What do you get when you cross a geisha and a witch? An asha! Yes, the asha can sing, dance and put on a beautiful show. They wear gorgeous clothing, elaborate hairstyles and makeup. But they are also the best fighters around and can control elements. In Tea's case, she is a special kind of asha because her magic comes from the darkness. She can raise the dead and control vicious creatures that threaten the eight kingdoms in her world. Because of her skills, people fear her, but also respect her abilities and rely on her to protect them. I loved learning about all of the training that Tea goes through to develop her skills and become even more powerful. There's plenty of action, but the ultimate battle is reserved for the next book (or books). I can't wait to see what's in store for Tea, her brother and the other asha in the next book. If it's as good as "The Bone Witch," readers are in for a treat!

Even though I found this book to be confusing at times, I really enjoyed it. I loved the writing style and concept so much. Everything seemed very well thought out and very detailed. I really liked the alternating narratives and the world building was really cool. There is some info dumping here and there but it wasn't terrible. I really liked all of the characters. They were all well written and developed.
Overall, I really enjoyed this this. It's pretty original and I really loved the concept. If you're looking a fantasy that has great world building and a great concept, I would recommend The Bone Witch.

Tough to wade through at times but when you get into it it's written well. Looking for more excitement and pace in the next book - if there is to be one!

I was disappointed in how I felt about the book. The premise sounds amazing! A young girl, Tea, is brought into the world of asha--geisha-like women who can control elements--after raising her brother, Fox, from the dead. Tea is a Dark asha, also known as a Bone Witch to those who dislike her kind of asha. Bone witches are rare and considered untrustworthy to many people in the surrounding lands. Though, they are needed to send daeva--demons who cause havoc--back to the dead.

There were intriguing elements about the story: the asha, the daeva, the magic that is infused into their clothing and hairpins, even some of the backstory of how asha and daeva came to be was neat. But, sometimes it felt like there was just too much information. It became convoluted and it was hard to keep who was who and what was what straight in my head. There were characters brought to only one scene and then were only mentioned in passing several pages later and I had no idea who they were.

There was a False Prince? But I didn't know who that was. There were bad guys called the Faceless that were causing a ruckus. There was also political turmoil because some countries were okay with Bone witches and some weren't. Secrets were revealed, daeva were raised, people died.

Which, sounds awesome, but there was just so much going on that it was hard to keep track.

However, at the same time, nothing happened through most of the book. Tea was doing her asha life and learning how to be an asha, which is pretty much like being a geisha with lessons and tea ceremonies and getting fancy clothes. It felt like most of the book was Tea talking about clothes and hairpins and then there were pieces of the book where all this info and action was stuffed into a few pages and then shifted back to boring stuff.

I will say that, despite it's boring aspects, there is potential here. I liked the writing style, so I wouldn't be opposed to reading something else from this author. It was just less kick-ass asha than I thought it was going to be.

If you want to give this book a shot, go ahead. It may appeal more to you than it did to me.

It just wasn't my cup of Tea.

** spoiler alert ** The publisher provided a free brook via NetGalley for an homer review.
I was very excited to read this book from the back cover description:raising the dead, oops it's your brother, distrustful public of one with her rare powers? Great! There are no real spoilers here (small one in the very last sentence).

Let me say I wanted to love this book. But there were some flaws with the story. I never truly liked Tea, the main character. The story being told from Tea the fallen in the present and Tea's origin and schooling never meshed well. She wasn't the most endearing character, though she is spirited. I just couldn't connect.

When I updated my Goodreads to say I was reading this book, I read the review here. I didn't know about the book recipe saying this was like "memoirs of a geisha;" I love that books. It's top 2 of all time for me, I did artwork, school projects-including writing Arthur Golden himself. I read mostly nonfiction books about the flower and willow world, as well as many (good and bad) fictional stories. It seemed the author wrote extensively about the world of the geisha, but substituted asha for geisha. Measuring time spent at parties with with ohana incense markers, accounting, detailed kimono/hua, flower, singing, dancing and musical instrument lessons...but then also just adding on...oh and they can summon the elements and fight, and in Tea's case, raise the dead....but she had to entertain at nightly parties instead of helping the kingdoms. Big disconnect I couldn't go along with.

