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  • The Bone Witch: The Bone Witch, Book 1
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Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars
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The Bone Witch: The Bone Witch, Book 1

The Bone Witch: The Bone Witch, Book 1

byRin Chupeco
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Top positive review

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Stephanie @ TeacherofYA
5.0 out of 5 starsThe Bone Witch is Magic and Fantasy Memoir
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 17, 2017
Title: The Bone Witch (The Bone Witch #1)
Author: Rin Chupeco
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire, 2017 (March 7)
Genre: YA Fantasy

**I received a copy of this book free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review**

My Review:

I have had this book on my TBR for a looooooong time. I was an "Asha Apprentice" for the book and entered all sorts of giveaways for the book and Asha swag. I have a poster someone gave me that is ripped but I don't care - the art is gorgeous. This cover is probably one of my all-time favorite covers. Ever. It. Is. Stunning.

So why did it take me so long to read it?

It received some lackluster reviews, and that worried me. I didn't want this book that I loved for its outside beauty to be one I hated. But what I think happened is a typical case of "overhype" - the book is pushed so hard that it can't possibly live up to expectation. So I waited. I bided my time. And now that the sequel, The Heart Forger, is coming out soon, I felt it was time to read it for me.

I'm glad I waited.

Because I loved it.

Not only is the writing spot-on, but it borrows the Geisha structure from Memoirs of a Geisha for the Asha structure in the book. The amazing quotes are plentiful.

It is an excellent read. Lots more to be learned from the story world, but that's probably why there is another book coming out. I'm glad I finally got a chance to read this without the hype to influence me one way or the other.

The book starts with one of the strongest quotes I've read:

“Let me be clear: I never intended to raise my brother from his grave, though he may claim otherwise.”

If that line doesn't just suck you into the story, the writing will. Chupeco knows how to write poetic lines.

“It was true that I was born at the height of an eclipse, when the sky closed its only moon eye to wink back at the world, like my arrival was a private joke between old friends. Or perhaps the moon read my fate in the stars and hid, unwilling to bear witness to my birth.”

The story starts similar to Memoirs of a Geisha - if you haven't read it, I'll explain. In Memoirs, a man interviews an old Geisha about her life. In Bone Witch, a man hears of the woman's notorious past and interviews her about her life. We learn about Tea, a Dark asha, from her own story, and we flash back from her childhood and training to her present-day exile. We know she has obviously either done something wrong or has been framed for it because she lives in exile on the beach.

We read that Tea raises her brother from the dead, an act that is accidental but also enlightening: this is what marks her as a dark asha. Like Memoirs, we read about her acceptance into an asha-ka, a unit similar to a Geisha house. There is a hierarchy and they must learn how to entertain (just like Geisha) for wealthy patrons. Essentially asha seem to be magical Geisha.

Sometimes the similarities were a little too on the nose. The head of the house is a lot like the head of the Geisha house in Memoirs...she is a disgusting old lady who only cares for profits and smokes incessantly. Her character is torn directly from Golden's book. Also, Tea is tricked into ruining another apprentice's hua, an outfit that sounds a lot like the gowns and wraps that Geisha wear.

Despite the similarities, be it intentional or not, the book is a delightful read. As we flash back and forth from Tea's present circumstance as an exiled asha to her novice days, we gain an appreciation for the plucky young girl with too much power. And we have Rin's writing to bring us along the way.

I wanted to know more about asha and I was left hanging at the end, but I will say that I never regretted a single moment. And I'm dying to know where Rin will take us next.

Is it Classroom-Appropriate?

I think this would be a great book if a class is learning about Geisha or Japanese history - it would be fascinating for the students to compare what they know of the Geisha customs and try to match up the similarities. Since Memoirs of a Geisha is such a prevalent read in schools, it might be a nice way to pair the curriculum or to find something newer to replace Golden's book.

The terminology and language are influenced by Indian and Middle East practices/words as well. It's almost as if Chupeco put the multiple cultures in a blender and mixed them up. There are some definite pluses to using this book in the classroom.

However, as Golden's Memoirs is more historical fiction and Chupeco's Bone Witch is fantasy, there would need to be emphasis on the difference. Otherwise, I find The Bone Witch to be a pleasant addition to a school's reading choices.

I give The Bone Witch ★★★★☆ for class use.

Age Range

I didn't find anything questionable in my reading. It has a Lexile of 900L and is recommended for ages 14 - 17. I agree with the assessment and suggest it be offered as reading material for readers in 8th grade and above.

I'm happy to find this one listed on Lexile. It can be frustrating when trying to pair a book with a reading level and not finding one. The site says they are currently trying to update their selections and that some previous scores may change. Publishers are including Lexile scores on their websites and with supplemental materials. This will help match the reader to the book with greater ease.

