BOOK REVIEW: The Bone Witch by Rin Chupeco

Hello everyone. Welcome back to Bibliophilia Book Reviews. Today I will review The Bone Witch by Rin Chupeco, the first book of The Bone Witch trilogy. I first saw this book at Barnes and Noble and bought it primarily for its gorgeous cover. This review has spoilers. For more information about this author and her books, visit her website here.

“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, is that the dead hide truths as well as the living.”

The Bone Witch by Rin Chupeco is a fantasy young adult novel about a girl, Tea, who discovers that she is a necromancer—or bone witch—when she raises her brother Fox from the dead. Consequently, she is taken from her home in Knightscross to train as an asha—or magic wielder—at the Valerian (school for ashas) in Kion, where she is inevitably immersed in the politics of the kingdoms and immediately at odds with the elders of the asha association. The book consists of two intertwined stories—one in the present, where a bard relates his experiences with the young bone witch as she is telling him her story, and another in the past where Tea is telling her story to the bard in the form of flashbacks.

The story begins when a bard arrives to the beach where the exiled bone witch lives surrounded by the bones and skulls of monstrous creatures, bones that she uses to resurrect the daeva (seven of them); she raises each one of these creatures from the dead and orders them to die again in an attempt to tame them. Each chapter contains a passage in italics where we are told the story in the now, which is narrated by the bard, and a flashback where we are told the story in the past, whose narrator is Tea. Neither storyline converges by the end of the first book. The story ends however where it began, with the main character exactly in the same place (in the past) she was in when the story started (in the present). In other words, at the beach in the Sea of Skulls. Thus the story structure is a circle, so technically they do converge but only at the end of the entire trilogy.

Structure

This book’s structure is probably the main reason a lot of readers have had trouble getting into it, and the reason why some of them end up not liking it at all. I did not have this problem, but I also understand that this kind of structure in a book is hard to pull off. This is because it gives the impression that a lot of things are happening at once, and it is hard to keep track of them. For example, in the first chapter, we see how the bard arrives at the beach, meets Tea, and convinces her to tell him her story. Then, she starts telling him her story in the form of flashbacks. And in the first flashback she tells him (and us) how she raised her brother Fox from the dead. The story, thus, has two beginnings: one in the present and one in the past.

And in every chapter, both the story in the present and the one in the past continue; one in italics and the other in flashbacks, respectively. However, the story in the past is a lot faster than the story in the present. Here, Tea raises the daeva back from the dead, trying to tame them, but every time she continues her story in the past, she stops the flow of what is happening in the now, and we get the sense that nothing is happening in the current storyline because we have no idea why Tea is raising these monsters from the dead in the first place. The reader, however, needs to know what happened in the past for the story in the present to progress. And it isn’t until the very end of the first book that we learn why Tea is resurrecting these creatures.

This structure, however, can be very taxing for the reader and unless he is invested in the story thus far, he is probably going to stop reading. It is also a good recipe for giving the impression that the story drags along—in between all the flashbacks—and it usually both confuses the reader and may even bore him because it seems like the story in the present is not going anywhere. The reader has to stick with the narrator for a very long time (almost to the end of the first book) to finally understand where the story in the present is going, and unfortunately not many readers are willing to make that effort.

“You can be the most powerful witch in the land, but you will always have a weakness, and that will always make you believe you have no power when someone exploits it. There is no greater strength than the ability to understand and accept your own flaws.”

The Magic System

This is perhaps one of the most interesting things about the world portrayed in The Bone Witch. The magic in this world originates from the story of Blade that Soars and Dancing Wind, who kept her husband’s heart—the source of his magic and power—in the diamond around her neck, set inside a heartsglass case. Her bother-in-law, Hollow Knife, jealous of his brother’s power, looks for Blade that Soars’ heart throughout the length and breadth of the land and never finds it, until Blade that Soars tells him where it is. Convincing Little Tears, Dancing Wind’s sister, to steal Blade that Soars’ heart, Hollow Knife uses it then to create the daeva and to wrest control of the world from his brother, whom he kills by shredding his heart into thousands of pieces so that he can gain his brother’s power by creating a new heartsglass with some of its parts, thus becoming the False Prince. His followers, the Faceless ones, all three of them mentioned throughout the book, now seek to wrest control of the world once again. Dancing Wind, however, manages to make Blade that Soars’ heart whole again—though smaller this time because of the pieces that Hollow Knife’s new heartsglass required—and resurrects her beloved. Blade that Soars then banishes Hollow Knife to the underworld while Dancing Wind punishes Little Tears by reducing her ability to wield magic and by cursing her into becoming the first Dark asha.

