The Bone Witch (Bone Witch, 1); Rin Chupeco

In a lot of ways, “The Bone Witch” reminded me of traditional geisha or geji culture, but with magic. Tea lives in a world where witches do more than just practice their rune-based magic—they are also entertainers and performers with elaborate clothing that signifies their personality and accomplishments. The traditional witch’s presence is highly sought after in tea houses and parties and expected to entertain their guests all for a fee. That’s on top of their elemental magic which they use to heal or serve as body guards. Except bone witches, who are a type of necromancer and who slowly drain themselves to nothing to put down terrible monsters that rise from the dead every so often. They are revered and feared and generally not liked because of their relationship to the Dark, and our main character Tea just happens to be one of the most powerful in the nation. Except you are mostly told that, and rarely see it until the very end.

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“The Bone Witch” is beautifully written and split into two parts, where, at the conclusion of the numbered chapters, we get a little interlude from the bard character. We get to see Tea’s story unfold in two parts, one that she tells recounting her training starting at the age of twelve through fifteen of how she was discovered, followed by the Bard, detailing his brief encounters with Tea at age eighteen when she’s been exiled. It’s a really interesting way to tell a story, my problem with that was that, where the book ends, is still very far away from the Tea we see in the Bard chapters. Which is where we are often told of Tea’s necromancy prowess, and yet we rarely see it in action, and we never see what happens that pushes Tea to exile. Which, ultimately, made a lot of this first book in the Bone Witch trilogy feel like a prologue. Because not much actually happens in those three years of time where Tea is telling her story.

Most of the book is spent describing Tea’s day-to-day chores with a lot, and I mean a lot, of time spent talking about the elaborate fashion the witch’s wear. Most of Tea’s training isn’t even in her own magic, but is spent on history lessons, music, singing, dancing, and fighting so she can entertain and protect her guests and not much time is ever spent on her doing the thing she is supposed to be uncommonly powerful at. A mystery is so lightly teased throughout the course of these plethora of descriptions that it ALMOST felt useless, except that it’s so obvious you can’t ignore it, either. There’s also a romance aspect of sorts? It was very bland to be honest, as the only characters that felt distinct at all were Zoya and Polaire (who I loved. More Polaire all day every day, please and thank you).

The best parts of the book came at close to the 70% mark and later when Tea actually does things. Truthfully, everything exciting happens at the very end, and it’s almost too much. Don’t get me wrong, it was great! I loved the action and seeing Tea as she learns what the extent of her power is and finally comes face to face with this mysterious Faceless (so mysterious I’m still struggling to understand what they are and why they’re fighting?) but it should have been spread out to make the book more exciting. For the twist, and everything Tea does at the end, to really feel impactful, those teases earlier on needed to be fully explored. Plus, it would have been nice to get closer to the exile Tea we know exists from the very start by the end of the first book, which is why I’m giving this 3 stars. It’s totally a personal thing, but I don’t enjoy obvious sequel baiting throughout the entirety of a book and it leaves me questioning if I will return to this series. I enjoyed the authors writing, and this fantasy felt oddly cozy since it was predominately just a day-to-day account of mild training exercises and clothing, but it could be that others of this authors work is more suited to my tastes than this particular YA fantasy.