the first chapter, the characters and plot turned out to be fascinating. Who doesn't enjoy a royal assassination mystery when the royal family is full of psychopaths and the woman tasked with solving the mystery is the royal mistress!? The Bone Orchard
contains wonderful plot twists and a complex past that unravels as the story unfolds.

When I saw this book I wanted to love it but I just could not get into it at all. I found myself being rather confused by the world-building and the plot because of the way you are just thrown into the world without some much-needed context and clarity. Even something even as minor as the character names pulled me out of the story as well. The triggering content was also not my favourite thing to read about either.

I will give this a middle rating seeing as I couldn't make it all the way through the book, and thank you NetGalley and Tor Books for giving me the opportunity to read this nonetheless.

Thank you so much for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for my honest review! To say my mind was blown would be a complete understatement! There was a lot going on here and it also had some heavier issues. I would classify this as a dark fantasy but it would work across a lot of genres!

Series Info/Source: This is a stand alone book. I got an eGalley of this from Netgalley to review.

Thoughts: This was a 5 star read for me up to the last third of the book. I love the creative world here and how Charm and her sisters survive. The idea of the bone garden and the way psychics are dealt with in society was fascinating.

However, as things progressed this became a very clear “who-dun-it” type of mystery with a lot of twists and turns that were a fairly predictable. The story just went on for a bit too long and lost some of it's wonder and sparkle towards the end.

I also felt like things were very rushed at the end; if this is the first book in a series great...if this is a stand alone (like I believe it is) then it feels very unfinished. I feel like pacing could have been better, less of Charm and the Lady running around in the middle and more wrap-up of how things played out.

My Summary (4.5/5): Overall this is a well done and creative fantasy that I mostly enjoyed. I will be honest, I started skimming a bit towards the end here...it just got too long for me. However, as I got right to the end I was really interested to see how things wrapped up and then everything felt so rushed and incomplete. Still parts of this were very creative and it was definitely worth the read and I am eager to see what stories Mueller comes up with in the future.

I’m struggling to find a way to discuss The Bone Orchard, because I honestly struggled to follow the book while reading it. It’s an ambitious, wholly distinctive look at the mistreatment of sex workers under the guise of a fantasy story. The main character Lady Charm is the madam of a brothel who “employs” (used very loosely) girls created from fragments of her own consciousness. She’s equally as much a necromancer as she is a scientist. And if that sounds like a fascinating concept, it's because it absolutely is. But a creative concept does not make a brilliant book.

I’m not one to hyperfixate on worldbuilding in fantasy books because the characters will always matter more to me in a story. But I will notice worldbuilding when it isn’t there, or when it is so muddled I'm left in a constant state of never quite feeling like I have my bearings in any one setting in the landscape of the story. The Bone Orchard unfortunately had me feeling this same disorienting sense of being in a fantasy universe without ever really getting to know it at all. And that's in large part the result of the majority of the book taking place in a single location - The Orchard House brothel. It creates a similar kind of insular atmosphere of a closed-circle mystery, only the borders aren't completely closed and the author is trying to convince you of a a whole fantasy world rife with geo-political conflicts. Those two things just don't mesh together.

Perhaps if the characters themselves were distinctive enough to detract from the ambiguous worldbuilding, I would have had a better time with this. But the characters all seemed to blend together into nebulous groups of protagonists, antagonists, and the ambiguous side characters that could swing either way.

1. Protagonists - Charm and her collection of prostitute bone ghosts who are in a constant flux of living and dead. Despite having names like Shame, Desire, and Pain their personalities were confusingly interchangeable even with the range of virtues they were supposed to symbolize.

2. Antagonists - The emperor’s sons, painted as cut-and-dry evil men with no gray area in between. There’s really no easier way to illustrate a character deserves every ounce of fury wrought upon them then by establishing them as a pedophile.

3. The rest - The Empress, and to a certain degree the guards that frequent Charm’s brothel. I couldn’t tell you any of their names, but they're there and they're politicking.

I understand there’s a feminist reading that underlies the entire story here - most apparently commentary on women’s perceived lack of power in a world dominated by men. But you can’t outright vocalize the inequality between genders like The Bone Orchard does and then have an entire organization of male and female royal guards that do not reveal their sex and are treated as a monolith of agender beings by the general populace around them. It’s sending two very different messages.

I want to give this book credit for what it is - totally unique and an ambitious standalone fantasy with some heavy handed commentary on sex work as it can be applied to our own world. But in terms of my own enjoyment, I felt a complete disconnect from a narrative and setting that never seemed to really find steady footing. I can’t say The Bone Orchard is a book that's going to stick with me - besides a niggling feeling of never quite connecting all the dots on a page with too many to count.

