Tuesday, June 8, 2021

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Witness for the Dead by Katherine Addison

 


Full Disclosure:  This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on June 22, 2021 in exchange for a potential review.  I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.

The Witness of the Dead is one of the most anticipated SciFi/Fantasy works of the year - the sequel to Katherine Addison's celebrated "The Goblin Emperor".  I didn't love the Goblin Emperor nearly as much as the general consensus - the book was often a fantasy parable on race that worked really well, even if a bit heavy handed, with excellent world building as it built a story of a half-goblin distant son of a ruler suddenly becoming emperor.  It featured court intrigue and scheming (it was advertised as a fantasy of manners) but mostly featured a young slightly naive but determined to be good ruler trying to make things work for the best of everyone, even as he was distrusted for his racial heritage.  But I didn't love it mainly because things wound up going too well for the hero, too easily, which kind of didn't work with the buildup, which made it all not hit as well for me.  Still I really enjoyed Addison's second* novel, The Angel of the Crows (a fantasy take on Sherlock Holmes) and was really interested to see how a new book in a world I did really enjoy would work.  

*Addison is actually a pen name for author Sarah Monette, but she has only three novels under the pen name.*

And I really liked The Witness of the Dead, which is a short (240 pages) novel featuring a character from The Goblin Emperor in a fantasy book that is largely a mystery novel (featuring multiple mysteries), to go along with some fantasy adventure beats and some more court scheming.  The protagonist, a Witness for the Dead who can see the last thoughts and observations of the recently deceased, finds himself trying to resolve disputes and mysteries involving those recently dead, which gets him into further trouble due to his own standing outside the typical political hierarchy, as well as his own tragic past (outlined in The Goblin Emperor, but you don't need to remember it for this book to work).  While the ending is a little abrupt, and not everything works, it is a very successful work that will please fans.  

--------------------------------------------------Plot Summary----------------------------------------------------
Thara Celehar is out of the Imperial Court - where he never felt comfortable - and now working once more as a Witness for the Dead in the city of Amalo.  It's a bit of an awkward position, in part due to his scandalous/tragic past and in part due to him having been appointed to this position outside of the usual political/religious hierarchy.  All Celehar wants is to use his ability to hear the last thoughts/observations of the recent dead to help mend disputes among the people, and not to deal with either politics or perhaps his own loneliness.  

But a series of petitions all at once causes him to once more be in a mess of public affairs: a dispute over multiple wills from a wealthy recently dead patriarch, a petition from a brother of a woman who had gone missing and been suspected dead after leaving her family to marry a husband who has disappeared, and most significantly, the appearance of a woman drowned through an act of murder.  As Celehar inspects each of these occurrences and searches for the truth, he finds himself involved in ethical matters he wanted once to avoid, that bring up memories of his tragic past, and will make it all the more difficult for him to find the right, good, and just path to go forward...assuming the politics of it all don't eat him alive. 
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The Witness of the Dead very much feels like a hybrid of Addison's prior two novels, taking the background and setting of The Goblin Emperor and marrying it to the mystery novel structure of The Angel of the Crows.  The story focuses in large part on the murder mystery of the woman dumped in the river, as Celehar investigates the opera-house the woman turns out to be a part of, but the other mysteries - the dispute over the will, which turns into a political nightmare, and the suspicion of the woman who was possibly married by her disappearing husband - work alongside that main focus, and all intertwine in Celehar's (and thus the reader's) own consciousness.  There also are fantasy adventure and fantasy of manners type subplots in here, as Celehar gets sent away to deal with a ghoul that has risen in a graveyard in a town a few hours away and has to deal with other religious/political figures who have their own ambitions they see threatened by Celehar's unusual appointment. 

This intertwining of it all works for the most part really well, thanks to the mysteries being interesting and Celehar being a fascinating character.  His past - revealed in The Goblin Emperor but explained well enough through asides here - of having fallen in love with a married man who then killed his wife due to his own urging and who Celehar wound up putting away still gives him nightmares, especially as he finds himself coming to the possibly-romantic-attention of another man with a motive for murder.  He's kind of introverted despite a job that involves being available to the public, and due to that scandal and the rest is desperate to avoid attention from politics and others, or to avoid scandal, or even just to avoid confrontation even when doing so involves putting his own needs to the side in favor of not challenging others.  And while Celehar winds up getting better at expressing himself and dealing with his own needs by the end of the book, he still has those problems all the same - there is no miracle solving for his character flaws and problems, he remains the same person, just a bit changed from the experiences in some ways.  

And again the mysteries and plot work really well, with both the main mysteries going in interesting if not particularly unique directions....but directions that work well under Addison's writing.  The fantasy elements also work really well, as Celehar first finds himself hunting down ghouls who arise when proper burial and gravekeeping procedures aren't kept for the dead, and has to put his life on the line to stop one in a town a little bit away.  There's also the man exiled ages ago who asks Celehar to help him deliver a letter to a long lost granddaughter and the ghosts of a massacre that Celehar has to experience for a full night....These plot elements work really well to show the tragedies of the past and how we try to move forward from them, themes that are done far more subtly than in The Goblin Emperor.  

Not everything works really well honestly.  As seems to be a habit in Addison books, the ending is incredibly abrupt and relies on some coincidences that allow the mystery to be wrapped up really quickly out of seemingly nowhere, which is a bit of a disappointment.  And the Court Intrigue plotline, dealing with two leaders in the hierarchy who try to cause problems for Celehar at times due to his being appointed from outside - who essentially begin the book's entire narrative - doesn't really work as the characters disappear for long stretches of time and never really make any emotional impact....I never really care about this conflict or got why it matters - so when this conflict seems to result in Celehar losing certain political protection, I never got why that should matter or if it even did in this book.  

Still for the most part, it works really really well in a nice tight short novel package.  And there's more that could be done with Celehar's character journey if Addison wanted to, so if she wants to write any more sequels, I will definitely be there.  

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