Published July 21, 2021 by Rebellion Publishing Ltd.
ISBN:
978-1-78618-504-4
Copied ISBN!
ASIN:
B08GJRR14T
4 stars
(48 reviews)
When the young half-goblin emperor Maia sought to learn who had set the bombs that killed his father and half-brothers, he turned to an obscure resident of his father’s Court, a Prelate of Ulis and a Witness for the Dead. Thara Celehar found the truth, though it did him no good to discover it. He lost his place as a retainer of his cousin the former Empress, and made far too many enemies among the many factions vying for power in the new Court. The favor of the Emperor is a dangerous coin.
Now Celehar lives in the city of Amalo, far from the Court though not exactly in exile. He has not escaped from politics, but his position gives him the ability to serve the common people of the city, which is his preference. He lives modestly, but his decency and fundamental honesty will not permit him to live …
When the young half-goblin emperor Maia sought to learn who had set the bombs that killed his father and half-brothers, he turned to an obscure resident of his father’s Court, a Prelate of Ulis and a Witness for the Dead. Thara Celehar found the truth, though it did him no good to discover it. He lost his place as a retainer of his cousin the former Empress, and made far too many enemies among the many factions vying for power in the new Court. The favor of the Emperor is a dangerous coin.
Now Celehar lives in the city of Amalo, far from the Court though not exactly in exile. He has not escaped from politics, but his position gives him the ability to serve the common people of the city, which is his preference. He lives modestly, but his decency and fundamental honesty will not permit him to live quietly. As a Witness for the Dead, he can, sometimes, speak to the recently dead: see the last thing they saw, know the last thought they had, experience the last thing they felt. It is his duty use that ability to resolve disputes, to ascertain the intent of the dead, to find the killers of the murdered.
Celehar’s skills now lead him out of the quiet and into a morass of treachery, murder, and injustice. No matter his own background with the imperial house, Celehar will stand with the commoners, and possibly find a light in the darkness.
Nicely Tied Together Fantasy Crime Noir and Mystery
4 stars
Content warning
Some of the storyline and content of the book in general concepts.
I really enjoyed the The Goblyn Emporer. I was a little unsure about going to another disconnected story (well the story perspective is somebody from the first book, but no real going back to the original storyline), but I pretty quickly fell into listening as much as time would permit.
The whole feel of this book is different than the first installment. I have not read a lot of murder mysteries, at least since I was young and long car rides and the alphabet murder mystery with my mom), but it was enjoyable to get into it. This story feels like an old private investigator taking place in a fantasy world with elves and goblins. There is a serial killer, ghoules, and political intrigue.
Ya habíamos conocido al personaje central en The Goblin Emperor. Algo triste y solitario, también va con su oficio de Testigo de los Muertos. Es que en ese mundo hay Testigos que hablan por los que no tienen voz. No es el énfasis que le dan, pero se parece a los derechos de la Pacha Mama, creo, y creo que se menciona que a veces hay un Testigo que toma la voz de un río o de un monte.
Para ser Testigo de los Muertos debes tener el llamado, y con suerte tendrás el Talento. El talento te permite "ver" un poquito, sentir las últimas impresiones de lo que queda de las almas en los cuerpos. Además te entrena la orden monacal de los testigos, y adquieres el superpoder de la escucha profunda.
Los Testigos de los Muertos buscan la Verdad, que no siempre es lo que más conviene.
Ciertamente …
Ya habíamos conocido al personaje central en The Goblin Emperor. Algo triste y solitario, también va con su oficio de Testigo de los Muertos. Es que en ese mundo hay Testigos que hablan por los que no tienen voz. No es el énfasis que le dan, pero se parece a los derechos de la Pacha Mama, creo, y creo que se menciona que a veces hay un Testigo que toma la voz de un río o de un monte.
Para ser Testigo de los Muertos debes tener el llamado, y con suerte tendrás el Talento. El talento te permite "ver" un poquito, sentir las últimas impresiones de lo que queda de las almas en los cuerpos. Además te entrena la orden monacal de los testigos, y adquieres el superpoder de la escucha profunda.
Los Testigos de los Muertos buscan la Verdad, que no siempre es lo que más conviene.
Ciertamente no le conviene a los asesinos que la verdad de sus crímenes se conozca. De ahí los nudos trenzados de esta historia. Con un par de aventuras y peripecias distractoras por ahí enmedio, emocionantes y terroríficas.
Buena lectura de fantasía, recomendable para el otoño.
Review of 'The Witness for the Dead' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
A side character from the first Goblin Emperor book solves a whodunnit in which an opera singer was murdered, with a number of side quests. It's nice to see more of this world getting filled in, and what is happening away from the royal intrigue. The short story at the end is very sweet, too.
