Review Detail

THE KING OF BONES AND ASHES is a story set around three witches living in New Orleans, as magic fades from the world these three witches find their fate tied to one another. Alice the youngest of the Marin group who has been locked away in an asylum for witches her entire life, Lisette who took over running her mother’s Voodoo shop Veve after her death even though she herself no longer believes, and Evangeline who is tied to the Marin family in very complicated ways. Connected through the magic Alice, Lisette, and Evangeline will need to learn the truth about magic, the grimoire and the secrets everyone seems to be keeping.


What I liked:

This story is definitely a slow build, it focuses a great deal on the setting of New Orleans, and really fleshing out the characters more so than the action. Which as someone who loves action I sorely missed that, but I did like that it spent a lot of time really getting into the characters background and their families. It really helped to understand certain dynamics and the way the witches community worked and was set up. Out of the three characters Alice was probably last on my list of favorites. She was a great character and I would definitely love to see more of her, but we don’t get to spend a whole lot of time with her in this book. I mean that ending definitely set her up for some really interesting things to come. Then there is Lisette and Evangeline who I really really enjoyed. They both had such interesting storylines and I loved the way they kept being tied together with certain characters or storylines. I think both of them added a lot to the story, I became so invested in these two characters and I that’s what had me turning the pages.

Another thing I enjoyed was the magic and it’s so different from what I’m used to reading in books about witches. One of the big things is that it isn’t one type of magic. Everyone has their magic but it’s used and practiced in different ways. J.D. doesn’t go into a whole lot about the way the magic system is set up but I like that the reader is left to imagining the possibilities of what these witches can do. I also really loved that each of our three witches was how they all used their magic in varying ways, how theirs wasn’t the same as the others, and how different their outlooks were. I really do hope we get to see more magic sort of work it’s way into the sequel. I would love to know what these characters can do and how powerful they are.

There are a couple things that I had a bit of a problem with, one being that a couple of parts in this story were a bit confusing. They were hard to follow and I had to go back and reread them to understand what was going on. The last thing I had a problem with was that the chapters didn’t have a clear name as a header and it was sometimes hard to distinguish who was speaking. Of course, both of these things didn’t take away from the enjoyment of this book, they were minor problems that were easy to get around. Overall this book was a slow start for me but came in with a strong finish. It was a rich world with a great setting that really added to the overall gothic feeling that the book was going for. If you love witches and a dark twisted plot I would definitely recommend picking this one up. I am interested to see where this story goes and see each character grow in the sequel.