About the Books
Title: The Heart Forger
Author: Rin Chupeco
Series: The Bone Witch #2
Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 503
Edition Read: Library eBook
Dates Read: January 1 – 7, 2024
Blurb: In The Bone Witch, Tea mastered resurrection – now she’s after revenge….
No one knows death like Tea. A bone witch who can resurrect the dead, she has the power to take life…and return it. And she is done with her self-imposed exile. Her heart is set on vengeance, and she now possesses all she needs to command the mighty daeva. With the help of these terrifying beasts, she can finally enact revenge against the royals who wronged her – and took the life of her one true love.
But there are those who plot against her, those who would use Tea’s dark power for their own nefarious ends. Because you can’t kill someone who can never die….
War is brewing among the kingdoms, and when dark magic is at play, no one is safe.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Title: The Shadowglass
Author: Rin Chupeco
Series: The Bone Witch #3
Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 449
Edition Read: Library eBook
Dates Read: January 8 – 14, 2024
Blurb: In the highly anticipated finale to the Bone Witch trilogy, Tea’s life—and the fate of the kingdoms—hangs in the balance.
Tea is a bone witch with the dark magic needed to raise the dead. She has used this magic to breathe life into those she has loved and lost…and those who would join her army against the deceitful royals. But Tea’s quest to conjure a shadowglass—to achieve immortality for the one person she loves most in the world—threatens to consume her heart.
Tea’s black heartsglass only grows darker with each new betrayal. And when she is left with new blood on her hands, Tea must answer to a power greater than the elder asha or even her conscience…
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Review
I was very glad to finish up this series, my first one for 2024! While I did enjoy it, there were a few things that bothered me.
Chupeco continues using the framing device story that was used in The Bone Witch. So throughout the series, we know the direction the story is going (Tea’s growth in power, exile and rebellion) but don’t have all the details about how we got there. What The Heart Forger does brilliantly is fill in a lot of the details regarding Tea’s character. When we first meet her in the first book, she seems like a young, innocent girl who has a very Dark power, but still intends using it for good. It was hard to see how would one day raise monsters and believe that her ends justified her means. The Heart Forger works really well to connect these two characterizations. Tea isn’t evil or heartless, in fact she never was, but there are reasons behind her actions that start to make more sense.
I also really enjoyed seeing the greater world fleshed out even more. We get to see it as Tea discovers it and it was interesting to see how the different kingdoms interacted with each other. We also got to see a lot more about the culture of the asha as well as the threat of the Faceless. We also learn a bit more about how heartglass works, as well as the dangers of your heartglass turning fully dark and what the mythical shadowglass can do.
My main complaint lies with the third book, The Shadowglass. While there were a lot of threads that needed to be tied up before the series ended, to me this book felt like it was dragging a lot in places. It was a bit uneven for me, the plot racing along for a bit, and then screeching to a halt and plodding along for a bit more. I will say that seeing the two stories, the main story and the framing device, come together at the end was very well done. It was really nice seeing how all the dots connected
GoodReads rating: 4 stars for The Heart Forger, 3 stars for The Shadowglass
Categories: Books I've Read
Life With No Plot 
Leave a comment