Thank you to the publisher Tor Books for providing an e-ARC via NetGalley for an honest review.

Charm is many things. Prisoner. Witch. Necromancer. Whore. Madame of a brothel filled with the boneghosts she created. Political pot-stirrer. And on Tuesdays, she is the Emperor’s mistress. Until one Tuesday, when she is summoned from her brothel to the Emperor’s deathbed, and given two final tasks: find the killer, and allow none of the Emperor’s sons to sit on the throne. They are both impossible tasks, but Charm has managed the impossible before. And this time, the impossible could lead to her freedom.

“You’ll find that what you can bear increases a great deal when you are not offered any other choice.”

I have no idea what the Tor editors are drinking, but somehow they have (practically) cornered the market on outstanding and incredible fantasy and science fiction. Do they have witches of their own—a department of oracles and diviners scrying for the best new talent? Do they sacrifice the soul of an assistant editor every quarter moon to catch the coolest shit in the agenting sieve? Or do they just send out a random intern with a dousing stick and say, “do your thing,” and let them go stumbling into the dark of the slush pile?

Regardless of how they do it (and the varying degrees of ethical implications), I am loving it.

“Where there are no witnesses but murderers, there are no crimes.”

I really LOVED this book, if you couldn’t tell by the five star rating (which is actually kind rare for me, I just happen to cherry pick what books I review on this blog and they tend to be the ones I really like).

It is dark as hell, but so fucking good, with intriguing worldbuilding reminiscent of The Goblin Emperor meets Tanith Lee and T Kingfisher with a dash of Harrow the Ninth, all mixed in the heady politics and intrigue of 17th century France.⁠

First of all, there is a mystery within a mystery, and crimes wrapped within crimes, because empires don’t become Empire without a heaping dose of either. In addition to Empire and the history (particularly the remixing of history) of Empire, there is the complication of magic-workers and immortality.

What are the succession plans, after all, when the Emperor plans on living forever?

What point is there, to be a prince or lordling or scion, when your master will never die? How does absolute power corrupt absolutely when you are immortal…and when you have allowed your mistakes the double-edged gift and curse of immortality as well? Wrapping that all into unsustainable magic and heavy control mechanisms and you get…this book.

Plus, of course, a very interesting spin on trauma response and coping mechanisms that was fairly easy to figure out only because I had literally just reread Mirror Dance by Lois McMaster Bujold, and the same technique (more or less) is applied. But there are so many twists and turns that I kept doubting my suspicions on what was actually going on and who was…well, that’s a spoiler.

Anywho, the plotline is relatively simple, although the politics themself are complex. Charm must figure out who murdered the Emperor, while also navigating the regime change and power vacuums.

Charm is a survivor, as are her boneghosts, created by her bone orchard in the backyard and the ghosts living in her mind. There are Pain, Justice, Desire, Shame and Pride, who all have distinct personalities, disabilities and purposes within the salon…and, coincidentally, most all have a specific prince who visits them.

There are also the people with power in the city of Borenguard (and the empire as a whole), operating underneath the Emperor himself, and the police who guard the city (and are bound themselves by mindlocks, which are a tool used to control magic-users and mostly managed by the Emperor himself because Control), and the people within the city who are both innocent bystanders and victims and also implicit in the atrocities of Empire.

Survival is not immoral. Winning our freedom is not immoral.

The writing is so beautiful, and is able to capture so many themes all at once, although the overwhelming theme is survival…and all of those variations on a theme. Of course, there is also the exploration of empire and power and history and justice: who gets to own it, who is owned by it (and to what degree they are owned), what stories are told (and are not told) and by whom, along with the privilege of who gets to forget, and who is forced to remember, and suffer through that remembering.

Who keeps the fragments of a soul? Who holds the weight of a tragedy? Does one atrocity cancel out another?

There is so much more to say about this book, but I don’t have the words, because the words are literally in the book itself and explained far better than I ever could.

Oh, and the book itself is intrinsically queer.

Anywho, if this doesn’t pick up an award nomination, I’m going to kick someone. Possibly several someones.

“The world isn’t all towers of white marble, and it isn’t all gardens of perfectly trimmed grass,” said Pain softly. “Whether we want to look or not, we cannot escape from the world. We can retreat for a while, but it is always there.”

I received this ARC from NetGalley for an honest review.

My review will post on my blog April 7, 2022

Possible Triggers:
Death | Light Gore | Assault/Battery | Rape

Characters:
This book is told through multiple PoV’s.

