it tends to be overly descriptive, and the story building is rather lengthy. I can't actually get over how there was 97% description and 3% plot.. Nothing really seemed to happen.

Plot • Tea knows she's not like the other witches in her family – really her whole village – when she resurrects her brother from the dead. This ability makes her a bone witch, someone to be feared and alienated. As soon as her powers manifest, an experienced bone witch arrives to take Tea and her brother under her wing. Together, Tea begins her training as an asha, a wielder of elemental magic, and soon learns that there are more obstacles and dangers for her to face.

Characters • I liked Tea as a heroine and the emphasis placed on her coming to terms with her abilities. Necromancy isn't exactly a bright and shiny power but nevertheless, it is her strength. Another highlight is her relationship with her brother. Despite its odd circumstances, I enjoyed the bond they shared. Then rounding out the rest of the characters are the women who become her sisters (liked them all except one!) and the two other men who make up the love triangle but don't worry, the book is light on both the triangle and even the love part.

Writing • The author chose an interesting style to tell her story and despite some initial misgivings, it actually worked for me and worked for the book itself. The world and characters were intriguing from the start but something was lacking. There's a lull in the middle and never quite got the full emotional investment from me. More time spent with Tea and evenly-paced action would've bumped this up at least more star in my eyes.

Overall feelings • I liked it but didn't fall in love with it as much as I had hoped. In spite of that, the ending does leave the reader wanting to know more and I'd be curious to see if the next book proves to be a strong sequel.

When I first heard about this book, I immediately wanted to read it! The main protagonist is called Tea (which is written like tea but not pronounced like it, even though I can't help but think of the tea you drink anyway. I love tea.) and she's a dark witch. What more could I possibly want? Well, something more apparently ... because while I wouldn't necessarily call The Bone Witch disappointing, it was not all I hoped it would be.

The story is told in two different time streams. One follows Tea from the tender age of 12 to her rise as an asha (=bone witch) and another one from when she is 17 years old and has been exiled from the community. For me it was difficult to follow the latter, because she reminisces about her past (which gets backed up by the other timeline), but also talks about revenge plans that I couldn't comprehend as a reader because I have no idea what happened and we don't find out in this book. It is obvious that this is a series (I don't know how many parts, but it will definitely have one sequel), but it seemed like a prequel/origin story for something you have no idea about.

The world of The Bone Witch is an extensive one, where maps and explanations of countries and such are direly needed. They are provided in the front and back of the book, but I still felt lost when it came to the cultural aspects and geographical locations of kingdoms. Chupeco likes to go into detail when it comes to description, but the characters didn't explain so much as just talk about the things that are a regular part of their lives. So, to me, it felt like reading a foreign language, which made it impossible to follow all the political aspects and such, which I simply ignored at one point or another.
I think one of the things that I struggled with a bit was the lifestyle of the asha. You have to know, they are among the most powerful people, either being able to manipulate elements or raise corpses and control minds. They start their apprenticeship around the age of 13 and it takes several years until their official debut. Their lessons include things such as history and politics as well as combat training, which I think is cool. However, a big part of their education is singing, dancing, playing instruments and learning how to entertain guests. The value of an asha is measured by how often they are booked to meet guests and how much they are willing to pay - the more popular, the better for their house. So, they literally get rented out. It just felt like they were some sort of magical combo between escorts and geisha. I do understand that there is a political aspect to this and a lot of tradition and honor involved, but I DON'T get why that's necessary. They should not have to entertain anyone and make sure they are liked unless they want to, because as I said, they are among the most powerful people there are. At some point they did try to break down gender stereotypes, with only women being asha and men being Deathseekers (soldiers trained to battle evil creatures), but not very successfully so.

Finally, there was a supposed twist about the love interest in the end, which I didn't find to be a surprise at all. While I might not always guess the bad guy correctly, you cannot fool me in the romance department. I know most of what I said didn't sound very positive, but it was an interesting story. I just don't think that it resonated with me as much as I hoped for. I would still be willing to pick up a sequel and if it were only to figure out what's really going on.

Fazit: 3/5 stars! My lack of understanding of the world and the detailed description made it difficult for me to truly connect.

This was a DNF for me. The character's fell flat for me and didn't connect with them at all. It doesn't help that the story was dull and slow in some parts. I can't really recommend this, but you should download the sample of it to see if you would like it or not.

