Reviews

The Grief of Stones by Katherine Addison

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kristinecanwrite's review against another edition

5.0

A soft, but nonetheless devastating portrait of the kinds of grief and shame that eat people alive. While this is probably the slowest and most focused of the generally slow and wide-lensed series, and there were places where I missed some of the verve of Witness for the Dead, I was still absolutely obsessed. There are plenty of dangling threads to leave me salivating for the next book, but honestly I'm still screaming about all the times people tried to tell Thara they would love him even if he weren't useful, and will be waiting in the hope that book three is just 200 pages of Iana and Thara talking about opera and feelings.

ergative's review against another edition

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3.75

Like Witness for the Dead, this had a sort of unfocused plot structure, lots of individual events winding around each other, anchored by Celehar's internal landscape which--despite being so central to so many events--doesn't really change much over the course of the book. A very slow, gentle opening up of a mostly closed-off but gentle person.

Unlike previous books, the use of pronouns for conveying intimacy felt much less consistent. People regularly blend informal 'I' and formal 'you' in the same conversation in a way I don't recall from previuos books (but possibly a reasonable middle ground between extreme formality and extreme intimacy); and there are cases where the same people in the same conversation use 'thou' in one sentence and 'you' in the next. This is a pity; I really liked this approach to linguistic worldbuilding in these books, and I would like to see it maintained more consistently.

mou3r's review against another edition

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challenging emotional mysterious sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

This was beautifully written, as are the other works that take place in the universe Katherine Addison has created. I struggle to categorize her novels into broad genres such as 'fantasy' or 'mystery' as they unfold themselves in a way that seems very unique to the author. Following the minutiae of a single character's day to day life in a vivid and lively town full of well crafted characters, the reader receives a level of detail often reserved for visual storytelling - like one would find in video games or highly polished film sets.

I watched the nearness of the end approach with sadness as I knew the many troubles, wounds and story threads our protagonist was wound into couldn't possibly be resolved in the space remaining. In Thara Celehar, Addison has fashioned a very unique figure whose story I find myself deeply craving more of. I was gutted that things ended where they did, but found the echo of the book's title an appropriate place to leave things for this installation.

queerlyread's review

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4.25

Accidentally read this before The Witness for the Dead because my library had it mislabeled as book one, but hey, it was still good! A little confusing at first because you are thrust right into the life Celehar has built for himself but it's like... when you meet someone who has built a slow, steady life somewhere and you're granted access into it. I was learning Celehar during the beginning of this book (due to my own folly hah!) and it was a really interesting reading experience.

The first half of the book deals with a pretty uncomfortable plot line when it comes to the slowly unfolding mystery (and it is slow), but it's never gratuitous. Celehar is the same stalwart, gruff elf we knew in The Goblin Emperor and it was nice to see his character so well defined and how he (big spoiler)

responds to losing such a major tenet of his identity part way through the book

. The second half of the book gave big MWT's The Queen's Thief series vibes and I was SO here for it.

Like The Goblin Emperor, for me, Celehar's story really shines in his interactions with others. It shows such a wide range of dynamics and interpersonal relationships, and not all of them good. KA does an excellent job of not overly villainizing her antagonists, but also not over-idealizing her heroes.