Tea is different from the other witches in her family. Her gift for necromancy makes her a bone witch, who are feared and ostracized in the kingdom. For theirs is a powerful, elemental magic that can reach beyond the boundaries of the living—and of the human.
Great power comes at a price, forcing Tea to leave her homeland to train under the guidance of an older, wiser bone witch. There, Tea puts all of her energy into becoming an asha, learning to control her elemental magic and those beasts who will submit by no other force. And Tea must be strong—stronger than she even believes possible. Because war is brewing in the eight kingdoms, war that will threaten the sovereignty of her homeland…and threaten the very survival of those she loves.
“Then perhaps we should carve a world one day where the strength lies in who you are, rather than in what they expect you to be.”
This is a world where the idea of being a witch is not so far-fetched or shunned upon as most would think. In fact, there are so many witches in this world that there are many different kinds, each one in charge of a specific element over another. And of course, there are always going to be some witches that are seen as "less than", even among them as a species. In this case, it is the necromancers, the bone witches, that are deemed as freaks and the witches that nobody wants to really get involved with.
That's the kind of witch that Tea ends up becoming, despite her sisters having control of the more calmer elements. It's not like she meant to raise her dear brother Fox from the dead, but she did it anyway, and that was the moment that changed everything.
Tea was set on a path to adventure, one where she had to learn very quickly about what it meant to be a bone witch, how to control her powers, and why so many people grew to fear those that ended up controlling the dead. From the young age of fourteen years old, Tea is whisked away from the comfort of her hometown, and with the help of another bone witch, an Asha named Lady Mykaela, she travels far to a land where she becomes one of the most powerful Asha alive, and all before she hits her eighteenth birthday.
This book is told in an interesting format, where not only do we get to hear Tea's side of the story when she first found out what she was, but we also get a sneak peek into what happened after all that, when she is no longer in a safe place with Lady Mykaela, and where she is one of the most feared women in the world. With power, the kind of power that Tea has, is bound to come those that fear those that have such power, and that's what happened to Tea. Did she deserve it? Was she really that scary that the time jump shows her in a place of exile from those she grew to love and care about? We won't know until the next book comes out, so I'm hoping that happens sometime soon.
It was very difficult for me to take the time to write down my thoughts for this book for the longest time. It even took me a while to read this book because there were moments where I wasn't really engaged. It was interesting, but there was something about it that made it such a weird book to get through. I loved Tea, don't get me wrong. I loved her story, I found her to be such a powerful girl at such a young age and she really grew into herself more than I could ever dream of, but I feel like the disconnect between when she was first learning how to be a bone witch and the bard's time with her in the present left a lot of holes to be filled in. There were times where the bard would touch upon a subject, and then the chapter following it would semi answer the question, but there is still so much of Tea's story to be told, and I can't wait to find out more of what exactly happened between the events of the past and the current timeline as it stands today.
Rated: 4/5 ★
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