Holy heck… Does this book have characters that are going to piss you off so much. Sara A. Mueller has a talent for making truly despicable characters that you just; I'd say ‘character’s you love to hate’ but I don't think that conveys the true scope of feelings that specific characters ignite in you.

I loved the Empress and Pain. Wow. Just talk about strong female leads that are strong in not usually celebrated ways. Strength of character and convictions.

Positives:
+ the firedrinkers. I love the firedrinkers. It sucks that they exist in the way that they do, but I like what/how they have made it their own.
+ Really eccentric and fascinating new take on necromancy that I have never come across before. This wasn’t talked about super in depth, but it's such a delightfully different twist.
+ I love that the magic has consequences for using it, and also that the way they have decided to mitigate those consequences is just as horrifying as that thing happening. I love that the people in power with this also are absolutely suffering the consequences and their people are in a secondary way as well. EVERYONE is affected by magic in some kind of capacity, even if it's just less access to specific goods.

Negatives:
- This isn’t a negative for me personally, but this is a hard warning to readers that don't like seeing the true extent of ugliness that humans can/do inflict upon each other. It is hard to read (it should be).

Final Thoughts:
Wow. How do I even explain what it is about this book that makes it so fascinating? How about I tell you about a new type of necromancy that is vastly different than anything I have ever read before. Or perhaps I mention the interesting (and horrible) ways that different countries in the story deal with magic. Or maybe even how people deal with their trauma. This is absolutely not a happy story. There is horrible thing after horrible thing being talked about in the book. Part of the reason I think I enjoyed the book so much was BECAUSE those horrible horrible things (that are prevalent in history and fantasy) were addressed. They were talked about, the excuses were torn away. It made for a very difficult read at times, but also vastly fulfilling when you got towards the conclusion of the story. I will never look at cheese the same way again.

A necromancer, Charm, captured in war opens up a brothel staffed by women grown from her own blood and bones to flip the script on her captors and build a life on her terms. The world building is exquisite, and Charm and her Bone-ghosts are such a thoughtful exploration of trauma, especially the trauma of women, and how we manage things to keep surviving. Absolutely phenomenal!

*Special thanks to NetGalley and Tor-Forge for an early copy of this e-arc*

easily one of the best fantasy books i’ve read in a while; so uniquely creepy and intelligent. i adored the political intrigue.

Charm is a hard woman to figure out. Most people know that she came from an area brutally conquered by the emperor but, now, she closes her exclusive brothel on Tuesdays to cater to that emperor. She seems to have made a very cozy nest for herself, as far as we can tell at the beginning of Sara A. Mueller’s enthralling The Bone Orchard. It wasn’t until near the end of Charm’s story of revenge, politics, healing, and hope that I understood Charm’s contradictions–and she seems to finally understand herself.

Charm is a woman in a gilded cage. A bit of magic implanted in her skull keeps her from doing anything more rebellious than coloring her hair in bright colors while only wearing mourning black. Almost as soon The Bone Orchard opens, Charm is summoned to the imperial palace where the emperor who ruined her life and destroyed her country lies dying after someone poisoned him. Once there, the emperor gives Charm one final set of commands: she has to find out which of his three sons poisoned him and make sure that none of them sit on the throne. He then reverses all of his other commands so that, once she finishes this last task, she’ll be free.

As if Charm doesn’t already have enough on her plate, The Bone Orchard takes us behind the scenes at Orchid House and its very unique staff. The women who work there are bone ghosts, created by Charm and a mysterious woman known as the Lady. They are created from bones grown behind Orchid House, then animated by ghosts known as Pain, Pride, Justice, and Shame. We learn where the ghosts came from over the course of the book in some of the best character development I’ve ever read.

I loved a lot of The Bone Orchard. Charm and her women are fantastic creations. The magic system is original and deadly. And the politics are top notch. The only thing that bothered me about this book is the way that mental disorders and illness are treated. Where Charm’s psyche is portrayed with compassion and depth, the men are written off as irredeemably insane and violent. The magic system probably make that true, but it was still an odd note to strike. This is definitely Charm’s book and there are other great characters here. Like I said, I loved a lot of this book. I just wished that every part was written as well as Charm was.

I cannot get over this book.
From the first page I was pulled in. to Charm's world and I couldn't pull myself out.
Everything is so richly described and written that it feels like you're there, in both good parts and bad ones.
But even in the worst moments Ms. Mueller doesn't... dwell on the worst. She gives you just enough that you get the gravity of the situation, you're pulled into the drama and you're worried for the characters, but she doesn't overdo it.

The plot is fantastic. Combining fantasy, mystery and court intrigue all into one, I loved every minute of this book, and my only wish is that I could forget I had read it so I could read it again.