The Bone Witch by Rin Chupeco is a beautiful, fantastical story. Framed as a flashback, it tells the story of Tea, a young asha (read: witch) in training. Her power? Necromancy, which is alternately loved and feared in her society. Her power is discovered when she is young, and accidentally raises her brother Fox from the dead, leading her to leave everything she knows behind (except Fox) and embark upon her training. I don’t want to give too much away, but the world she enters is terrifying and overwhelming. The flashback intrigues you and sets up Tea’s future in a way that keeps you reading to know how she got there, which is obviously still left to be discovered fully in future installments of the series, so be prepared to not have as much of a conclusion as you would like.

At first, I wasn’t sure I liked the story. The world you enter is full of new words and new concepts and quite overwhelming at first. For me, having to learn and understand the world was my chief drawback. Once I got the hang of it, I found the world well built and fascinating. While parts of the story are slightly mundane, mostly Tea’s work up until actually becoming an apprentice, it is reminiscent of Memoir of a Geisha at times during her preparation. A lot of this book is spent leading up to bigger things, but such a set-up it is. Tea is an intriguing character, especially given information about her future that is slowly divulged. I found myself wondering frequently if she is going to wind up being the character I love the most, or the character I hate the most, as the series plays out. The other ashas and apprentices are also interesting, though not all are as fully fleshed out as Tea and her brother. I love the relationship between Tea and Fox, and am interested to see how it continues to grow.

Tea’s new life is dangerous and intriguing, with lots of half-truths and misinformation floating around. There is also joy, though. She’s falling in love with a prince, even though his bodyguard is afraid of her. There’s also mystery, in the form of the mysterious heartsglass maker, the history of the world, and the monsters Tea is being groomed to fight. I also really loved the concept in this world of the heart glass. Every person wears their heart in a glass vial around their neck. Ashas can read and interpret them to help others, with different colors pertaining to different emotions and illnesses. It’s bad news bears if you give your heart away to the wrong person, though, and it can lead to much worse than a broken heart. The brilliant colors of this world, including the heartsglass, really are truly painted in your mind as you read.

Overall, I really ended up loving this story, even though it took me some doing to get there. If you start reading and find yourself overwhelmed by the world, then just keep going, it gets easier. I admit the story also drags at some points, though I found reading about how asha dress and all their various accoutrements interesting, since it deepened the world building. If you like fantasy with a little bit of a dark edge, this is definitely for you.

I received this book from Netgalley and Sourcebooks FIRE in exchange for a fair and honest review.

The story is very imaginative and consistent. Each chapter has two sections, with a time displacement. The young age of the heroine and the relatively young ages of the major players make this a good book for young adults. The writing is smooth and easy to read. AS the first book in a series, there is a certain amount of stage setting, but the story is sufficient on its own. The world of the book and all its inhabitants is quite detailed and interesting. I look forward to the development of the story.

Tea has the gift of necromancy, making her a bone witch, among a group of few others who are both respected and feared throughout the kingdom for their dark, powerful abilities that cross the boundary between the living and the dead. In order to learn how to wield and control her power, Tea leaves her hometown to train under the guidance of an older bone witch. But as she grows in her abilities and takes on the mantle of an asha, Tea discovers that there are secrets she does not know about - and she'll have to be strong enough to face them all and protect the people she loves.

Plot? Majority of this novel is really character-driven, and in my case, that usually means a book is a bit of a slower read. This is not to say that I didn't find it interesting though! Reading about Tea's experiences upon her arrival in the city, and all of the situations she finds herself in definitely gave me some Memoirs of a Geisha vibes (and since I enjoyed that book, I obviously liked being reminded of it). The plot certainly picks up when she officially becomes an asha, especially when she's dispatched to take care of her 'magical' duties.

Characters? Unfortunately, I got the sense that I was staring at the characters of this story from behind a glass wall. This was likely due to the narration style (which I'll get into momentarily). But even just from observing her, Tea felt very much like a typical fantasy heroine whenever we were reading about her journey towards becoming an asha. I definitely didn't form any sort of personal connection to her, nor did I particularly find her remarkable or unique. I actually enjoyed more of the secondary characters, even though they were so rarely on the page, which I suppose says a lot about Tea herself and the way this was written.

