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I've joined the Creator Accountability Network (CAN) as a provisionally credentialed creator! The provisional period is three months long, and at the end of that time I'll be fully credentialed if nothing disqualifying comes to light.  I'll be excerpting details from their website as the best way to explain what this is and what it means for me as a content creator and for you as readers and audience members. The short version is that I've undergone ethics training as part of the credentialing process, and that if you feel my actions have harmed you (now or in the future), you can report harassment, abuse, or other harm to CAN. Quotes in the rest of this post are from CAN's website as of August 16th, 2025. Here's the long version: From CAN's mission and purpose statements:  "The Creator Accountability Network empowers Community Members to build trust with Content Creators through ethical training and credentialing, victim-centered reporting of unethical...
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The Heart Forger by Rin Chupeco (The Bone Witch, #2)

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.

TITLE: The Heart Forger
AUTHOR: Rin Chupeco
PUBLISHER: Sourcebooks
YEAR: 2018
LENGTH: 528 pages
AGE: Young Adult
GENRE: Fantasy
RECOMMENDED: Highly

Queer Rep Summary: Gay/Achillean Minor Character(s), Genderqueer/Nonbinary Secondary Character(s), Closeted/Questioning Secondary Character(s).

The Heart Forger is a strong sequel to The Bone Witch, artfully balancing two narratives to maximize the strengths of each. Powerfully queer, elegantly dark, excellently paced; good for those who like necromancy with their dragons. 

As the second book, The Heart Forger had a lot to live up to and it manages it beautifully. The main story and the interstitial narrative are given appropriate amounts of attention; there's a beautiful ebb and flow as the interstitial sections imply various results of the main story without revealing the details prematurely. It's a swifter book than The Bone Witch, it doesn't cover as much time and it doesn't have to do the heavy lifting of world-building that its predecessor did. That allows it the space for Tea to gain a sense of mastery and earned confidence commensurate with her already-established eagerness.

This remains a tricky series to discuss because everything I loved is a spoiler for something else. The handling of Tea's love life was very skillful, there was a tricky pivot to make due to a reveal at the end of the last book. Some of that work was done in The Bone Witch, but a lot needed to happen in this book for it to feel believable and I think the author pulled it off.

I was pleasantly surprised by where the main narrative stops. I wasn't sure how much more story could fit in before the past catches up to the start of The Bone Witch's interstitials, but the pacing is great and I'm left with a good mix of satisfaction and questions. I'm very ready to read book three. 
CW for violence, blood, death, major character death.

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