I will be buying a copy not only for my library, but also for myself.
Thank you #NetGalley for giving me the chance to read this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Charm lives in Orchard House, kept alive and unaging at the will of the Emperor. Every night Orchard House is filled with the male gentry, there to partake in the amenities that Mistress Charm and her Bone Ghosts provide: good food, good company, and conversation that they are assured will stay within the walls of the house. Charm and her Bone Ghosts mind the desk, entertain the guests, and bear the brunt of things that the Lady cannot stomach.

All this is kept in order by the Mindlock placed on Charm by the Emperor, the mindlock that ensures that she remains trapped, obedient, and sane. But when Charm is given a task by the Emperor, a task that if completed will lead to her freedom from the Mindlock, she finally must consider the price of her safety, and just what it will take for her to be free.

This is a dark and touching novel that grapples with pain, grief, and death. It is a tale of betrayal and mystery, full of backstabbing royalty and political intrigue. The women in these pages are strong and fearless and unbreakable. I will be recommending this to fans of Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir.

The Bone Orchard didn't really grab my attention. I liked the premise a lot, and the world was clearly very well thought-out and detailed, but I felt like I didn't have enough background information to keep me interested.

There were a few things that I liked about this book, but unfortunately it failed to captivate and engage me. When I read fantasy I want to be totally immersed in that world and feel something for the characters and what they are going through, but that just never happened for me with this one.

One of the things I did like was Charm and how she created her bone ghosts, which were representations of her shattered psyche. A little more explanation to how and why she did this at the start would have been nice, but enough was said eventually that you got the main points eventually. I liked her bone ghosts more than Charm herself, especially Pain, she was the only one I sort of connected to. As Charm is slowly reconnected to her past throughout the book, it was interesting to see how her personality changed and became whole.

The world was interesting but needed a lot more explanation. There was a bit of a strange mix of magical technology, but the setting of a palace and the outfits people wore were more reminiscent of the victorian era. The two ideas just never seemed to gel for me. I also was confused by the politics, as it included way to many people who I kept getting mixed up. The princes especially were hard to keep track of and they all seemed to have a history with Charm that was never explained. For the most part the princes were all cruel and nasty pieces of work which didn’t help to keep them separate. The mystery also fell flat for me, I just ended up not caring by the time we got to the solution.

The writing was beautiful, but I needed a bit more information up front about Charm and her ghosts as well as the relationships with all of the other characters. We do eventually learn most of it as Charm’s memories come back, but it was sometimes to late in the narrative for me to care about it at that point. I’m mostly thinking about her relationship with Prince Luther, by the time we find out the full story, I didn’t care about him or the two of them together.

This is probably more of a its me not the book type of review as I have seen several glowing reviews about how wonderful it is. So don’t just take my word for it and please look at other people’s opinion. It overall just didn’t work for me, but I can see how others will really like it.

This is one of those books I wish I could have not finished, so I could move on to a *hopefully* better one. It's clear from the ratings so far I am an outlier, but I just didn't care for this book at all. It wasn't the content but more the execution for me. I felt lost the entire time. Like I needed cliff notes to help me and I'm not sure if that was an editing flaw or what exactly. Maybe the people who gave it high ratings had said cliff notes.

Usually with fantasy, when you start the book you have to get your bearings, you may not understand who, what, where in that moment, but once you start reading, it all gets laid out and you understand the world you've entered. I never got to that point. The beginning started out confusing and we never get proper clarification on many things. Maybe I'm just not smart enough for this book. But I felt like I didn't understand what was going on the entire time, like where do psychics come from and what do they do? It got to the point where I really didn't care and I just wanted it be over.


**Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for allowing me an advanced copy of this book and in return I am submitting my unbiased and voluntary review and opinion. I am posting this review to my Goodreads account immediately and will post it to my Amazon & Instagram accounts upon publication.

This was recommended by a very dear friend whose review immediately sent me over to NetGalley for an ARC. Her own review mentions how this is such a beautiful exploration of the ways in which women experience (and move on from) trauma and that is exactly spot on. Mueller does a wonderful job of slowly revealing what has happened in Charm's past and only showing you these different events as they become relevant. And normally this would make me impatient, but it's so gracefully done here that you hardly notice.

Anyway, content warnings for physical and mental abuse, gore/body horror, violence, assault, implied rape. And I'm not sure if it warrants a warning, but this book deals heavily with the separation of personalities and self in order to cope with extreme trauma. So just keep that in mind!

This is so decadently weird. I don't really know if the plot was interesting or its resolution compelling but god was it a fun time getting there. The central conceit of the bone ghosts, trauma fracturing the mind in ways that can inhabit physical bodies, is worth a ponder too.