I also didn't care for the slow build ending with an obvious reveal of love interest and hints at sequels to come.

I did not finish this book. I could not engage with the story or the characters and had to stop reading.

I wanted to like you. I really did. But I just couldn't bring myself to do so. I requested this because the plot sounded up my alley. I was excited to sit down with this and Chupeco does have a way with words and I liked the back and forth narrative that lets you see some hint of the fate of the main character but those snippets felt "heavier" in comparison to the rest of the book. The world building maybe suffered because of the tone changes that happened along with the heavy use of exposition for Tea's POV throughout.

The characters and world building were interesting and I do think this universe should get the chance to be improved upon (it seems as if this novel was the one to set up future installments) because Chupeco does craft an interesting story but for me this first installment was a slow set up, that seemed to focus more on Tea's training, that didn't seem to focus on much else (there are hints about a love triangle and bigger enemies that may come later).

I'd give this a try if you're looking for a fantasy book with an interesting concept and a really slow burn but this just didn't grab me like I wanted it too.

From the publisher: When Tea accidentally resurrects her brother from the dead, she learns she is different from other witches. Her gift for necromancy means that she’s a bone witch, a title that makes her feared and ostracized. But Tea finds solace and guidance with an older 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, and in the face of danger, Tea will have to overcome her obstacles…and make a powerful choice.

The Bone Witch is beautifully written, with lovely passages and good world building. I was able to clearly visualize the world and its inhabitants. The narrative alternates between two points in time. In the first, Tea (pronounced Tey-uh), surrounded by teachers, fellow students, and her asha family, is learning what she needs to know to be a powerful and effective wielder of magic. In the second, she is alone and in a dark place, telling her story to an interested bard and preparing for action. The novel opens strong and the cover is gorgeous.

However, the pace of The Bone Witch is glacial. Glaaacial. And the slow pace is not spent developing character. Despite the slow pace, I never felt I got to know Tea; her dead brother Fox was the most interesting part of the book. We also don't see any action to explain how Tea went from the first place, surrounded by friends and family, to that place of solitude until late in the book. We do see her undergo training in dance, voice, martial arts, how to wear her special asha clothing and jewelry, etc. Oh, and a little bit about raising the dead.

The narrative is relentlessly joyless, yet I was compelled to keep reading. Big questions are left unanswered, and I am intrigued enough that I will plan to read the sequel.

Although much in this book feels original, sometimes the author does wander into cliché territory (from p. 202 of the advance reader copy: "Don't worry your pretty head over it, my dear," the old man said kindly”).

I give The Bone Witch points for a transgender character, a boy who knows he won't survive as a soldier and dreams of being the first male asha instead.

This book will find its reader, but many others will stop reading long before the end. You might be that reader however, so watch for the book at the Galesburg Public Library in March if you are intrigued.

I read an advance reader copy of The Bone Witch.

This was a wonderful YA title. The writing was beautiful and the character of Tea was well written. However, the last half of the book dragged a bit and the ending was disappointingly abrupt and too cliff-hangery. That being said--I look forward to the next installment of the series!

I thought this book was wonderful! I am so intrigued by the world-building and eager to learn more about the mythology of this universe. Also that cliffhanger! I need to know how she ended up with him and how he was killed.

I received this book in exchange for an honest review from Netgalley. I am not a fan of this book. While I appreciate the opportunity to read the book prior to release, I couldn't follow what was going on. It was very confusing, and I felt it wasn't going anywhere. I wanted to like this book, but I just couldn't.

The following will be posted at The Crown of Books at http://thecrownofbooks.blogspot.com
The date of publication will be February 18th, 2017 around noon EST.


Right off the back, this is going to be on the best reads for this year.