The heartsglass of those who can wield magic and summon runes is silver. Any girl who has a silver heartsglass trains to become an asha—like Tea—while any boy with a silver heartsglass can either train to become a Deathseeker or a Heartforger, and since there is only one heartforger and one heartforger’s apprentice, all other boys become deathseekers, an elite force of warriors. The Faceless and those who follow the False Prince have a black heartsglass, a symbol of rot in your soul, while those who only have a mild command of magic, like forest witches and water witches—e.g., Tea’s sisters— have a purple heartsglass.

There are three types of asha—those who wield no magic but who excel at entertaining patrons, like Lady Shadi, those who wield elemental magic, such as Polaire and Zoya, and those who wield Dark magic, also known as bone witches or Dark asha. There are only two Dark asha left in the eight kingdoms, Mykaela and Tea, and every time that a bone witch draws in the Dark she is inevitably drawing dark rot into her soul. Hence, if she draws too much of it, she will inevitably turn her silver heartsglass black. Tea’s control and use of Dark magic is much more powerful than Mykaela’s though, and because of this, she is considered dangerous by the asha association seeking to control her. Tea’s rebellious nature and innate use of Dark magic make her go against tradition, like when she proposes to the elders that Likh, a boy with a silver heartsglass, become an asha instead of a deathseeker, or when she refuses to kill the azi, the most powerful of the seven daeva, and makes it her familiar to prevent Mykaela from having to face it in battle; after all, Mykaela is already too weak from her previous encounter with a daeva and facing the most powerful one of them might just kill her. Mykaela, however, is especially vulnerable because she gave her heart to the man she loved when she was young and never got it back after he died, making her power as a Dark asha a lot weaker than it ought to be, a consequence of Dancing Wind’s curse on Little Tears and all other Dark asha after her. Tea knows that Mykaela is dying even though her mentor refuses to tell her about it. But Tea will do anything to protect her from anything and anyone that seeks to use her, and kill her in the process, including the elders of the asha association.

“You wanted to ask me about my loves and my romances? Prince Kance started out as a simple infatuation. Back then, I had no inkling how much of my life he would change. But when you are younger, and know no better, an infatuation can lead all the world to burn.”

Characters

The main character of this book and trilogy, as I said before, is Tea and I have already talked about her in the previous section of this review. Thus, I will mention all other characters relevant to her story in this section. First off, there’s Fox, her dead bother, whom she resurrected at the beginning of the book and is now her familiar. Tea’s relationship with her brother is one of friendship and companionship. They support and comfort each other as Tea goes through the hardships of her training in a strange city while Fox learns how to coexist with the living as her familiar, but most importantly as her protector. They take care of each other in a city that ostracizes them both, one for being a bone witch, the other for being dead and her familiar. I found this type of relationship, Tea’s most important one in the first half of the book, a very nice relationship between the siblings and I am eager to see how Fox’s storyline progresses and watch him grow into his own.

Secondly, there’s Mykaela. Mykaela is the only other bone witch alive in the eight kingdoms when Tea begins her apprenticeship as a Dark asha in Kion; she is Tea’s mentor, and later on, her sister. I liked Mykaela. She is a powerful bone witch, her lack of a heartsglass notwithstanding. Having given her heart away to the man she loved when she was young, as a Dark asha, Mykaela’s power was inevitably affected by her decision to do so and now, years later, is suffering the consequences of it. Every time she draws in the dark to resurrect and kill daeva she is slowly killing herself. Every time she gets weaker and weaker, and, desperate, Tea and her other sisters seek to protect her and make her stronger. The only way for Mykaela to recover her strength, however, is for her to find and recover her heart. But she has not been able to do that. Wherever her beloved kept it, he is not telling anyone for despite having brought him back from the dead several times to ask him about Mykaela’s heart’s whereabouts, he is not saying anything. And you cannot force the dead to talk if they do not want to. I liked Mykaela’s backstory and I am sure that it will have an important role to play in the next two books.

