I was six years old when I learned that I had an older brother I would never meet. Growing up in a slightly traditional Chinese family, we’re not used to expressing emotions and feelings. But it was clear that my mother’s miscarriage had cast a pall over the family, even when it went unspoken. My parents had been looking forward to having a baby boy, and on the rare moments when that topic came up (often unexpectedly) in conversation, I could sense that quiet sadness that never went away.
I was in my teens before I realized that I—or my father, or the both of us without either side acknowledging—might have started compensating for that absence. I was always tomboyish, and I gravitated to action figures, martial arts, and rough sports. I’d always been the daddy’s girl. My father was an award-winning basketball coach, and while basketball initially didn’t strike my fancy I joined basketball camps that he helped oversee and and practiced mainly to spend more time with him. We had similar interests in pop culture and the like, so we were quick to bond over them - he taught me how to speak Klingon, bought me my first light saber, played video games together.
It wasn’t until I was much older that I realized that these were easily things he could have done with my older brother or—what would probably have happened—things we both could have done with my older brother. I’ve heard of other Chinese parents, fathers in particular, who resent not having a son and often take that frustration out on their families. To his credit, my father never did any of that. But I could see his wistfulness when he played with some of my younger cousins, singling out one of them in particular to constantly tease and play pranks on (jokes and humor were his chosen method of expressing affection), or on those rare occasions when anyone ever alluded to my older brother. I saw it most clearly in his unabashed happiness when I told him he was going to have a grandson, and when he nearly broke down when Ezio was born.
It was when I was pregnant that I started thinking about that brother more often than I ever had in the past, (brought back to the fore most recently, since my little Ezio is about to have a new sibling as well). I had just finished The Suffering, the sequel to the Girl from the Well, and while I’d taken a few months off from writing to prepare for a toddler I’d also been at a loss over what to write next. Somewhere during those sleepless nights where I had to wake every couple of hours to feed my baby or pump, I started coming back to that. My brother didn’t even get to have a name, and it felt wrong for him not to have one. I thought about giving him one, thought about Chinese mythology where spirits could come back from the dead—not to haunt and terrorize like Western urban legends, but sometimes to comfort and impart knowledge.
In Chinese lore, they sometimes came back as fox spirits.
Chinese spirits were also transcendent, intelligent specters—in many stories they show themselves to philosophers while the latter meditate or study; sometimes they even take tea with them.
So I started writing about a girl named Tea and a brother she brought back from the dead, named Fox.
The Bone Witch is a lot of things - a ghost story, a warning about how absolute power can go wrong, a coming of age story, a vengeance quest, a magic tale, a treatise about the patriarchy and how even well-meaning matriarchies can get things wrong.
But at its heart, in its truest, purest form of heartsglass, is just a story about a girl and her brother.
The Bone Witch is about learning to live together, about what it’s like to be family.
The Heart Forger is about learning to make choices beyond that family, to be independent while still learning to give each other space, about learning to maintain that love despite change.
And the Shadowglass, due out next year, will be about learning how to say goodbye.
And I think it’s the best eulogy about my brother that I’ve ever written.
Despite an unsettling resemblance to Japanese revenants, Rin always maintains her sense of hummus. Born and raised in Manila, Philippines, she keeps four pets: a dog, two birds, and a husband. Dances like the neighbors are watching.
She is represented by Rebecca Podos of the Helen Rees Agency.
I have been blessed by the goddesses to have allowed me to join THE NEVER TILTING TOUR by Caffeine Book Tours (hosted by Shealea of shutupshealea.com)!
Seeing CBBTC (Caffeine Book Tours)’s post about the blog tour back then, I didn’t even hesitate to join because I’ve always wanted to read a Rin Chupeco book, specifically her Bone Witch trilogy. It’s my blog stop today now off to the blog tour…
This was a slow burn of a novel. Every chapter was just another taste of a very detailed and atmospheric story. It’s written in a very old fashioned way of story-telling, through the perspective of a character retelling her experiences from memory, rather than as they happen. I found myself eagerly pushing towards the snippets of her present-self that is only glimpsed at the end of each chapter, rather than being caught up in the storyline that takes place in her past. It was heavy in the description of the culture and visuals of the world, which were gorgeous, but there just wasn’t enough action for me to focus on it for long periods at a time. However, the ending left me wanting so much more from this character and the world she lives in, that I am already highly anticipating the next book. If this was just a stepping stone to a greater plot, then I’m completely on board.
I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
