2021 romantic fantasy. Piper is a lich-doctor, a medical examiner who
also has the magical ability to feel what a corpse felt when it died.
Galen is another of the dead Saint of Steel's former paladins, now
working as a general troubleshooter and bodyguard for the Church of
the White Rat.. Both of them are involved in the investigation of
bizarrely-injured corpses floating down the river…
This was the weakest book so far for me. I don't think it's that
the romance is between two men; but after the main body of the action
and falling-in-love (which is fine) there's an over-long coda in which
our heroes, especially Galen, act like idiots in the "nobody could
possibly want me so I'll just leave you for your own good" sense. This
is both annoying in itself, because someone who could make that
mistake once might make it again so I'm less inclined to believe in
the happy ending, but annoying also in context, because it isn't
blended with the exciting action and problem-solving of the main body
of the book. It's a crashing change of pace, and I think I'd have
enjoyed that last section more if I hadn't been regretting the end of
the main, and more engaging, narrative.
I liked Piper. He made sense, not only as a protagonist but as someone
who's found a niche where his skills, abilities and shortcomings can
all fit together to make him better at what he goes.
He didn't mind living people, he was perfectly happy to meet them
and talk to them and even work with them, but corpses never, ever
asked stupid questions. You learned to appreciate that when you
spent all day analyzing why and how people had died. The dead didn't
say things like, "Are you sure he's dead?" when the man's head was
half off or, "Dear god, what happened?" when it was bloody obvious
that someone had shoved a sword through him. The dead just laid
there and got on with being dead.
Galen convinced me less, partly because we've seen more interesting
paladins in the earlier books, but also because he's simply not
prepared to listen to this person who might turn out to be the love of
his life.
That said, all is redeemed by the gnoles, who have always been
interesting and who here, without as much competition from the humans,
really shine. Yes, obvious lesson about prejudice, we had that back in
Clockwork Boys, but there's more of their culture here and it's a
joy to read about them.
I'll carry on reading Kingfisher and this series, but this is
definitely the weakest so far for me.