2025 fantasy, third of what I believe is still expected to be a
trilogy. Thara Celehar lost his ability to speak with the recently
dead, but continues to serve his hierarchy and his god.
As before, there are several cases going on at once: a stabbing
at the opera which may link back to The Witness for the Dead, an
escaped rebellious noble who really shouldn't be Celehar's problem,
and the mountain where a mining company exterminated dragons in order
to make itself even richer. Most significantly at first and the only
matter that is officially assigned to Celehar, one of the town's
cemeteries hasn't been accepting new bodies for burial for fifty
years, the local head of the hierarchy is too interested in his own
power to do anything about it, and the Archprelate sends Celehar to
sort it out. Which should be just a matter of smoothing over the
pointless feud with the Catacombists' Guild, but if it were an easy
job it would already have been done…
I made an involuntary warding gesture and turned to the others.
"Ithalpherix says there is no one left alive in the mine."
The clockmakers looked at each other. "Do we trust what she says?"
"Since what she says is that she tore them all to pieces, I tend to
think yes."
Everyone made warding gestures.
At the same time Celehar is dealing with the trauma from events in
previous books, and this is not a culture that really has the concept
of post-traumatic stress: you survived, you must be fine. (And when we
first met him properly in Witness for the Dead he had already been
through a fair bit.) So yet another strand is his gradually realising
that, well, there are actually people who care about him, and will go
out of their way to help him if he lets them.
"Dost thou love me?"
"I love thee, and it grieves me greatly to see thee hurt. And, to
tell thee the truth, it worries me more than a little that thou
findst this so unfathomable. Do thy other friends not love thee?"
"I have very few close friends," I said. "I suppose I don't know how
the thing is done."
He laughed. "Dost wish a guidebook?"
"Thou hast no idea how much," I said.
I loved this book, It's an interesting fantasy world; the writing is
excellent; character is far more important than violence; the various
plot strands all feel as though they are given enough time, rather
than being hastily wrapped up to make room for the others. This will
definitely be among my books of the year.
The only thing I can see being offputting to some readers is that, as
in the other books set in this world, many terms are untranslated and
all the names are alien. There's plenty of context for the former,
though, and I wouldn't expect an experienced reader of SF or fantasy
to have any trouble.
There hasn't been a further book announced, and this would be a
satisfying end to the series, but equally there would plenty more for
Celehar to do should the author (and publisher) choose.