If your heartsglass turns silver, it means you have a capacity for magic you can also give it away to a loved one in an act of romance or safety, but at the risk of that other person having control over you if you are especially magically talented, you can read other people’s heartsglasses since they will change color depending on their true emotions (and you can tell if they’re lying to you).

There’s a lot to unpack here, especially through Likh, a trans girl who wishes to become an asha-and who is also one of my faves in this book.Īnd second, there’s a thing called a heartsglass that people wear around their neck, which is tied to one’s identity in complex ways. If you’re a boy, you’re conscripted into the Deathseeker army. If you’re a girl when this talent is discovered, you are trained as an asha in the capital, where you learn how to wield your magic alongside learning etiquette, dancing, and entertaining heads of state in a diplomatic capacity. A chosen few have magic and can control the elements like fire, water, earth, etc. First is that magic is gendered in a fascinating and strange way. In the land of Eight Kingdoms, there are two rules of magic that, if you know them up front, will make the series easier to delve into. Understanding The Bone WitchĪnd so, I do you a service because you all need to read these books. You’ll have to wait for the grand finale for that.īut damn, it’s so worth it. And I’ll tell you upfront: Reading The Bone Witch is, at minimum, a two-book commitment-since the storylines don’t converge in the first book, nor the sequel.

The novel’s structure demands time and patience, as it flips between short italicized chapters in the present, and longer, more narrative chapters set in the past before the storylines converge. The worldbuilding-freshly un-Eurocentric and inspired by the mythologies of the Middle East and Asia-was, at first, confusing. I had tried reading this YA fantasy before and stopped a few times before filing it away and ultimately restarting.

I’m going to confess: I picked up Rin Chupeco’s The Bone Witch with some trepidation.

The bone witch series order