I've followed a tortuous path to get to this book, which was released last March but which I'm only getting round to reviewing now. That's because my introduction to this rich world that Katherine Addison has created started with book two in a spinoff trilogy. That was 'The Grief of Stones' and I adored it but struggled with it too because I needed a grounding that it didn't quite give me. That is now firmly in place, courtesy of 'The Goblin Emperor', still credited as the first in 'The Chronicles of Osreth' series, then 'The Witness for the Dead', a spinoff focused on a single character, Othala Thara Celehar, and a reread of 'The Grief of Stones', which furthered his story, so I can continue it here.

That's the right way to tackle this series and, quite frankly, seems like the only way to tackle it. It is possible, as I proved, to start partway through, but in doing so I made my life much harder than it should have been and missed quite a bit until I went back to find out what. Also, the further this runs, the more it refers back to earlier events. While the lead character solves many mysteries in these books, many of them turn out to tie together. There are a few in this particular book and all of them seem to connect. They're not the same mystery by any means but they connect. It always helps to pay attention but especially so here.

To make all this even more awkward, these three 'Cemeteries of Amalo' novels are so different to the book they followed. They're each shorter than 'The Goblin Emperor' and more dynamic. They don't merely bring a rich and impeccably detailed fantasy world to life, as that original book does without a heck of a lot of story to bog down the character building. They also trawl in mystery and horror and drama and a whole lot more. If 'The Goblin Emperor' were ever adapted to the screen, the result would be an art film, while the trilogy would be genre movies set in the same world. It's almost as if the two are pitched to two different audiences.

Celehar is a Witness for the Dead, which is a holy calling that involves accepting any right petition for his work, his services provided for free but funded through a stipend from the Amalomeire. He works in the city of Amalo, to which he was assigned by the Archprelate after he provided capable service to the Emperor of the Ethuveraz. He's a quiet elven man who has gone through much as he navigated a set of adventures across three books and now into a fourth. I like him immensely, not just as a character but as a human being, rather ironically given that he isn't one, even in fiction. I want to keep reading about him forever.

When we left the previous book, Celehar had lost his ability, leaving Velhiro Tomasaran in charge of the day to day Witness for the Dead business. He can help her, because there's so much more to it than talking to the recent dead and he's still capable of doing everything else. So he's her guide and mentor and sometimes backup too, while he awaits a fresh assignment from the Archprelate of Cetho, Teru Tethimar. That turns out to be a tough one, to figure out what's going on with the municipal cemetery of Ulnemenee, which hasn't buried anyone in fifty years, and solve it.

But wait, there's more, as they say. There's also a death at the Vermilion Opera, at which Celehar spends a good deal of time because his friend Iäna Pel-Thenhior serves as its director. The corpse belongs to Mer Ema Dravenezh, the secretary of the Marquess Parzhadel, the opera's sponsor, so it's a big deal and, while Tomosaran can handle it officially, he's on the fringes of it as her mentor and Pel-Thenhior's friend. Later, he's assigned as a consultant to Osmer Lisava Ormevar, a scholar working on the dig at the Hill of Werewolves, from book two. And we haven't even got to the title yet. Eventually, he's kidnapped by miners who want him to solve the problem they have inside the mountain known as the Tomb of Dragons.

Now, the dragons are all dead, but one of them is hanging around anyway. We've already seen the ability Celehar has to deal with ghouls and, in the second book, a revethavar, a dangerous abiding ghost that remains, sometimes for centuries, after a ritual suicide. Well, here we get perhaps the most daunting word Addison has conjured up yet; because Ithalpherix is a revethvezvaishor'avar, the revethavar of a dragon. He is still pissed that the Clunethavar gassed the mines to wipe out a hundred and some dragons over a century ago and he wants restitution for that. And, because it makes it official, he petitions him as a Witness for the Dead.

I'm sure you're wondering how all this is connected, but the bottom line is treason. Very early on, Celehar is roused from sleep because the Vigilant Brotherhood need to search his apartment and everywhere else for Dach'osmer Coralis Clunethor, who I believe I remember from the fringes of 'The Goblin Emperor'. He's the next in line for the principate of Thu-Athamar but he was involved in treason against the new emperor and locked up. Now he's escaped and is at large and the more Celehar gets caught up in other plot strands, the more he's put in danger from this one.

There's so much going on here that it's hard to do it all justice in a short review, especially when a simple plot strand here turns out to have roots in others in an earlier book, maybe more than one. As you probably noticed, I've mentioned a lot of names and I did that because many have meaning and resonance from earlier stories. There are a whole bunch more who play their parts here, and some of them play massively important ones, like Edrehasivar VII, whose shadow constantly floats over this series. He was the titular character in 'The Goblin Emperor', of course, but I don't recall him appearing in the spinoff trilogy until now. It's good to see him again, but it's good to see a lot of these characters again.

'The Goblin Emperor' was a daunting book, but it's as rich as fantasy gets. We learn about a world primarily through a single character, as he's thrown into the spotlight, given ultimate power over his empire, literally down to the life and death of any of his subjects, but in such a ritual structure that he's as much a prisoner as anything else. While this spinoff series leaves that behind in Cetho to concentrate on a minor character from that book, as he solves mysteries and defeats monsters and everything else, it's really continuing to build the story of the emperor and the Elflands. This is a book, but it's more as the third book in a series and a lot more as the fourth book in a broader epic.

The reason I think this works so well for me is because it balances every aspect in utter harmony. It works because it's incredibly rich worldbuilding. It works because it's deeply built on character. It works because it trawls in the best from multiple genres: it's a fantasy novel that functions as a set of mysteries interspersed with moments of horror, drama, intrigue, adventure, even hints at romance. And yet it does all of those things all at once. There are nuances in these mysteries and especially these intrigues that I've not seen in novels dedicated to those things.

And, as humble as he is, Celehar is one of the great fantasy characters but I could put a top ten list together of others here in support. Addison weaves her magic that deeply. It takes serious skill to make us sympathise with a murderous dragon who's been dead for over a century. And that leads me to my biggest problem, which is that I care about so many characters here, especially Celehar, that I don't want this to be over. The back cover lists this as the final volume in the 'Cemeteries of Amalo' trilogy and, while a lot of things have certainly wrapped up here, not everything is done.

It needs to keep moving forward. For a start, while the potential romance for Celehar that we've been wondering about for a long while now is scotched, happily so, there's a new character who's brought in apparently to take that role. Except it doesn't get to that point because the book has no more pages left and we're left to wonder where it might go, just as we're left to wonder about whatever task the Archprelate will have for him next. Assuming that there's a next. What I deeply hope is that, while the 'Cemeteries of Amalo' trilogy is done, Thara Celehar will return in another trilogy or another series or another something. It can't end here.

Now, there are short stories in both the 'Cemeteries of Amalo' trilogy and the broader 'Chronicles of Osreth' series. I will track those down. However, there other novels by this author, at least two as Katherine Addison, which is a pseudonym. One is an urban fantasy set in an alternate Victorian London and the other is a historical fantasy novella co-written with Elizabeth Bear that's set even earlier, with Christopher Marlowe as a child as the lead character. There are more under her real name of Sarah Monette, including a number of series. I need to explore. She's that good. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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