In "The Bone Witch," a young girl named Tea accidentally brings her dead brother back to life. Once discovered, she is taken in by another Asha who can help control her abilities.

I remember when I first came across this, I thought this was going to be an excellent book. However, something in the back of my head wasn't sure. Over time, that little voice that told me it wasn't sure said go for it and I was really happy to get my hands on a copy.

I am an avid reader for stories about magic and witches and all of the sorts. This story wasn't just about ordinary witches, it was about a witch that could raise and control the dead. This was different already and I was eager to read more about it.

The first part I loved was the two very different POV's that were introduced. One was the main character Tea as she goes through her journey of raising her dead brother and learning to be a Bone Witch. The second is of a bard who meets her and recalls his story between the two. Normally, different POV's would continue the same story, but these POV's were at different times as the Bard's telling was after Tea's original beginning. What got me into the story was how the Bard kept coming in. The mood was extremely different than Tea's mood and you can tell that something certainly happened with Tea over time. It made me want to know what happened. It also proved to answer some questions that I had while reading Tea's POV. If it wasn't for the Bard, I would have so many questions. Including the Bard was a genius addition to the story. Very well done.

Another part that I truly liked and believed that was incredibly unique was the heartglass. In this world, the heartglasses usually stay the same color, but can change based on the mood the user is feeling. As for an example, red is happy, pink is romantic, and so on. If your heartglass is silver, it means that you can draw runes and become a fighter or an asha. Purple may have been a limited asha, but not an official asha of a sort.

One last thing that I enjoyed reading about was the character Likh. Likh is a boy who does not want to become fighter with magic. Instead, he would rather break tradition and do something else he wants. The fact that this was made into the story made me happy as it was seen in most stories. Props for adding a unique character.

However, this is just one little thing that I would like to point out. There may be other readers who may struggle with some of the terms like asha, asha-ka, hua and more. I was one of them. Asha was easiest to learn that it was another term for witch. Other terms needed a little bit more reading to figure out what the words meant. This may be a problem with some readers as it may be confusing to some.

This series has so much potential that I will have to continue the series. I plan on buying the first book soon after it released. It's going to be one of the best series yet to come and for this years and the upcoming years. I definitely needs to recommend this book

Let me start by saying that I really wanted to love this book, that I was just so excited to have this book and that already so in love with the cover!

One thing that the author did an excellent job at was worldbuilding. We were introduced to a completely unique world of magic, that is intruiging concept of imagination to my mind. We spent so much time in training school with our main protagonist Tea, that I truly felt like I was being prepared in the practice of Dark Asha magic. The author's voice feels authentic, like a storyteller, since really we have all of the book coming from Tea's perspective in a story of my life format.

I found the alternating timelapses of this plot extremely confusing, and I still haven't figured out some fragments of it. We switch back between two POVs from what happened in the past in Tea's life, to current day plans with Bard. In novels with these two seperate timelines, I feel like there should be a connecting point, right? Even with trying to close-read, I just couldn't find that point of connection that I was looking for in the whole book.

Something that I found extremely unrealistic was the way that Tea has "instalove" with Prince Kalan. I'm sorry, I have ranted about how much I hate instalove, how much I hate instalove, and how much I hate instalove. The thing is, this romance didn't even make sense. These two people see eachother for like 3 experiences total in the book, which I didn't think that "sparks flied" (ex. no kissing, no "i love yous",). Let me be clear, I'm not saying that romance is supposed to be physical, not at all, but I couldn't even identify the friendship here. All of these things later on when Tea was like "I would be willing to die for you" just didn't make sense. The romantic subplot was pushed far to the wayside, which I can understand, but then it's expected to be the main things that propels future Tea forwards. I just don't get it, I can't wrap my head around it...

