Scan barcode
A review by nonesensed
The Grief of Stones by Katherine Addison
4.25
Thara Celehar continues his work as a Witness for the Dead, now with an unexpected, adult apprentice to teach along with all the new deaths he needs to solve or simply follow up on. It's rough being a Witness, but would it be even worse to not be one? Food for thought.
I'd like to start out saying I enjoyed this book. I love Thara Celehar as a character, he is just the kind of loyal, self-sacrificing dumbass I enjoy reading about. The mysteries Thara deals with engaged me, for the most part. The characters are interesting, and I love the subtle signs of a bit of a found family forming around Thara. Please keep this in mind while I now spend the rest of my review whining.
I've finally put my finger on why this book and the one before it haven't grabbed me as much as The Goblin Emperor: The plot and the character development rarely overlap.
In The Goblin Emperor the plot is finding out who killed the former emperor and if our dear main character Maia can survive long enough on the throne to find that out. The character development and emotional stakes are Maia finding allies and friends in a beyond rough and hostile environment. These two things go hand in hand and build on each other.
When we follow Thara Celehar, the plot is a constant string of minor death-related mysteries with the main focus on one such major mystery. In this book, it's the death of a noble woman that turns out to not be as natural as it first seemed and how that eventually puts Thara on the scent of a questionable foundling school. The character development is about Thara letting go of his grief over his executed lover and maybe one day opening up to the many people around him who want to be his friends, family and also a potential love interest. These two things rarely overlap. Also, the focus of the book is clearly on the mysteries, not so much on scenes where characters just bond or talk about their own conflicts. This makes most of the dialog feel very utilitarian. The characters focus mainly on discussing the mysteries they're trying to untangle, pausing briefly to ask rare personal questions, and then "going back to" the plot. This is not so different from The Goblin Emperor, but since the plot and characters went well together there, it wasn't as irksome.
I will admit to outright groaning in frustration at points in the book, especially towards the end, where I thought I finally was going to get Thara seeking true comfort from his love interest Iäna, only for the two of them to Mostly Talk Plot, with few non-dialogue cues that there was anything else going on subtext-wise, only twenty pages from the end of the story. I feel like I'm missing scenes of character interaction and feelings. There's a lot of subtext going on, but we're now on book two with Thara as its main character, and things about him revealed all the way back in The Goblin Emperor - like the fact that he caused the death of his lover by following his calling as a Witness and getting said lover executed for murder - has only ever been adress by Thara dwelling on it. When they're not talking about the plot, the characters default to long walks in silence together or brief moments that could be building to something (like sudden hand-holding near the end of this book) that's not followed up on. The difference in pace and focus between plot and character development is, in short, jarring.
I am holding out hope for Thara getting to just talk to people, should there be a next book, but that hope is growing fainter.
I'd like to start out saying I enjoyed this book. I love Thara Celehar as a character, he is just the kind of loyal, self-sacrificing dumbass I enjoy reading about. The mysteries Thara deals with engaged me, for the most part. The characters are interesting, and I love the subtle signs of a bit of a found family forming around Thara. Please keep this in mind while I now spend the rest of my review whining.
I've finally put my finger on why this book and the one before it haven't grabbed me as much as The Goblin Emperor: The plot and the character development rarely overlap.
In The Goblin Emperor the plot is finding out who killed the former emperor and if our dear main character Maia can survive long enough on the throne to find that out. The character development and emotional stakes are Maia finding allies and friends in a beyond rough and hostile environment. These two things go hand in hand and build on each other.
When we follow Thara Celehar, the plot is a constant string of minor death-related mysteries with the main focus on one such major mystery. In this book, it's the death of a noble woman that turns out to not be as natural as it first seemed and how that eventually puts Thara on the scent of a questionable foundling school. The character development is about Thara letting go of his grief over his executed lover and maybe one day opening up to the many people around him who want to be his friends, family and also a potential love interest. These two things rarely overlap. Also, the focus of the book is clearly on the mysteries, not so much on scenes where characters just bond or talk about their own conflicts. This makes most of the dialog feel very utilitarian. The characters focus mainly on discussing the mysteries they're trying to untangle, pausing briefly to ask rare personal questions, and then "going back to" the plot. This is not so different from The Goblin Emperor, but since the plot and characters went well together there, it wasn't as irksome.
I will admit to outright groaning in frustration at points in the book, especially towards the end, where I thought I finally was going to get Thara seeking true comfort from his love interest Iäna, only for the two of them to Mostly Talk Plot, with few non-dialogue cues that there was anything else going on subtext-wise, only twenty pages from the end of the story. I feel like I'm missing scenes of character interaction and feelings. There's a lot of subtext going on, but we're now on book two with Thara as its main character, and things about him revealed all the way back in The Goblin Emperor - like the fact that he caused the death of his lover by following his calling as a Witness and getting said lover executed for murder - has only ever been adress by Thara dwelling on it. When they're not talking about the plot, the characters default to long walks in silence together or brief moments that could be building to something (like sudden hand-holding near the end of this book) that's not followed up on. The difference in pace and focus between plot and character development is, in short, jarring.
I am holding out hope for Thara getting to just talk to people, should there be a next book, but that hope is growing fainter.