Review: The Grief of Stones, by Katherine Addison

 

Celehar’s life as the Witness for the Dead of Amalo grows less isolated as his circle of friends grows larger. He has been given an apprentice to teach, and he has stumbled over a scandal of the city—the foundling girls. Orphans with no family to claim them and no funds to buy an apprenticeship. Foundling boys go to the Prelacies; foundling girls are sold into service, or worse.
At once touching and shattering, Celehar’s witnessing for one of these girls will lead him into the depths of his own losses. The love of his friends will lead him out again.

This book is like a warm embrace. Katherine Addison's The Grief of Stones returns once again to the world where she set her magnificent The Goblin Emperor, but this volume, like the once that came before, doesn't explore the protagonist of that novel but instead a character who appeared there, the Witness for the Dead Thara Celehar. Witnessing means being able to feel a dead person's last moments, and also investigate if something is afoul. Thara is a very contained charachter, something that is accentuated by the first person narration. He is weighed down by a tragic thing in his past, when he was forced to testify against his lover for a crime his lover committed; but he's also a kind character who always does what's right.

This isn't a flashy book; our narrator is very episodic in his recounting of every single day of investigation. But the narration is never boring; every single thing matters, the little connections that are made with other characters, the other little cases that intersperse the bigger investigation. We are accompanied on a journey in a world that comes to life around us, meeting the everyday people, witnessing Thara find friends and connections that love him and care for him. It is, most of all, a healing book; even though the protagonist is put through the ringer in this installation, one can just be sure that his healing journey is on the right track.

I just love the writing. This is a world were language is pretty codified, where people use you for pretty much every interaction, leaving thou only for family and friends; where people use we to talk about themselves. It was pretty jarring in the beginning, but by now it's the third book set in this world, and it's a joy to see characters suddenly using thou to express their feelings.

The book is set in a pretty homophobic world; Thara suffers not only from the grief of his past lover's death, but also from the fear of being discovered. He doesn't seem to want to act on the feelings he seems to be having for another male character, but throughout the book are small scenes of incredible tenderness.

The Grief of Stones is a quiet book that shimmers with hope.

✨ 4 stars