Writing? I actually thought the narrative style choice - jumping between the telling of the story to a chronicler to the actual experience through Tea's eyes - was a clever way to keep the reader hooked. It definitely worked on me! Apart from that, I also felt like the author indulged in quite a few dense descriptions with overly specific details that I didn't find particularly necessary. Still, it didn't take away from my overall interest in seeing what would happen next.

Overall? In spite of the lack of character connection, I liked this book well enough. The narration style really worked for me, though I'd like to point out that it might not be everyone's cup of tea. I personally found the plot was really what ended up hooking me the most, and I thought it was well worth the read.

The Bone Witch, Rin Chupeco's latest novel is striking. I haven't read anything quite like it, and found it wonderful.

Tea can raise the dead. But raising her brother was an accident. Many women are asha, those who can control elemental magic, but very few can practice necromancy. Fortunately though, Mykaela, the current Bone Witch was near and took Tea under her protection.

Tea trains in the ways of an asha, which is quite similar to the training of a geisha. They learn history, music, performance, current events, and how to control their elemental magic. And when they finish training, they are able to wear their ceremonial hua, which is different for every asha, designed strictly for her based on her abilities, her training, and her personality.

The story is told in two points of view, from the bard who found Tea in the desert, and from Tea herself. And it's very obvious who is speaking at each time, which makes it easier to follow. There isn't lots of flip flopping between POV's, and it helps contribute to the flow of the story.

There are some very pertinent topics discussed in The Bone Witch, including that of toxic masculinity. Only women can become asha, men who have the potential must become soldiers. This is addressed well in the book, with one of Tea's friends proving that just because he is male, doesn't mean that asha training is for the weak.

There is a ton of world building, and it does get bogged down in details. There is so much description and page time dedicated to Tea's asha training, and not nearly as much fighting daeva as teased. That being said, and me being a costuming/history/sociology nerd, I liked the slow parts. The details will probably come in handy in the rest of the series, and was worth the slog.

The ending left me wanting much more. I wanted to know more about what happened to Tea in those unmentioned years. Why she became hard, what happened to her brother, and what her new determined plan is. Rin Chupeco has set a very ambitious bar, with the foreshadowing of what is to come.


If you're a fan of (implied) Asian history, geisha training, necromancy, coming-of-age stories all with a bit of supernatural demon-ish critters thrown in, you may well like it. But be forewarned, there is a lot of worldbuilding and description, and this may turn off some readers. But give it a chance, you may wind up liking it.

This is a book full of beautiful descriptions and fantastic locales. The story takes its time unfolding, but readers who fall in love with Tea will enjoy the journey and the magic within.

The Bone Witch just suffered from a bit of first book syndrome for me. I'm interested to see where the series goes because it does have a fascination world and a lot of potential but this book had a lot of exposition and very slow plot development which didn't super impress me.

Everything about The Bone Witch by Rin Chupeco spoke to me. I loved the cover, I love stories about witches, I had super high expectations for this book going into it and was worried it would let me down, as a few other reviews didn’t seem to share my enthusiasm.

But I liked Tea immediately and I enjoyed the format the story was told in, with Tea in present day introducing each chapter, and then flashing back to tell her story. I enjoyed watching Tea apprentice as a Bone Witch and start to grow and see the world from a different perspective. I really loved her relationship with her brother Fox, and his protectiveness and loyalty to her. It was such a strong bond and I loved how even when she started to apprentice for something bigger, she never forgot him.

I also enjoyed the flowering affection between Tea and Prince Kance. It wasn’t a cheesy instalove situation, though there was definitely intrigue and attraction. I enjoyed how it was sprinkled in among the rest of the story and never fully took dominance, though still played an important and interesting part. This is my favourite way to read about love interests.

I felt that all the characters were really strong here, even the people we only catch glimpses of at the beginning, they make an impact. Prince Kance’s cousin Kalen has that dark and brooding intrigue about him, the ladies of the Fallen Leaf add a touch of that mean girl competition, even Tea’s former coworkers-come-maids add another layer of depth and another way to watch Tea grow and interact in different situations. I loved the well rounded cast and how strongly they all worked together.

The world that they dwell in is not at a loss for its own depth and magic. This is a very rich story, but not one that has a lot of action really fast. There are beasts that are slain and situations that need to be resolved, but there’s not necessarily a lot of action or immediate gratification, this is very much Tea telling her story. Even towards the end, the last half of the book doesn’t really increase in speed, but we’re being taken on a journey into the depths of Dark magic and the slow but growing build makes the journey a full experience.