I'm not sure what I was expecting from another book set in The Goblin Emperor universe, but I really enjoyed this fantasy slice of life cozy mystery. This is not a sequel per se and I don't strictly think you need to have read the previous book to enjoy this one, but I do think coming to this one knowing the naming conventions and a little bit of backstory make this book easier and more enjoyable to read.
It was also fun to have read this after reading Paladin's Hope (by T. Kingfisher), which similarly features a main character who is able to see a body's last moments before death. Plot-wise, it's definitely a useful mystery hook to have an amateur investigator (and also thankfully not a cop) have some insight into tracking down nefarious deeds. The similarities end there, as Paladin's Hope has a more ...action and romance bent …
I'm not sure what I was expecting from another book set in The Goblin Emperor universe, but I really enjoyed this fantasy slice of life cozy mystery. This is not a sequel per se and I don't strictly think you need to have read the previous book to enjoy this one, but I do think coming to this one knowing the naming conventions and a little bit of backstory make this book easier and more enjoyable to read.
It was also fun to have read this after reading Paladin's Hope (by T. Kingfisher), which similarly features a main character who is able to see a body's last moments before death. Plot-wise, it's definitely a useful mystery hook to have an amateur investigator (and also thankfully not a cop) have some insight into tracking down nefarious deeds. The similarities end there, as Paladin's Hope has a more ...action and romance bent to it, and this book is more about religious duty and local community. (I think I expected that book to have more of the feel that this one did and was surprised where that one went. But that's neither here nor there.)
I think my biggest joy with this book was just the extra worldbuilding and cultural details. The Goblin Emperor is (understandably) focused on Maia who is insulated from the rest of the world, and so the book focuses more on his feelings and court politics. There's still plenty about Celehar's feelings and local politics here as well, but there's a lot more space to see the world itself. It was fun to have such a different locale here where we get to see coin-powered gas meters, teahouses, burial practices, local religious politics, airship manufactories, etc.
I really enjoyed this a lot, even if it had a very different feel from The Goblin Emperor. I do love a good mystery though, and this delivered.
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.
Addison's writing feels like a fine mechanical watch, intricate and whirring. The main character has a somehow calm and quiet approach to being a detective, but the book still has its operatic moments, both literal (I want to see the opera about the manufactory workers), and metaphorical.
Review of 'The Witness for the Dead' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
I loved The Goblin Emperor so much that I didn't want to seek out Witness for the Dead - who knows when Addison will write another book in this world, I have to make it last - so I waited until I happened to come across it on the shelf at the library, which finally happened.
I don't know that I would say it's better than The Goblin Emperor - for one thing, TGE is a better entry point because Maia knows nothing about court and the reader learns along with him, where Celehar in WftD is in a world he knows intimately - but in some ways it hangs together better. This is a murder mystery, and an exploration of the outer edges of Maia's kingdom; there are no huge plots to uncover, no questions of "what makes a good king?" and so on. The worldbuilding calms down here …
I loved The Goblin Emperor so much that I didn't want to seek out Witness for the Dead - who knows when Addison will write another book in this world, I have to make it last - so I waited until I happened to come across it on the shelf at the library, which finally happened.
I don't know that I would say it's better than The Goblin Emperor - for one thing, TGE is a better entry point because Maia knows nothing about court and the reader learns along with him, where Celehar in WftD is in a world he knows intimately - but in some ways it hangs together better. This is a murder mystery, and an exploration of the outer edges of Maia's kingdom; there are no huge plots to uncover, no questions of "what makes a good king?" and so on. The worldbuilding calms down here in a way that's very satisfying to a reader of TGE, too.
As Witness for the Dead, Celehar's job is to commune with recently-deceased bodies to hear what they can still remember of their deaths or their concerns, which helps solve disputes and clear up confusion (and his job is also also to put down ghouls, bodies that rise from the dead when their graves aren't kept up or properly marked). This puts him in the middle of local religious politics, family drama, and murder. The main murder of the story is a young mezzo found clubbed on the head and left in the water, which Celehar is trying to solve, clue by clue; there's also a woman enticed away from her family and poisoned, which points Celehar to look for a serial wife murderer.
My main issue with TGE was that the pacing of the plot was awkward, with the exciting action sequence that felt like the climax happening near the midpoint, and of course those niggling questions about how despite the fact that Maia is the lovable good boy and underdog, he's kind of ... conservative, isn't he? And WftD has a similar problem: the most exciting part, dealing with the ghoul, happens at the midpoint of the book, and everything else is fairly calm, with no real rising intensity. I was actually okay with that until the seemingly unrelated plot threads resolved rather suddenly in the last few pages. In some ways, this book is more like literary fiction than genre mystery, which relies on a particular formula of increasing danger and clue-finding, but it didn't quite stick the landing.
