The Witness for the Dead by Katherine Addison: review

5/5 stars on Goodreads

The Witness for the Dead by Katherine Addison

Katherine Addison returns to the world of her wonderful The Goblin Emperor in a stand-alone sequel, The Witness for the Dead. The protagonist is Thara Celehar who featured in the first book as the investigator solving the previous emperor’s assassination. It made him unpopular in the court, and the Emperor relocated him to a remote industrial city of Amalo to serve as the witness for the dead there.

Celehar is a priest who can communicate with the recently departed, to stand witness for them in this life. As naturally reticent, he prefers the company of the dead too. But being a witness often means investigating the lives of the dead, to find justice for them after death. It makes him a de facto criminal investigator, the only one in Amalo.

Celehar has a lot on his plate. A young woman’s family wants to find out how she died, which leads him on the trail of a serial killer. Another family wants to learn the patriarch’s true last will, which plunges him back into the political machinations he left the court to escape. And an opera singer has been murdered, and there is no dearth of potential suspects. Add to that a ghoul, an industrial accident, and a personable opera director who serves to remind him that one cannot be true to who one loves in the empire of elves and goblins, and it’s not a wonder he doesn’t sleep well at nights.

This was an utterly wonderful book. The world is rich to a fault, yet the story is small in scope; a cosy mystery in its truest form. Celehar, like Maia in the first book, is a deeply humane character who strives to do his duty, but who isn’t without small faults that make him all the more likeable when he overcomes them. The focus is on solving the mysteries, and although Celehar finds a way to forgive himself for the events of the past (told already in the first book), the book ends with him pretty much in the same place than in the beginning. Only a few experiences richer and with a new friend.

With a world this wonderful and characters as great as Celehar and Maia, I hope the author will write many more books set there.

I received a free copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.