There were a few things that came up that I found confusing. A few words that were a part of this world that I didn’t feel I was given enough context of, so it left me a little uncertain. This sometimes made the overall story a bit complicated for me to follow, I wish there was a bit more time spent on describing certain elements or explaining exactly how they worked, so that we weren’t just quickly introduced to and left to take at face value. Unless I just missed something?

That said, I thoroughly enjoyed this book, especially the ending, which I did not see coming at all. I can’t wait to read what comes next because I need to know how things ended up the way they did! I feel completely satisfied by this read, it was exactly what I was hoping it would be.

I wanted to like this book, I really, really did. I was super excited about this book when it was announced, it was actually one of my most anticipated books of the year. Sadly however, I was disappointed. I am giving this a book a 1 out of 5 stars even though I would like to give it more but I did DNF this book. The concept of the book was really good but the execution of it was a little too slow for my liking. It actually came very close to putting me in a book slump. I also wasn’t the biggest fan of how the book flashes back and forth from the present to the past. The book itself, as in the writing and the ideas behind everything are interesting. I liked the ideas of different types of witches and what each one brings to the table. The world building is good but I feel like the book is just a little description heavy and slow…very slow.

I may try reading this book again in the future and if I do and finish it than my rating will change as I only give 1 star ratings to books I either hate with a capital H (which is rare) or books that I DNF.

I give this book a 1 out of 5 stars.

Will update with links to where I posted my review online closer to the release date. (Final review might change slightly but will have the same basic message).

The Bone Witch has an amazing sounding premise, interesting writing, and semi-diverse characters. Unfortunately, it's a book that sounds better in summary than it proves to be in execution.

Premise:

In the grip of sorrow, Tea accidentally raises her brother from the dead. Her newfound ability sends her into an apprenticeship to become a Bone Witch, or a Dark Asha.

Dark Asha generally serve to protect the kingdom from monsters called daeva, which periodically rise from the dead and wreak havoc. Bone witches are rare, and so for the sake of the world's stability, Tea must study hard to harness a power within that she never knew she had.

This all sounds pretty promising, but reading through Tea's journey bored me to tears. I had to physically will myself to pick this up and it took me two months to finally finish it.

The story largely consists of walking you through every painstaking detail of Tea's apprenticeship over the course of two years.

I felt like it kept going in loops: "Tea's learning this now. Ok Tea's learning that again, but she's a little more advanced now. Tea has started learning this new thing here."

It was just so repetitive & boring. This book is overstuffed with descriptions of Tea's life in training and severely lacking in compelling action scenes.

When we aren't following Tea's training schedule we're listening to her superiors make obscure references to other Kingdoms, to past wars, fallen heroes, and lurking threats.

Name drops everywhere and mentions of events that mostly had no impact on our present story line. I felt lost while wading through these history lessons, and largely apathetic about keeping it all straight.

Writing:

The writing at times was beautiful, but just as often it was convoluted. Run-on sentences that carried on for half the page with poor word choices in some areas.

TOO. MUCH. DESCRIPTION.

If I knew anything about this book, I knew precisely what each character was wearing down to the individual stitches. The clothing and food details were overwhelmingly superfluous.

It got to the point where I just stopped trying to picture it. It was mentally exhausting.

Every so often I would find myself completely captivated by a sentence or two, but there wasn't enough good here to outweigh the bad.

I feel Rin Chupeco has a lot of potential, I could see her writing style morphing into something amazing with a bit more experience.

Characters:

I appreciated that these characters were racially diverse. It's wonderful to see different cultural influences and an array of skin colors in our books.

But personality-wise I found almost every character incredibly dull and predictable.

I wanted desperately to like the relationship that bloomed between Tea and the brother that she raised from the dead, Fox. But a large portion of the interactions between characters felt forced.

I didn't buy Tea's friendships or her rivalries. I wasn't invested in anyone's cause. I don't even have a favorite character. That's how uninteresting they were.

At the end of the day, I feel like this story had potential but that it could use a lot more editing before publication. It's missing some vital pieces of characterization and doesn't deliver a compelling narrative.