More particularly, I had an issue with the central mystery - the murdered mezzo. The picture Celehar finds drawn of her through all of the interviews he does with her colleagues and acquaintances is not very nuanced. She was a bitchy, demanding leech who was only liked by pathetic backstagers who were absolutely zero threat to her. I kept waiting for him to find out that there was more to her and make some sort of thematic point, but she was never more than a macguffin to drive a mystery for Celehar to solve. None of the mysteries seem to have much of a thematic point, unfortunately.
Minorly spoilery, but I did love that Celehar gets to find people who aren't so fussed about being marnis, and is set up to have a healthy, loving romantic relationship once he finishes dealing with his issues over causing Evru's death. And really, that's the most important thing.
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 …
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 points at which I needed a little help. Specifically, I found the sexual mores confusing, and it was important to the plot that they make sense.
I would highly recommend this if you read and liked The Goblin Emperor, but I'd be more cautious to recommend it if you haven't, even though it's not a sequel per say.
I read The Goblin Emperor long enough ago that I really don't remember much about it (other than that I enjoyed it) but that didn't matter at all when reading this book. The world of this novel is well-described and interesting. I liked the main character and as he spends the book trying to solve several murders, we learn about the world and the people who inhabit it. I really enjoyed inhabiting the space for awhile.
Review of 'The Witness for the Dead' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
Another novel in the world of The Goblin Emperor, but entirely stand-alone, could be read in any order. The first novel was about the new goblin emperor himself; this one is about Thara Celehar, a Prelate of Ulis and a Witness for the Dead who was a side character in the first book. After helping the Emperor he is moved to another city and takes up a post there, where he makes other clergy extremely nervous due to his connection to the Emperor. The novel mainly follows Celehar as he solves a series of murders - which is his job, after all. Like the first book it's a fairly gentle main character who dutifully goes about his daily responsibilities. The world remains very detailed and interesting although still a little confusing at times with all the different titles thrown around. Despite various murders to solve, a ghoul attack, and lots …
Another novel in the world of The Goblin Emperor, but entirely stand-alone, could be read in any order. The first novel was about the new goblin emperor himself; this one is about Thara Celehar, a Prelate of Ulis and a Witness for the Dead who was a side character in the first book. After helping the Emperor he is moved to another city and takes up a post there, where he makes other clergy extremely nervous due to his connection to the Emperor. The novel mainly follows Celehar as he solves a series of murders - which is his job, after all. Like the first book it's a fairly gentle main character who dutifully goes about his daily responsibilities. The world remains very detailed and interesting although still a little confusing at times with all the different titles thrown around. Despite various murders to solve, a ghoul attack, and lots of dropped details about a tragic gay romance in the past, the book somehow still leaves me with the impression of being a fairly gentle read without any huge emotional highs or lows.
Murder mystery with elves and goblins, and an opera!
4 stars
This novel doesn't follow the same character as The Goblin Emperor, but builds up that same world. It is a crime fiction in a fantasy setting and not a regular ole fantasy novel (you know, the ones that start with “Harry y'er a chosen one!”).
I really liked the main character, it made me think a lot of Robert van Gulik's Judge Dee or Ellis Peters' Brother Cadfael. He's a Witness For The Dead, as such he can “see” the last thoughts of the recently deceased, and he can fight ghuls. His “normal” cases relate mostly to ending inheritance disputes or finding tombstones, but sometimes, when an unknown, mysterious young woman washes up on the shore of the canal, he's called on to see what he can learn about her last moments… and if it shows that she was the victim of a murder, he's got to solve it.
I …
This novel doesn't follow the same character as The Goblin Emperor, but builds up that same world. It is a crime fiction in a fantasy setting and not a regular ole fantasy novel (you know, the ones that start with “Harry y'er a chosen one!”).
I really liked the main character, it made me think a lot of Robert van Gulik's Judge Dee or Ellis Peters' Brother Cadfael. He's a Witness For The Dead, as such he can “see” the last thoughts of the recently deceased, and he can fight ghuls. His “normal” cases relate mostly to ending inheritance disputes or finding tombstones, but sometimes, when an unknown, mysterious young woman washes up on the shore of the canal, he's called on to see what he can learn about her last moments… and if it shows that she was the victim of a murder, he's got to solve it.
I also liked the setting, instead of seeing the court of the emperor, you see how his subjects live. There are a multitude of influences in the worldbuilding, it made me think of a late-19th century Japan—full of modern wonders (tramways, zeppelin factories!) along with a deep spiritual grounding of the characters, and a very stratified society. And lots of tea drinking.
The book was a fast read, the only problem being all the elven or goblin names to remember.
Review of 'The Witness for the Dead' on 'Goodreads'
No rating
I wanted to jump into this fantasy because I remembered The Goblin Emperor fondly, but oh my goodness. The fantasy terms and names I needed to figure out how to pronounce and understand in the first few pages.