Charm is a witch, and she is alone. The last of a line of conquered necromantic workers, now confined within the yard of regrown bone trees at Orchard House, and the secrets of their marrow.
Charm is a prisoner, and a survivor. Charm tends the trees and their clattering fruit for the sake of her children, painstakingly grown and regrown with its fruit: Shame, Justice, Desire, Pride, and Pain.
Charm is a whore, and a madam. The wealthy and powerful of Borenguard come to her house to buy time with the girls who aren't real.
Except on Tuesdays, which is when the Emperor himself lays claim to his mistress, Charm herself.
now—Charm is also the only person who can keep an empire together, as the Emperor summons her to his deathbed, and charges her with choosing which of his awful, faithless sons will carry on the empire—by discovering which one is responsible for his own murder.
If she does this last thing, she will finally have what has been denied her since the fall of Inshil—her freedom. But she will also be betraying the ghosts past and present that live on within her heart.
Charm must choose. Her dead Emperor’s will or the whispers of her own ghosts. Justice for the empire or her own revenge.
The Review: {Contains Mild Spoilers}
The Bone Orchard is an interesting and confusing story to digest. If you were to ask me who the main character is, I'm not sure that there's an easy or simple answer that I could comfortably supply. In almost any other instance I would probably be frustrated by that, but Charm and her ghosts are the exception to that rule. The assassin was a bit obvious and that is probably my biggest gripe. I don't like it when the villain is the obvious choice. That being said, there are as many villains running about as Charm has ghosts and each one was as likely as any of the others to have killed Charm's Emperor, one was just more so. I love the idea of her traumas and emotions being given bodies of their own, with fractured memories and treating each other as sisters and, in one instance--my favorite instance--as a daughter. There's something philosophically important in there that someone more capable could probably draw connections to, but I can only say I know they are there. I also absolutely adored that Pride was born blind, and the others having similar "defects" was beautifully poetic. Little things like Pain becoming Mercy, Pride being blind and Desire having injured hands made the story so much more compelling and enjoyable. Charm discovering herself bit by bit with the "death" of her ghosts is heartbreaking and yet, it's also cathartic and inspiring. I suppose the story can be taken literally and at face value, but I adored the ambiguous and metaphorical nature of them and it's the reason I've rated it so highly. Parts of the story seemed irrelevant after the fact, but I still enjoyed it. I think parts of Charm's history were seemingly added as an afterthought to give it more depth, and so some bits rang more flat than others. All in all however, I still enjoyed them as much as cruelty and violence can be enjoyed, and I think for the most part, they did serve a purpose so I haven't deducted. I don't know who I would recommend this book to, but I do know that I don't regret reading it, and would likely re-read it in the future. My favorite sections were Pain's journey to identifying who she was separate from the whole. She made the book for me, and is why I think I'll go back to this world someday. I can't wait to see what Sara A. Mueller releases next (and hopefully in less than ten years.)
