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Murder, tea, and... elves?
Aug. 25th, 2021 07:34 pmI got Katherine Addison’s The Witness for the Dead out of the library in hard copy and was a bit surprised at how short it was, having expected it to be about the same size as The Goblin Emperor, for some reason. But it is much shorter, around 200 pages. This is not a complaint, even though I liked this book a lot and would have happily kept following Thara Celehar around for another 200 pages, watching him solve crimes and quiet ghouls and go to teahouses and flirt with the outrageous opera composer who clearly has an enormous crush on him. But it’s just the right length for what it is, which is a tightly plotted, multi-strand little murder mystery that’s certainly action-packed enough but also feels very quiet and leisurely, largely due to Celehar’s methodical and humbly introspective narration.
It’s been several years since I read The Goblin Emperor so it took me a little while to get back into how that universe works, all the complex formal titles and cultural signifiers that Addison uses, but I didn’t mind because it’s so rich and dense and well done; it packs in a huge amount of worldbuilding without infodumping on us too much (that said, I can see how some people who have less patience for that sort of thing might be driven completely batty by all the long nonsense words). The society Celehar has to navigate is complex, strictly classed, and home to a variety of religious sects that all seem to coexist more or less peacefully. Celehar mostly hangs out by himself, does his job, feeds the local semi-stray cats, and feels bad about himself, resolutely not noticing how much everyone actually likes him (except the bitchy bureaucrats who can’t figure out how to rank him properly in their hierarchy) in favor of being hyper-aware that his job is off-putting and weird.
The main murder for Celehar to solve here is the case of an opera singer who turns up dead in a canal; secondary cases include a very wealthy woman who turned up dead shortly after getting married, a recently deceased bourgeois with two wills and a large family arguing over which one is real; an exploding factory that is probably an accident no matter how much one of the aforementioned bitchy bureaucrats who hates him wants it to be something nefarious so she can be a big damn hero and solve it, and a very nasty ghoul out in the countryside.
While the subject matter is often grim it is hard to overstate how absolutely delightful this book is (especially if you’re me and like grim things to start with). It’s just extremely charming in every way, from Celehar’s self-deprecating internal monologue to the opera composer’s scandalous project to invent musicals about working people (I was thinking Les Mis through most of the book but the end recalls one of the gloriously embarrassing traditions of Irish theater). I really do hope there are more books set in this world in the future!
It’s been several years since I read The Goblin Emperor so it took me a little while to get back into how that universe works, all the complex formal titles and cultural signifiers that Addison uses, but I didn’t mind because it’s so rich and dense and well done; it packs in a huge amount of worldbuilding without infodumping on us too much (that said, I can see how some people who have less patience for that sort of thing might be driven completely batty by all the long nonsense words). The society Celehar has to navigate is complex, strictly classed, and home to a variety of religious sects that all seem to coexist more or less peacefully. Celehar mostly hangs out by himself, does his job, feeds the local semi-stray cats, and feels bad about himself, resolutely not noticing how much everyone actually likes him (except the bitchy bureaucrats who can’t figure out how to rank him properly in their hierarchy) in favor of being hyper-aware that his job is off-putting and weird.
The main murder for Celehar to solve here is the case of an opera singer who turns up dead in a canal; secondary cases include a very wealthy woman who turned up dead shortly after getting married, a recently deceased bourgeois with two wills and a large family arguing over which one is real; an exploding factory that is probably an accident no matter how much one of the aforementioned bitchy bureaucrats who hates him wants it to be something nefarious so she can be a big damn hero and solve it, and a very nasty ghoul out in the countryside.
While the subject matter is often grim it is hard to overstate how absolutely delightful this book is (especially if you’re me and like grim things to start with). It’s just extremely charming in every way, from Celehar’s self-deprecating internal monologue to the opera composer’s scandalous project to invent musicals about working people (I was thinking Les Mis through most of the book but the end recalls one of the gloriously embarrassing traditions of Irish theater). I really do hope there are more books set in this world in the future!