And then also she forgot all of her other siblings in her old life. Now, I may be mistaken but I believe that she had three or four sisters, mom & dad, and after she changes locations to study and train for the rest of her life, we have barely any mention of her being homesick or her missing her parents. Sure, her brother is with her at all times, but she doesn't even seem to treasure their time (because of constricitions) when he's around. Realistically, not knowing much about her family relationships, you still should be showing some thoughts or emotions about the topic of "home" right?
The thing is, for most of the book nothing significant happened, I can't pinpoint when the climax happened (or if there even was one). At the point of about 50%, I was completely ready to DNF and would have if I hadn't read up on some more positive reviews that I found on Goodreads. But nothing more interesting happened after that, so I could conclude that the pacing was done too slowly and the story was being drawn out too long.

The ending was just so irrational, I don't understand the character, I don't understand why she's doing what she's doing... I couldn't wrap my head around what exactly she's doing fundamentally. I didn't know this, but I just found that there is a second book in the works that is probably going to be prone to explaining more of this, but at this point I'm not interested. What's the first book for then to establish the fundamental premise, right?

**Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange of my honest review.**

The story is told in the way that Interview with the Vampire is told, through a main character telling someone else. In that sense, nothing actually happens in this book. What we do get is the whole story that has brought us to where the book starts, and hopefully into what the next book will be.

The story, or backstory, is interesting and exciting. I had a difficult time pushing through the second half of the book until the final few chapters. I am unsure what changed there, but I think I was finally getting anxious to know what happened to get us to the main characters current state. I pushed on, and was not disappointed.

If you like books like Red Queen, Throne of Glass, and The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones, you will most likely enjoy this book very much.

Thank you to Netgalley for providing me with a free copy of this book in return for my honest review.

The theme of necromancy fascinates me. It got me to read the Anita Blake series by Laurell K. Hamilton. The necromancy concept was never really developed in those books, and Hamilton wandered away from it. This resulted in my wandering away from the series.

I've seen some stories of necromancers as ceremonial magicians who draw a protective magical circle and summon the spirits of the dead into that circle. A cautious attitude is wise when you don't know the spirit you're summoning. Yet what about the beloved dead?

When I read in the description of YA fantasy The Bone Witch by Rin Chupeco that twelve year old protagonist Tea refused to accept the death of her brother and ended up resurrecting him, I was intrigued. I also loved the cover. So I requested an ARC from Net Galley, and am now posting this honest review.

Chupeco doesn't spend nearly enough time on necromancy, but she does eventually show us how a deliberate act of necromancy works in her universe. It's a dark approach, but it's based on ancient beliefs about the nature of life and death. I thought it was an excellent concept.

On the other hand, this is what is now called an epic fantasy. This means that it takes place in a universe imagined by the author as opposed to urban fantasy whose setting is in a contemporary urban context, or historical fantasy which deals with a specific time and place in our past. I always hope that an epic fantasy will be less derivative than they usually are, and I'm always disappointed. This is why I read so little epic fantasy.

This book pulls background from a bestselling historical novel, Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden. I wondered if this was originally supposed to be historical fantasy. I also imagine that Chupeco considered the borrowed background a selling point. She thought that the fans of Memoirs of a Geisha would buy the book. I am not one of those fans. I read Geisha: A Life by Mineko Iwasaki. Iwasaki was the geisha that Arthur Golden interviewed when he was writing his book. She considered the novel a misrepresentation. I urge people who want to know the truth about geisha to read Iwasaki's memoir.

From a feminist viewpoint, the idea that women who have magical gifts that could potentially transform their world for the better should spend a great deal of their time entertaining wealthy and powerful men is repulsive. It nevertheless makes sense in the patriarchal context that Chupeco is portraying. This practice provides these pseudo-geisha with important connections, but it also defuses the fear of strong women by making them seem harmless. Since Tea turns out to be far too much of a powerhouse to be confined to the traditional geisha role, this strategy completely fails to render her unintimidating.

