The Bone Witch

In this ambitious fantasy, the start of the Bone Witch series, a young woman with the ability to raise and control the dead becomes embroiled in a struggle for power and acceptance in a world that fears and distrusts her kind. Tea attempts to master her new status as a bone witch among those who possess less frightening and more tolerable magics, but she learns that the role she’s expected to play tends to kill bone witches before they grow old. As Tea’s story unfolds against a framing sequence that shows how far she’ll go to succeed, and how far she has already fallen from grace, a quiet tension and menace grows. Readers start off knowing that something terrible will happen, but the journey—as recounted in Tea’s evocative, sometimes distant, and sometimes flowery manner—is mesmerizing. Chupeco (The Suffering) does a magnificent job of balancing an intimate narrative perspective with sweeping worldbuilding, crafting her tale within a multicultural melting pot of influences as she presses toward a powerful cliffhanger. Ages 12–up. Agent: Rebecca Podos, Rees Literary. (Mar.)