I feel a little bit like I’ve been robbed of a five-star experience. Everything about this on the surface screams like a book I would love. It’s got a great title, a beautiful cover, a cool dark premise, and gorgeous aesthetics. It’s one of those stories that could have been the perfect book if there was more action. Since it doesn’t, it reads like many first novels in a series do: it introduces the world building and characters and does little else. I’m prepared to tentatively let it slide when I know first novels aren’t always the best novels when it comes to series. If the next book gets more into the nitty gritty battle sequences, I’m on board. We’ll just have to wait and see…

What this book does do really well, however, is give you an immersive, ornately curated experience. It’s like walking through a beautifully curated museum exhibit, full of intricate details that draw out hints of the past and tell a story about the wealth of a culture. There’s this very carefully put together array of Japanese-inspired wardrobes and culture and I feel very much like I’m opening a window into the history of this magical, mythical place. Every robe is intricately detailed and every tradition entwined in becoming a bone witch is extremely rich.Yet ultimately it’s too detached from what truly happened with time that we just don’t get the meat of the story. There’s no knitty-gritty action or juicy details. It is beautiful and full of life, but because it’s nothing but an exhibit behind glass, you don’t get the full story of what made these people tick. Everything’s already been long lost to legends of the past.

Without a doubt, this book is beautifully written. If anything, Chupeco prioritises aesthetic over plot and in this way, it succeeds far more as a work of art than as a novel. And maybe that’s not so bad. Maybe The Bone Witch is ushering in a new definition of what a novel can be.

All I know is, I had a really nice time at the museum.

"The Bone Witch" manages to be both standard YA fare and gorgeously different. Tea lives in a world where everyone has a magical heartsglass that expresses their abilities and their mood. The younger sister of two low-level witches, Tea expects to become one herself. But everything changes when her heartsglass turns silver after she raises her brother from the dead.

The bulk of the story follows Tea after she is taken to be trained as a dark asha, a kind of necromancer-witch whose abilities include raising the dead. The basic arc of the training story is the basic arc of YA training stories everywhere: young, naive, but powerful protagonist is transported from their home and dumped into an arcane and mysterious world, where they are bullied and assigned tedious tasks until they manifest their unusual talents and begin their meteoric rise. What makes "The Bone Witch" different is the exotic richness of Tea's world: the asha are somewhere between witches and geisha, and the descriptions of the clothing and events are sumptuous and compelling. Not to mention the food. The society Tea lives in is vibrantly multicultural, with characters speaking Russian and eating Persian and Indian food. Sometimes this works well, and sometimes it feels like a bit of a hodge-podge rather than an organically grown world, but it certainly makes the book stand out against the general YA background.

Although for me the descriptions are the best part of the book, there's also plenty of action, including a unique magical system and a showdown with a dragon (I'll stop there to avoid further spoilers!). That being said, readers who hate cliffhangers and more complex narrative forms should be forewarned: this is the first part of a series, and the story is told by two alternating narrators: a bard whom Tea has summoned to tell her story, and the flashbacks of Tea herself. I personally love the serial form, and I didn't find the dual narrators difficult to follow at all, but because of the complexity of form, as well as the darkness of theme--Tea does, after all, raise the dead--this is probably more appropriate for older YA readers. An interesting and often beautiful and evocative addition to the YA genre. Plus a stunning cover!

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing a review copy of this book. All opinions are my own.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me an advance copy of this book.

I try really hard to read every book that I am granted through NetGalley, in order to write a thoughtful review. But I'm afraid I had to DNF this one about a third of the way in. The older I get, I just can't put the time into reading something I'm really not enjoying (and my TBR list is WAAY too long as it is.)

I read a lot of YA fantasy, so I thought this would be right up my alley. But right from the beginning, I felt like there was way too much "other-world" stuff - new words, names, etc. - that I was having a really hard time remembering (or caring about). And the descriptions of the world, and particularly the fashion, just went on and on. I know sometimes I complain about not enough world-building in fantasy books, but this seemed to be too far on the other end of the spectrum. There was so much of it being described, again I was having a hard time keeping things straight. The author's writing itself is well done - there's just too darn much of it.

And maybe because it was hard to feel like I was in their world, the characters felt kind of flat to me as well. And really, not much happened to keep my interest in the plot in the part I did read. I might have kept going, except then I read some reviews which implied that the last part of the book is even slower moving than the beginning. This one just wasn't for me. If you like really long descriptions, and particularly if fashion is your thing, maybe it would all be more interesting for you.