My favorite character in this novel is a boy whose nature and talents cause him to rebel against established gender roles. His name is Likh. He has magical abilities. In this society, he would be required to join a special force of male magical adepts who are deployed militarily. Yet Likh is a gentle soul who is unsuited to the military. He is also a graceful dancer. This would qualify him to be a pseudo-geisha, but males aren't permitted to assume this role. I wanted this book to be about Likh's conflict with his society, but he was a minor character who didn't get enough space in the narrative to suit me.

Another important bone that I would like to pick with The Bone Witch is that I feel that it ended up reinforcing stereotypes about necromancers. It seems to me that magic is a tool. Whether it's good or evil depends on the ethical compass of the practitioner. If someone's magical abilities are particularly potent, it is much more incumbent upon that individual to consider the consequences of every magical act.

I also think that a character who isn't introspective or ambivalent about his or her decisions, isn't very interesting. Perhaps the YA genre doesn't really accommodate the maturity that I wanted to see in Tea, but I was a reflective teenager myself. This is probably why I believe that she fell short, and that The Bone Witch became less worthwhile as a result.

*The publisher provided a copy of this book to me via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review*

This book was my first read and first DNF of the year. Which is strange considering that I gave it 3 stars. So, here's the story. The magic system is excellent, the characters are like-able, the world is incredible. Unfortunately at 42% of the way through the book almost nothing had happened. There was so little intrigue that I just couldn't care less about the rest of the book. It was completely unfortunate. And there is SO MUCH POTENTIAL. My review isn't the only one to read this way, so my hope is that there was enough time for the author to do a significant re-write that would correct for these issues. At many points I can imagine the book taking off and really going somewhere - it just didn't need to sit in this slow dull place. Please, Rin Chupeco, do a re-write because that's a book I want to finish.

**This review will be published on my blog at www.myinterdimensionalchaos.blogspot.com on January 9th. I will add a link to the review when it goes live. It has already been posted to Goodreads and Twitter.**

When her brother is killed in battle, young Tea surprises everyone, including herself, when she accidentally raises Fox from the dead. While there are many types of witches in Odalia, Bone Witches -- those who can wield dark magic and raise the dead -- are feared and distrusted. With Fox accompanying her as a familiar, Tea begins training to become an asha. As a dark asha, she faces many challenges, given the open distrust of her kind. The fact that Tea's powers are wild and uncontrollable at times doesn't help make her path easier.

The world described in this tale is intriguing and interesting. Asha are like geisha....trained to entertain, dance, sing, and provide interesting conversation. But asha also wield magic and are trained warriors, fighting evil faceless ones and monstrous daeva that threaten the land.

At times the story got bogged down in too much background information or detailed explanation of asha training, dancing and clothing, slowing the pace of the action. The first half of the book held pace pretty well...action well balanced with detail. But in the second half, there were a few times that background details overwhelmed the plot. For example, an entire chapter was mostly explanation of an asha ceremonial dance, rather than anything actually happening. While I did enjoy the geisha-like atmosphere, at times the background details took too much time away from the main plot. I wanted less talk, more action. *cue Elvis music*

The ending of the story seemed a bit abrupt to me. Chupeco does plan a sequel, so perhaps the second book will pull the unresolved plot points together.

For the most part, I enjoyed this book. I like the idea of magic-wielding geisha and a hierachy of magic users, ranging from more mundane powers to epic warrior magical fighting skills. Tea was an engaging and multi-faceted main character. Her brother Fox was a great supporting character. Some plot twists and turns caught me by surprise....very well-executed!

The Bone Witch will be published by SOURCEBOOKS Fire on March 7th. I definitely recommend this book to those who enjoy YA science fiction and fantasy. Rin Chupeco is also the author of The Girl From the Well series. To find out more about the author and her other books check out her website: http://www.rinchupeco.com/

I really didn't find this story interesting at all. I really tried because the premise is great but I found myself skipping passages because I was bored. Flat characters, predictable plot. I just didn't care.

If you're looking for a quick read and not requiring something with substance this will fill the bill. The story iis okay, but not great. Not a waste of time but there are probably better options. There were some twists and turns that had promise.

Richly painted, immersive, and beautifully written.