Polaire, Althy, Zoya (and Mykaela) are Tea’s asha sisters, the ones that advocate for her in front of the asha association when Tea is presented to them for her asha test. They are also her mentors, each one of them teaching her different aspects of being an asha. Althy, for example, teaches Tea how to hone her ability to read people’s heartsglass while Polaire teaches her how to manipulate runes and play at politics. Zoya, on the other hand, doesn’t like Tea and is forced to become her sister, but as the book progresses their relationship changes and Zoya learns to respect her while Tea, for her part, learns how to follow her own instincts from Zoya.

Kance, the prince and heir to the Odalian kingdom, Kalen, a Deathseeker and his protector, and Khalad, Kance’s older brother and the Heartforger’s apprentice, are the three men in Tea’s life and story that will shape her into the powerful asha she is at the beginning of the story. In this first book we are introduced to Khalad when Tea sneaks out of the Valerian to meet the Heartforger and we learn that memories are essential for the forging of heartsglass; Dark ashas are special however in that they do not forget the memories that the Heartforger takes from them, as do other people, so Tea offers to give him memories in exchange for information and Khalad, as the Heartforger’s apprentice, is the one that extracts Tea’s memories from her. This is the extent of Khalad’s doings in this book but given that the second book in the series is called The Heartforger I’m assuming that Khalad’s role in the events in the second and third books will be much more significant.

The Love Triangle

Kance and Kalen are the two loves of Tea’s life. Yes, Tea is infatuated with the prince ever since she first meets him at the beginning of the book, but the romantic feelings she has for him aren’t mutual. Kance never expresses any romantic interest for Tea, despite the fact that he serves as her patron. On the other hand, Kalen expresses a candid dislike for Tea since the first time he meets her because he considers her infatuation with the prince a danger to him. And as his protector, he doesn’t look kindly on anything that will jeopardize the prince’s life; most especially a Dark asha. I have read several people say in their own reviews about this book that the relationship between these three characters is that of a love triangle, but it is not. Or at least, I’m inclined to say that it doesn’t entirely qualify as one because Kance never actually displays any romantic feelings toward Tea. Yes, Tea is infatuated with Kance throughout the first book and probably through a good chunk of the second book but something between them changes. Just as it changes between Tea and Kalen, from what we saw at the end of the first book when she resurrects him; Tea and Kalen’s relationship is more within the enemies to lovers storytelling trope. And given that Kalen is one of my favorite characters in the entire trilogy, I’m looking forward to seeing how his relationship with Tea changes from hate to love. Despite Tea’s feelings for Kance, I never really thought that he was in any sort of romantic equation or love triangle with Tea and Kalen while I read this book.

Villain

The villains in this story are the False Prince and his followers the Faceless Ones. We don’t see much of them throughout the first book, but Tea mentions them several times throughout her story as she relates it to the Bard, and eventually we do meet one of them at the end of The Bone Witch: Aenah. What I found interesting was that she was there the whole time, but she was indeed faceless and thus inconspicuous. And I am curious to see how the other two are going to be introduced into the story later on and how they’re planning on getting what they want. Also, I think that someone else is pulling the strings behind all three Faceless Ones and I have yet to figure out who.

Setting

The story of The Bone Witch and subsequent books is set in the world of the Eight Kingdoms, a map of which is given at the beginning of the book and a list of which is added to the back matter outlining the most important information about each one. And though this information is given as detailed as possible, there were times when I couldn’t determine specifically which kingdom was which. I had to stop reading altogether to find the kingdom I was looking for in the map and to determine who was its ruler and which its capital. And this interrupted my reading several times, so I stopped doing it the further along I got into the book. What I did like about this world, though, was its Asian influence. Ashas in this world are sometimes likened to geishas, and I did get that vibe, but they are also not geishas at all. Overall, I enjoyed this book a lot and would recommend it to anyone willing to read it. However, I would caution them that the book has a circular structure and that sometimes it can make for some confusion. However, if that person is still willing to give it try, I would suggest it as a fast and entertaining read. I gave this book a I Really Liked It rating, and I will definitely continue on with the series.