bloodygranuaile (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
bloodygranuaile) wrote2022-08-17 12:13 pm
bloodygranuaile) wrote2022-08-17 12:13 pm
Murder, blackmail, and opera, Part II
I really liked Katherine Addison’s The Witness for the Dead, a quiet little murder mystery set in the world of The Goblin Emperor, so as soon as I heard The Grief of Stones was out I put in a hold for it at the library.
This one again follows the quiet, tenacious Thara Celehar as he solves murders and meets interesting people and stumbles upon some plots that are bigger and more sinister than even the murders he is trying to solve.
Like the prequel, the book is fairly quiet, at least right up until the final showdown. Thara is provided, or perhaps landed with, an apprentice, a widow who discovered her ability to hear the dead late in life. Thara hangs out with his friend Anora, who works at the cemetery, and Pel-Thenhior, who continues to write scandalous (but successful) operas. He hears some petitions and meets a bunch of other interesting folks in varying levels of respectability and winds up uncovering a major scandal at a home for foundling girls, which results in him battling ancient monsters near the Hill of Werewolves again, though this time differently. The book does not feel at all repetitive but it does neatly reproduce all of the things I liked about the first Cemeteries of Amalo book, and it ends on a promising teaser for a third installment.
While it is definitely a comforting little cozy mystery it doesn’t feel lighthearted, as Thara’s office is a grim, dignified one and his entire personality is weighted down by grief. It is, in some ways, a fairly serious book about grief, even as it is also a delightful book about a quiet little priest solving murders with his friends and fretting about the state of his coats. (Thara’s not particularly vain, but his coats are in rough shape.) The elaborate system of titles and other fantasy words/names continues to be opaque to me in a way that could easily be goofy (so many zh sounds!) but is deliberate and consistent enough to end up lending some density to the worldbuilding, plus I find it nice that it’s not over-explained. Maybe someday Addison will release some notes on the language that we can all be big geeks about, Tolkien-style.
I don’t know what else to say about either this or its prequel; they’re just both lovely little jewels of books.
This one again follows the quiet, tenacious Thara Celehar as he solves murders and meets interesting people and stumbles upon some plots that are bigger and more sinister than even the murders he is trying to solve.
Like the prequel, the book is fairly quiet, at least right up until the final showdown. Thara is provided, or perhaps landed with, an apprentice, a widow who discovered her ability to hear the dead late in life. Thara hangs out with his friend Anora, who works at the cemetery, and Pel-Thenhior, who continues to write scandalous (but successful) operas. He hears some petitions and meets a bunch of other interesting folks in varying levels of respectability and winds up uncovering a major scandal at a home for foundling girls, which results in him battling ancient monsters near the Hill of Werewolves again, though this time differently. The book does not feel at all repetitive but it does neatly reproduce all of the things I liked about the first Cemeteries of Amalo book, and it ends on a promising teaser for a third installment.
While it is definitely a comforting little cozy mystery it doesn’t feel lighthearted, as Thara’s office is a grim, dignified one and his entire personality is weighted down by grief. It is, in some ways, a fairly serious book about grief, even as it is also a delightful book about a quiet little priest solving murders with his friends and fretting about the state of his coats. (Thara’s not particularly vain, but his coats are in rough shape.) The elaborate system of titles and other fantasy words/names continues to be opaque to me in a way that could easily be goofy (so many zh sounds!) but is deliberate and consistent enough to end up lending some density to the worldbuilding, plus I find it nice that it’s not over-explained. Maybe someday Addison will release some notes on the language that we can all be big geeks about, Tolkien-style.
I don’t know what else to say about either this or its prequel; they’re just both lovely little jewels of books.
no subject
As a complete outsider to the genre, I've always wondered about how cozy mysteries deal with the actual emotional impacts of death/murder. Kinda makes me want to check these out...