Witness for the Dead

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Katherine Addison: Witness for the Dead (2021, Doherty Associates, LLC, Tom)

Langue : English

Publié 13 novembre 2021 par Doherty Associates, LLC, Tom.

ISBN :
978-0-7653-8744-8
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4 étoiles (6 critiques)

5 éditions

Slow and meandering fantasy murder mystery

3 étoiles

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 …

a publié une critique de The Witness for the Dead par Katherine Addison (The Goblin Emperor #2)

Buena lectura para noviembre

4 étoiles

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 …

a publié une critique de The Witness for the Dead par Katherine Addison (The Goblin Emperor #2)

fantasy noir?

4 étoiles

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.

a publié une critique de The Witness for the Dead par Katherine Addison (The Goblin Emperor #2)

An ok fantasy/mystery.

3 étoiles

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.

a publié une critique de The Witness for the Dead par Katherine Addison (The Goblin Emperor #2)

Review of 'The Witness for the Dead' on 'Goodreads'

5 étoiles

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 …

a publié une critique de The Witness for the Dead par Katherine Addison (The Goblin Emperor #2)

a beautiful world to exist in

4 étoiles

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 …

Sujets

  • Fiction, fantasy, epic
  • Fiction, fantasy, action & adventure