The Witness for the Dead

by

Paperback

Published July 22, 2021 by Solaris.

ISBN:
978-1-78108-951-4
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(4 reviews)

A standalone novel in the fantastic world of Katherine Addison's award-winning The Goblin Emperor.

When young half-goblin emperor Maia sought to learn who had killed his father and half-brothers in The Goblin Emperor, he turned to an obscure resident of his court, a Witness for The Dead named Thara Celehar.

Now, far from the court, Thara Celehar lives in quasi-exile, neither courtier nor prelate, serving the common people of the city. He lives modestly, communicating with the dead as is his duty.

But his decency and fundamental honesty will not permit him to live quietly. Celehar will follow the truth wherever it leads him no matter who may be implicated in murder, fraud, or ancient injustices.

4 editions

reviewed The Witness for the Dead by Katherine Addison

Slow and meandering fantasy murder mystery

This book is a return to the world of The Goblin Emperor, which I quite liked. It's an indirect sequel, set after the events in the first book, but pretty much unrelated otherwise. Its protagonist is Thara Celehar, the Witness for the Dead who helped Maia previously. He is now posted in the city of Amalo, a political backwater, which is fine for Thara. He tries to do his job, and much of the book is spent in his investigations on the death of an opera singer. But he also gets swept up in political intrigues, has to go fight undead, and drinks a lot of tea.

I must admit that at times my attention strayed. The plot is very meandering, it just piddles along, and I like myself a tighter narrative. Thara remained a bit bland. Addison likes to drown the reader in all the terms specific to her …

reviewed The Witness for the Dead by Katherine Addison (The Goblin Emperor #2)

fantasy noir?

I quite enjoyed this, the story moves along, it's varied and intricately drawn with gritty details. I felt at times like i was reading Dashiell Hammett, but with ghouls and elves and goblins. i think some of the subtleties of the world Addison creates were lost on me because i haven't read the Goblin Emperor. (can't say i wasn't warned.) I liked the names and titles of the characters; they have a nice musical ring to them, but again, i felt a like i was in the deep end of the pool trying to keep all of them straight in my mind. I think it'd be worth reading again this after i read the GE.

reviewed The Witness for the Dead by Katherine Addison (The Goblin Emperor #2)

An ok fantasy/mystery.

Addison does a wonderful job of world building. The slice of life moments in particular are great and Pel-Thenhior, the goblin director/composer is wonderful. Unfortunately the book has far too many subplots to give any of them the attention they deserve. There were also weird pacing issues and characters seem to do things so that reveals happen at the right time rather than for any organic or logical reason.

reviewed The Witness for the Dead by Katherine Addison (The Goblin Emperor #2)

a beautiful world to exist in

This was one of those books that when it ended, I missed getting to be in the world. It has a kind of understated, slice-of-life feel, with a lot of detail and reverence paid to the minutia of daily life and community relationships, that felt more prominent to me than the murder mysteries. Addison writes with an immense amout of compassion and tenderness, and for me that is what makes this book, and The Goblin Emperor, transcend what they would be on their face, in terms of plot.

The writing style drops you into the cultural nuances of the society largely without explanation, and you can infer, for example, what different honorifics mean through context. I really really like this and I think overall its very well done, but I think it would be more daunting if I hadn't already read The Goblin Emperor, and there were some …