2.5 stars, really, but I would have felt bad giving this book two stars, because it wasn't a bad book! It was just...an incredibly dull one. This book is boring. If I had to dress it up a bit I would call it a coming of age story more than anything, but even that isn't really accomplished well, because the protagonist, Tea, doesn't change noticeably from when we first meet her. In fact it's difficult to get a handle on her personality at all. She's not passive; there are definitely instances where I can see her iron will shine through, but these moments are few and far between, and do little to make up for her otherwise rather bland personality.

Tea is not the only character who is bland; Kance, the supposed love interest, is literally nothing but lines on a page to me. He may as well not exist. Tea's brother didn't seem to have much of a personality beyond supporting Tea. Some side characters were somewhat fleshed out, but not enough.

The two main things I liked about this book were the prose and the development. Some reviews here are complaining about purple prose, but I've always been a fan of flowery descriptions, so that was lovely. The author's writing is solid. Likewise, the worldbuilding, often lacking in YA, is also good - perhaps not as rich as I would have liked, but I truly felt like I was in a completely different world, which is good. However, this may have come back to bite the book in the bum at some points, because it was kind of hard to keep up sometimes, and this is coming from a seasoned fantasy reader. I still don't understand who/what the Faceless are or what they want. I'm not super clear on the whole resurrecting daeva and then putting them back in the grave thing. A lot of little things are unclear.

As it is, my main problem is that there was just no plot! None! Literally nothing happens in this book! Which is such a shame because it starts off really well, and the promise of necromancy was so enticing. In the end, the book does nothing but take us through the protagonist's day to day as she goes from asha apprentice to full-fledged asha. If the author wanted to go the way of contemplative coming of age story, there needed to be more character development. Right now, the book is awkwardly stuck between two undetermined states, and it was a damn job to get through the entire thing.

Even the Big Reveal at the end, which should have been exciting, was just lame. We didn't really know the Villain well enough to mourn what happened, and when the Villain was revealed, they talked like the most cliched Evil Villain ever. I thought I had somehow started reading a 1950s comic - a really bad one. The dialogue was really, really terrible.

Another thing that bugged me was the representation of Drychta, the nation that is very, very clearly modeled on the Middle East. Specifically, the Gulf Region. Must Arabs be the barbaric, super conservative, honor-killing weirdos everywhere we go? Even in fantasy worlds? This was so unoriginal, and for an author who champions diversity, extremely disappointing.

Also - and this is more a personal pet peeve than anything - I went through 3/4 of the book thinking the Bard was a woman, and I was really excited about that, since the norm in fantasy is that Bards are men. When I realized the Bard character actually is a man, I was not happy.

Hopefully the sequel is better - it seems like it's setting up for something interesting, though we were left with pretty much no idea what's going on, still, or why the protagonist is exiled now. I don't know whether I'll read it yet, but I guess the fact that I'm still pondering is a good sign?

First and foremost, I think this book feels like a young-adult Memoirs of a Geisha with magic - in a really good way. The world-building is well done, the imagery in the book paints a beautiful picture, and I especially love the descriptions of the beautiful costumes.

The book is told in alternating chapters from the past and from the present with the two stories converging as the book goes on. Tea sort of reminds me of Katniss from the Hunger Games, in that she's thrown into a world she didn't choose, and yet excels at almost every aspect, and ends up with more responsibility than she ever wanted. I didn't mind Tea, but she wasn't my favorite either. I really liked the supporting characters more than Tea. The world-building is really my favorite thing about it, and ultimately, the ending pushed my rating to four and a half stars. The ending is so unexpected, and I will absolutely read the rest of the series to find out how we get there. There is a huge shocker at the end that the past account has not caught up to yet, and it is such an unexpected twist for books of this genre in general that I can't wait to read more.

An elegant fantasy novel wrapped in Asian culture, Rin Chupeco’s The Bone Witch is an endearing coming of age story set in a world of dark magic.
With a narrative that’s intercut between the past and present day, it tells the story of Tea, a talented Asha who can raise the dead and her training to become a powerful and potentially dangerous witch.
A well paced story, rich in Geisha traditions and mythology, along with an interesting protagonist, keep things ticking along before a darker ending that sets the tone for a grander story in the last two books.
A wonderful start to what promises to be a fantastic young adult series.