I found this book to be a pretty refreshing story for the genre.
...an amazon summary, "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, it's that the dead hide truths as well as the living.
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.
Memoirs of a Geisha meets The Name of the Wind in this brilliant new fantasy series by Rin Chupeco!" AMAZON LINK OF JUSTICE
First, I really liked how this book switched between the present and the future. I thought it would be weird or difficult to understand or would spoil too many things about the present, but in the future, Tea is talking to essentially a journalist. The future chapters don't happen too often either, kind of every few chapters or so. You kind of get a sense of what she's doing, and then kind of a lead off to set up for the present chapters. So when I came across the first future chapter, I was like, ....excuse me, what is this??? BUT. Then when I got further into the book, the future chapters were kind of like shots of adrenaline to the story. I got more excited to read the next few chapters, and I kept track of what tidbits of information were dropped in the future chapters to try to piece together how the past was going to lead to these futures.
...so back to the story. The world is filled with magic. Every person has a heartsglass that will change colors depending on their mood, and there are also heartsglass that turn gray. The ones with gray heartsglass are elementals. They can train to become asha if they're female, or essentially a soldier if they're male. So Tea is a necromancer, which are very rare. Luckily for Tea, there is currently an older necromancer who can teach her the way of the dark arts. There's also a huge difference between necromancers and the rest of the magic wielders. Necromancy is a dark art, and the asha who practice it are more at risk to become dark/evil. By using the magic, they start becoming dark. They have to be very careful with their powers.
By the way, the other elementals are what you would expect of air/water/fire/earth etc, but when the amazon summary related it to Memoir of a Geisha, it was pretty spot on. So the asha are kind of like magical Geisha. They know a lot of formal, traditional dances, and they frequently entertain the richer people in the kingdom.
There's also a kind of rebel faction that's kind of hell bent on taking over the world on a weird level. They're a very real danger, but they also seem to have some Team Rocket kind of aspects about them. Kind of look the, "We're the big bad organization, FEAR US" and...they are scary...but they don't seem to be effective overall.
I did enjoy the book, I'm interested in reading the next one, but there are some world building elements that kind of conflict with each other. There's also a love triangle element coming into play, which is vexing, because I want less of that in books. Just less love triangle things, please. General plea to the young adult book world.
Happy reading!
