The Bone Witch by Rin Chupeco

“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.”

Tea can raise the dead… but resurrection comes at a price. 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 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, Lady Mykaela, who takes Tea and her resurrected 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. She will also have to make a powerful choice.

What an amazing tale… after chapter thirteen. It really took me THAT long to get into this book, despite the great reviews it got. I don’t really know why either. Actually, scratch that, I do know why. The story was very slow at the beginning. There was a lot of plot setup and descriptions that needed to happen in order to understand the “present” versus “past” sequences as well as the complicated world the characters live in. Every chapter began in the present, mostly, in italicized text. You read it and become confused, but then the next sequence of text takes place in the past and clears everything up. It reads exactly as though someone sitting down with you and telling you their life story, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I rather enjoyed that aspect. I feel as though it took the author a bit of time to get a handle on how she wanted this piece to fit together, writing it almost as though it were historical fiction, despite it being simply fantasy fiction. By chapter fourteen, Chupeco had done it though. The story flowed so nicely and the events, characters, and setting were so descriptive that it felt as though you were there with Tea and her brother in this Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden meets The Summoning by Kelley Armstrong.

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