Reviews

City of the Dead by Rosemary Jones

audreyintheheadphones's review

4.0

Somewhere in Waterdeep, Sophraea mused as the morning wore on, there were battles being fought across rooftops, intrigues being plotted in shadowy taverns, and clandestine assignations being made in perfumed bedrooms. But here, in her courtyard, there was laundry. Basket after basket of laundry filled with the enormous shirts and pants needed to cover a Carver male.

Synopsis: The Carver family has kept watch over Waterdeep's most important graveyard, the City of the Dead, for countless generations. But Sophraea, the Carver's sole daughter, finds herself in the middle of a complicated revenge plot with a cute green-eyed wizard at her side. Cameos by her great-grandmother the pirate captain, an enchanted ball of yarn (YES), guardgoyles, zombies, two severed hands (two!) and a homicidal shrubbery.

Oh so good. So good, y'all. I kept thinking of everyone on my flist I'd rec this to, and lost count. It's just fun.

Sophraea Carver comes from a long line of very large males, the Carver clan, who carve the monuments and guard the secret gate between the cemetary and Dead End House, their ancestral home.

As the only girl, she's longed for adventure! And excitement! What she gets are zombies. She should have been more specific.

The zombies attack by night, and by day, her family's beset by nouveau riche merchant Rampage Stunk (oh yes) and his army of really weird henchmen, bent on buying up tomb space in the coveted City. Things are very busy. And they get busier.

Basically, although this book is part of the Forgotten Realms series, but the label on the spine's really the only connection to the series. This is a gorgeous little standalone girls' own picaresque, equal parts Gormenghast, Discworld and the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland. It's a delicious romp with a refreshingly flawed but gutsy heroine.

How awesome is this book? Allow me to demonstrate.

Awesome Thing the First!

In the middle of a stormy night, Sophraea wakes to the sound of Stunk's henchmen breaking into her family's workshop, to steal an old and very rare book. Now, your run-of-the-mill plucky heroine might creep down, nightgown clutched about her, to see if she could divine their evil plan. But no! Sophraea, possessed of a large family of men for whom melee combat is an avocation, instead dashes from the window and runs through the house banging on doors, shrieking "UP THE HOUSE! THIEVES! THIEVES!"

Awesome Thing the Second!

The men in her family do not get up right away. No no, they lie in their beds and grumble as their wives pummel them with cold feet and recriminations. Because hello, that's how this sort of thing would really unfold. Points for veracity.

Awesome Thing the Third!

Eventually the men come pouring out of the house in their nightgowns, awhooping and ahollering at the miscreants, shortly followed by all their wives, bearing brooms and pots and pans. Sophraea has led the charge with a mallet, and is gaily bopping miscreants. This does not sit well with her uncle, who carries her bodily out of the fray and sets her on the doorstep next to her grandmother, so that he and his wife can go back to whopping. Poor Sophraea.

But as her grandmother points out, "...why bother when you've got so many tall relatives who are having so much fun." Who can argue with that?

Awesome Thing the Fourth!

Her grandmother keeps the enchanted ball of yarn, the family's last line of defense. Which I am not going to spoil for all of you.

And basically the whole book's like that. Guardgoyles. Severed hands. Zombies. Gravediggers named Fish and Feelers. Banter. Homicidal shrubbery. A heroine who honest to goodness stomps her foot. A bedridden pirate captain who upsets people. The cousin who's never spoken of. Tiny little ghostly shoes.

"You have been hunting for days," said Stunk's wife, "and if you do not do something soon about this haunting, I will have to abandon my air of noble calm and succumb to strong hysterics. And then who will host your endless dinners?"

Do I even need to mention the bit where two of the gravediggers rip a zombie apart and beat other zombies to death with the remains?