Review.

The Grief of Stones

Katherine Addison

Book 2 of The Cemeteries of Amalo
Pub date: 14 June 2022
Publisher: Tor Books
Reviewed from Net Galley

I first encountered Katherine Addison in the surrounding hype for the release of The Witness for the Dead, with a lot of people I respect recommending the “prequel,” The Goblin Emperor. Although I don’t often pay attention to other peoples’ recommendations (tastes are so subjective) the few times I have given in, I haven’t been disappointed. And The Golbin Emperor was no exception. Then Addison continued the delightful experience, first with the The Witness for the Dead and now with The Grief of Stones.

And on another side note it wasn’t until I finished The Witness for the Dead that I bothered to look at the copyright page and was delighted to find that Katherine Addison was a pseudonym for Sarah Monette, co-author with Elizabeth Bear of the powerful Iskyrne series. Bonus.

The Grief of Stones is a direct sequel to The Witness for the Dead (and spoiler alert: she sets up a book three!) in what is now called the The Cemeteries of Amalo series. It picks up pretty much right after The Witness for the Dead and I would recommend reading them in order. The main character, Celehar, a Witness for the Dead who has been in all three books, investigates another death per his calling and it soon becomes bigger than he had foreseen, taking him across the city and intersecting the lives of both the nobility and the destitute and abandoned. And of course along the way we learn even more about makes this most interesting man tick.

A combination of detective fiction, steam punk, fantasy and pure fun, the The Grief of Stones is a great read. My favourite kind of read in fact. The characters (especially Celehar) are sympathetic, mostly non-heroic and and just trying their best, and Addison deftly weaves the culture and history of her world around the “humanity” of the characters rather than getting caught up in how her complex world-building affects them. It is one of those books with a culture that hosts a rich and complex structure replete with confusing titles, indecipherable relationships and opaque hierarchies, but is one that you can just safely ignore as much of that as you please and be certain that the story will carry you along—it’s the kind of writing I love when it’s done well (and this most certainly is) because you know you can go back again and again and discover something new every time.

So go out, read the first two books, and get ready for the release of The Grief of Stones—you won’t regret any of it.