The Heart Forger by Rin Chupeco – Review

Published: March 20, 2018

Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire

Genre: YA, Fantasy

Series: The Bone Witch #2

Pages: 528 (Hardcover)

My Rating: 3.5/5.0

A copy of this book was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Synopsis:

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.

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The Heart Forger is the sequel to The Bone Witch, following the life of Tea Pahlavi from childhood to her exile from society. I enjoyed the first book and felt it had potential to gain momentum as the series progressed. I found that it honestly left me feeling a little lukewarm by the end of the book It was a good, entertaining read, but I just didn’t love it.

I think the biggest reason this book didn’t grab me was the style of storytelling. Much like in The Name of the Wind, our older main character is telling the story of her life to someone as a way to get her side of things out in the open. Consequently, this means that the story switches back and forth from past to present and I found this to be somewhat disorienting. The changes happened far too frequently for me to get completely absorbed in either the past or present and honestly, it’s nigh impossible to do this style with the same grace Rothfuss executes. It may not be entirely fair to compare this book the wordsmith of modern fantasy, but it’s the only book that come to mind with the same storytelling style.

I do feel like this book had considerably more action than the previous, but it also was largely without the presence of the asha community. They really make only minor appearances and things are limited to Tea, her close asha companions, and the nobles close to her. Once knowing that Kalen became her ultimate paramour, it was kind of frustrating to wait for her to get beyond Kance but at the same time it was nice to see how things played out. I ended up enjoying the parts where Tea tells of her past the most and really could have done without the present bits until later. I have some suspicions that Tea is not an entirely reliable narrator and I like that she seems to be the villain in this story. It’s a refreshing break from the stereotypical broken but righteous protagonists that seem to populate YA fantasy.

I struggled with this book and now I’m struggling to sum up my thoughts! It was a good story overall, but not spectacular and certainly not one I’ll go out of my way to re-read. I’m fond of the cover art – it’s particularly appealing and why I was drawn to The Bone Witch in the first place. I’ll consider finishing up the series since I’ve invested this much time already and I admit to being curious to see how thing play out.