End Result:

I give The Bone Witch ★★★★★. Though it appears that it shadows some of Golden's book, many new books are retellings of classic stories and authors are putting their own spin on the material. I don't know for sure, but someone on Goodreads told me the book was inspired by Memoirs, so it makes sense for there to be some similarities.

I am looking forward to the next installment to see what happens next: if you have personally read The Bone Witch, then you yourself know that it ends on one hell of a cliffhanger. I plan on immediately requesting The Heart Forger now that I know that hype is the killer of most books I tend to love: I enjoyed Flame in the Mist and Frostblood even though many people told me that they didn't live up to their "hype." Maybe we all need to wait until hype dies down for us to read a book - I know my feelings are my own now that I waited to read it.

What do you guys think? Do you find that hype impacts your reading experience? Especially with overly hyped books? I'm curious! And did you like The Bone Witch? Did I convince you to give this one a chance?
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13 people found this helpful

Top critical review

All critical reviews›
Ryan & Kaycee Bowick
3.0 out of 5 starsNecromancy & Magic! Great Read (with a little too much detail for my personal liking)
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 17, 2018
"There is no greater strength than the ability to understand and accept your own flaws."

If you are reading this review, then chances are that you have some sort of interest in finding out what this book is about and if it is a type of book you would like. Since this is a fantasy novel, there is so much to the story line and setting that could be discussed, but for the purpose of this review, I am going to try to avoid using their language/terminology where possible and use 'common colloquial terms' so that this is not a super long-winded review!

The Bone Witch follows Tea (pronounced Tay-uh.. as I learned after half of the novel had been read), a young girl who has lost her brother, Fox, to a daeva (basically a demonic monster-like creature) while serving in their form of a military. When she attends his funeral, she is distraught and overcome with emotion, resulting in the unintentional resurrection of brother. This was the moment that you (as well as the characters) learn that Tea is a Bone Witch.

"I understand now why people fear bone witches. Theirs is not the magic found in storybooks, slaying onyx-eyed dragons and rescuing grateful maidens from ivory towers... ...This is death magic, complicated and exclusive and implacable, and from the start, I wielded it with ease."

The individuals in this world/society all wear a necklace that is called heartsglass and when they turn 'of age' they attend a ceremony where their heartsglass will fill with a certain color. The different colors represent different occupations/types of magic. The heartsglass also changes color at times, functioning much like a mood ring in the way that it exposes how people are feeling. There is a lot to these items and the book goes into a lot more detail.

Tea travels with her mentor Mykaela to train as an asha (a very geisha-like title for women with magical powers) at the Willows for the House Valerian. Here she is introduced to many other asha and is quickly exposed to the darkness that can accompany her unique type of magic. She learns more about the daeva and her responsibilities as a bone witch (which include resurrecting and killing these horrific beasts).

Things that I loved:
★ Holy mother of beautiful covers. This is the most gorgeous book I own. The purples and blues with the golden foil delicately looping around the outskirts of the edging.... it doesn't get any better than this!
★ The different classifications of magic and their identification system for those who possess magic.
★ The story switches between past (the story of how Tea learned she was a bone witch and her training as one) and present (an unknown girl coming into contact with Tea, who has self-exiled herself for reasons unknown). This was an interesting switch of perspectives and it leaves this unknown feeling of 'what happened to result in this' that keeps you guessing
★ Touches on some great gender-role issues that I hope will continue to be exposed in the second installment
★ The ending. The ending redeemed so much of this book for me (in regards to things I did not like). It left me satisfied and left just enough loose ends to make me super excited to start the next installment (granted, I had the second installment already in hand... so someone else might would feel frustrated that they had to wait so long to tie up loose ends!)
★ Holy mother of beautiful covers. This is the most gorgeous book I own. The purples and blues with the golden foil delicately looping around the outskirts of the edging.... it doesn't get any better than this!

Things that I wasn't crazy about:
★ World-building overload too quickly, especially for YA. I felt that the abundance of terminology and introduction of new locations and characters happened so rapidly that I found myself very confused at times. If you find yourself in a similar situation--- USE THE REFERENCE SECTION IN THE BACK OF THE BOOK (who knew!?.. you're welcome!)
★ Holy hell, Batman.. the descriptions in this novel were exhausting. The detail that is went into for each and every girl's dress, hairstyle, hair pins, etc was totally unnecessary in my opinion. Why didn't someone (editor) tell Chupeco to chill out with the flowery prose? This would have EASILY been a five-star read for me without that.
★ I was also frequently confused over the whole concept of the heartsglass... but maybe that was just me.

