The Bone Witch Review

Spoiler Free

Summary from Goodreads:
"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 that 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, 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 quickly, and in the face of danger, Tea will have to overcome her obstacles…and make a powerful choice."

I've been trying to read all the books on my kindle to make it easier to travel light and I decided to try out The Bone Witch as it sounded very intriguing to me.

First question: Is Tea's name pronounced like the beverage tea or like Tey-uh? I wasn't sure and kept switching between the two as I was reading.

Like halfway through the book they tell you it's pronounced Tey-uh.

I found this book to have a slow plot, but overall a good read. I saw on Goodreads that a lot of people were unable to finish the book because of how slow it was and that's understandable if you don't have much patience for long set ups. However, I ended up really enjoying The Bone Witch.

The world that the book is written in is incredibly intriguing and a diverse one. There are many long descriptions though about the food and dress of characters, as well as the daily occurrences in the city. You really enjoy this culture rich world though where people literally wear their hearts around their necks and magic is a daily part of their lives. The heartsglass concept, where their heart is a sort of magic filled necklace, was really interesting and the importance/significance of giving it away was cool and well done.

I would absolutely love to be an asha. They're some kick-butt women who are powerful, beautiful, and talented in a wide variety of skills. You'll look up to them and start yearning to be like them. The powers are so interesting and how much training they have to go through is amazing!

This book also features some challenging established gender roles and traditions, which is great to see. Hopefully it's developed more in the next book, because I would love to see a female Deathseeker! (They're the highly trained warriors who at this point have to be men).

Again I have to say the plot is very slow. It's a lot of training and Tea learning about the asha world. It's a little excessive on the descriptions and is a lot of background information. I did really enjoy young Tea, but I think the older her that we see is more interesting and action filled.

I think the next book will be better on having more plot and this was a lot of important background to know, but it's difficult when it's 90% of the book. It really just felt like a build up book and I think a lot of people will give up before then. The writing can also be a little abrupt at times where it doesn't flow too well, but the creativity of the world and its magic will help distract you from that so you don't notice it as much.

Overall, this book was good. The series has a lot of potential and by the end I really enjoyed learning about how much power Tea could have and what she'll do with it. It's a great set up for the next book, but you just have to power through all the extensive details given. In the middle I wasn't sure I'd want to read the sequel, but by the end I really wanted to know what would happen next.

The Bone Witch comes out March 7!