David Bremner reviewed The Grief of Stones by Katherine Addison (The Cemeteries of Amalo, #2)
Good, but definitely not standalone.
4 stars
I read this quickly while somewhat sleep deprived, so I don't have as coherent an impression as I might have hoped.
Like the previous "Witness for the Dead" this is essentially a noir detective novel with fantasy elements. The characters are engaging, although the villains turn out not to have much redeeming qualities.
It's hard not to see the Goblin / Elf dynamic as some kind of comment on race and racism, although it wasn't really clear to me if the book was commenting on contemporary society or just reflecting it.
The book relies on the reader having some recall of the previous two, but especially Witness for the Dead. The reader needs the previous book not only for background on the world, but also on the relationships.
Like in Witness for the Dead, the use of an imagined dialect of English is crucial to both the atmosphere and the …
I read this quickly while somewhat sleep deprived, so I don't have as coherent an impression as I might have hoped.
Like the previous "Witness for the Dead" this is essentially a noir detective novel with fantasy elements. The characters are engaging, although the villains turn out not to have much redeeming qualities.
It's hard not to see the Goblin / Elf dynamic as some kind of comment on race and racism, although it wasn't really clear to me if the book was commenting on contemporary society or just reflecting it.
The book relies on the reader having some recall of the previous two, but especially Witness for the Dead. The reader needs the previous book not only for background on the world, but also on the relationships.
Like in Witness for the Dead, the use of an imagined dialect of English is crucial to both the atmosphere and the characterizations. Speakers (or students) of French or German will recognize the notion of formal and informal pronouns and their collision with plural. Other words seem to be borrowed from older variations of English, helping to paint the picture of a kind of steampunk early-modern world.