Overall.. It really is a fantastic read if you like fantasy. If you easily give up on books with overly-descriptive (and unnecessary) writing.. this probably won't be a good fit for you. However, if you can look past that (or skim past that, let's be real) then this is absolutely a book worth picking up. I have already started reading the second installment and, it could be too soon to judge, but I feel that the second novel is going to be even better!!
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8 people found this helpful

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From the United States

Contisha Salinas
1.0 out of 5 stars Slow
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 3, 2022
Verified Purchase
There were so many times I wanted to give up on this book. The unnecessary slowness of the details and drab action. Young, magical, "special", young person trope used but still without fanfare. Very monotonous.
One person found this helpful
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Summertime
1.0 out of 5 stars Stupid plot
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 21, 2022
Verified Purchase
Stupid plot
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Lori L
1.0 out of 5 stars Don't waste your money
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 10, 2017
Verified Purchase
This book has so much detail about irrelevant things that the boredom will kill you. Towns,style of homes,jewelry, and clothing. The girl in the story is taken from her village to the bone witch's home to be trained although, at 25% into the book,her mentor has left her behind,to cook,clean and bath the mother of the home. Treating her worse then the hired help. I gave up. Sooooo dry. From a person that reads approximately 15 books a month..... very disapointed
15 people found this helpful
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P.A.
1.0 out of 5 stars It just sucks.
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 9, 2017
Verified Purchase
This is the first of 30+ books I've read in the past 1 1/2 years that I decided not to finish. It just sucks.
2 people found this helpful
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Suzann Doran
1.0 out of 5 stars Disappointed
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 24, 2020
Verified Purchase
Not a great plot
One person found this helpful
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Amazon Customer
1.0 out of 5 stars Don't do it
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 28, 2017
Verified Purchase
It was a struggle to get through this book. Redundant, poor character development and BORING. No climax. Think monotone. Dying
7 people found this helpful
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M. Llovet
1.0 out of 5 stars Just take off the silly necklace and go free, kids.
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 16, 2022
So many plot holes in this book. The biggest: everyone wears a necklace called a heartsglass that shows your emotions and abilities. This is in no way mandatory, just the "done thing." Your heartsglass can be stolen and hidden, or given away, and it can be replaced. It can even be faked, as we learn. Despite this, a young man who will be conscripted into the army on the basis of his heartsglass KEEPS WEARING IT. Scratch that, he voluntarily wears one EARLY because he works for the Geishas - oops I mean ashas. Apparently it's this big coming of age thing when you get your real heartsglass but there was never any indication that it's REQUIRED you show up for the ceremony or that you wear the thing after. Just keep wearing your fake one and slip away somewhere safer, kid.

Apparently he wants to be an asha, though, but that is just NOT DONE because only women can be ashas, all the men with magic have to join the military. This, too, is lame. The ashas are clearly modeled on Geishas, in that they are hired by customers to entertain in teahouses, but there are NO sexual favors being traded. It's just women with magic entertaining rich men, no sex involved.

Yeah....right...sure. That's realistic. These powerful women are going to sit there and look pretty and let dudes they could kill with their little finger mansplain to them and patronize them. But there's nothing dirty going on. It's all clean and pure. So why couldn't a guy be an asha then, if he wants to entertain these dudes in a strictly platonic, artistic manner?

Because REASONS, that's why. We couldn't get rid of the gender divisions and just let the fighters be fighters and the lovers be lovers. Tea has to be a geisha even though she's obviously a fighter. She has to run away to fight. Meanwhile her little friend knows he will die fast in the military, can dance better than anyone else, but the ashas won't take him.

MAKE IT MAKE SENSE. You can't.

It could have been good. I liked the idea of it at first. But it's just so badly thought-out.
2 people found this helpful
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Cdiamond01
1.0 out of 5 stars Read the Reviews
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 6, 2022
Audiobook: I suffered through 2/3 of this book just waiting for something to happen. I’ve never quit a book or submitted a harsh review until this one. Many of the alternate voices were so irritating. None of the characters or the story ever developed.
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Kaley Connell
1.0 out of 5 stars If you've read or watched Memoirs of a Geisha, you already know half of this book.
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 16, 2017
Oh, how I wanted to like this book. It had been on my wish list for months. Trusty Amazon recommended it, the summary on the dusk jacket sounded so interesting, the quote on the back was so good and held so much foreshadowing, not to mention the cover is beautiful! If only you hadn’t lied in that summary, if only you hadn’t dragged the story out with useless descriptions. If only you hadn’t ripped off another book to make half of yours.

This story strayed so far from what the dusk jacket lead me to believe that I feel like I’ve been lied to. When Tea is introduced to Mykaela, an elder Bone Witch (also known as a Dark Asha), you think she’s found her guide to understand this magic inside her. Mykaela was supposed to be Tea’s teacher. The book jacket says so, Mykaela says so. So explain to me why Mykaela was gone for half the book and bedridden for the other half? Explain to me why Tea didn’t learn anything from her ‘teacher’ until the book was almost over, and even then it was basically like being given a video to watch in class instead of the teacher actually going over the content themselves?

Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden came out in 1999 and had an amazing movie adaption in 2005-6. This book, and its movie, are some of my all-time favorites. I’m not going to spend time gushing about how I’ve read the book and watched the movie enough times to have both memorized, but believe me when I say that they are worth reading and watching. So. Worth. Every. Minute. And believe me when I tell you that The Bone Witch uses almost everything that happens to Chiyo in the first half of Memoirs of a Geisha as content for what happens to Tea.

But it goes beyond using content from another work and putting it in your own. The entire story of The Bone Witch is based on 1920’s Japan, which is a far cry from the high fantasy setting it tries to tell you it is. Tea goes to the country of Nihon–sorry, Kion– to the capitol city of Tokyo–sorry, Ankyo– to lean how to become a geisha–sorry, asha. Here, Tea learns how to sing, how to dance, how to arrange flowers, how to entertain guests, how to play instruments, how to wear fancy outfits, and so much other stuff that geisha learned when they were in training. She gets to wear fancy kimonos–sorry, hua– and lives in an okiya–sorry, asha-ka– with her ‘mother’ as a slave until she has proven herself worthy to become a beautiful geisha–asha. Oh, and sometimes she trains in combat, which we don’t see a lot of, and she’s apparently better than anyone else her age. I’m assuming it’s because she’s a special snowflake.

The book is 407 pages long and goes back and forth between Tea’s origin story and some distant future Tea after some craziness happens that we don’t know about. But if you removed every passage that describes every single kimono–hua– that Tea sees, every single hair comb or pin tucked inside everyone’s luxurious locks, you could take away a good chunk of the book and not loose out on a single thing.

The story’s flow is also all sorts out of wack. You’ll be reading dialogue between Tea and person A, when suddenly person B starts speaking, and you only find out in the paragraph after that dialogue that the conversation with person A happened hours or days ago. The transitions for much of the book are either bad, or don't exist at all.

Another thing that really, really confused me was Tea’s physical description. Once, very briefly in the beginning of the story, it’s mentioned that Tea has tan or dark skin. This is never brought up again until near the end of the book when a bunch of random people are arguing over who’s skin is darker, which was super awkward to read. This made me assume that Tea is probably a person of color, not just a Caucasian with a tan. However, as you can see in the picture, the girl on the cover is whiter than the milk I pour in my cereal bowl. Even after finishing the book, I’m not sure what Tea is supposed to look like, and I’m honestly confused as to why these important details are so brushed over when we have five times as many on pointless things, like how many flowers are stitched on someone’s dress.

The final thing I’m going to complain about is the flip-flopping between Future Tea and Past Tea. Future Tea’s short passages were probably the most interesting part of the book, and even they were dull most of the time, except for the fact we know that Tea becomes an outcast and is planning to burn down the world for some strange reason. Multiple times throughout Future Tea’s sections, she talks about how ‘they’ killed the person she loves. You find this out very early on in the story, so I don’t consider it a spoiler, though most of Future Tea’s sections are spoiler heavy. There are two boys who play as love interests for Tea: one is your typical prince-in-shinning-armor character, and just so happens to actually be a prince; the other is the prince’s bodyguard and is your typical bad-boy-I-have-a-rough-exterior-for-complicated-backstory-reasons-and-will-hate-you-for-half-the-book character. Neither of them get a lot of page space. We don’t see her relationship actually growing with either boy. In fact, by the end of Past Tea’s narrative, she’s not overly close to either boy enough to say that they’re ‘dating’, though I guess you could technically say she gets the promise of a future dinner with one. There are more words used to describe people’s outfits than there are to progress her relationships with these boys. However, by the end of Future Tea’s narrative, we know which one she’ll end up with in the sequel.

I’m usually not in to love triangles. Very few authors do a good job, but when it’s done well, I love to pick my favorite and root for him or her. Friends and family will frequently be forced to listen to my explanation as to why Protagonist needs to get with Love Interest X because of reasons 1-30. Even when my favorite doesn’t win, I love reading about the growing relationships and watching them evolve, seeing rather than being told who the main character falls in love with. Rin Chupeco takes the fun and mystery out of it and instead hands the answer to you on a plastic tray like she’s giving you the saddest excuse of a burger the world has ever seen. Where is the mystery, the character development, the secret or chance meetings, the emotions, the fun? The answer: not in this book.

TL;DR, The Bone Witch rips off Memoirs of a Geisha, and I will not be buying the squeal.
23 people found this helpful
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SkyLynn Vernon
1.0 out of 5 stars 65.99 for a hardback is absolutely ridiculous
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 4, 2022
65.99 for a hardback is absolutely ridiculous
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