Review: The Witness for the Dead, by Katherine Addison

 Review: The Witness for the Dead, by Katherine Addison

By Rich Horton

A few years ago I read Katherine Addison’s novel The Goblin Emperor, and I just lapped it up – it’s a captivating read, and among other things it is about a noticeably good protagonist – someone who tries to see the best in other people and do the best he can for all around him. I came late to that book, and now I come late to a book set in the same world. This is The Witness for the Dead, which is the job title of the protagonist, Thara Celehar, who was an important character in The Goblin Emperor. And while Celehar is in outward appearance and attitude rather different to the Emperor, he shares with him a virtuous character, and a sense of duty. The Witness of the Dead is the first of a trilogy about Celehar and the city of Amalo.

Thara has moved to Amalo and taken up his duties there. As a Witness, he can sense the perceptions of very recently deceased people, allowing for understanding of why and how they died, and perhaps some ability to help their spirit rest. Besides the religious aspects of his job -- and he is also a Prelate of the god Ulis -- this knowledge can help in investigating suspicious deaths. Thara also has the ability to "quiet" ghouls -- reanimated corpses that can escape a poorly constructed grave. Thara, partly for his somewhat prickly nature, partly for his connections to the royal family (and his relationship with the Emperor -- addressed in The Goblin Emperor, and partly simply out of jealousy, is regarded with hostility by the other priests in Amalo.

The novel works as sort of an introduction to Amalo, and to Thara Celehar's life there and his job. Thus we see him investigating a variety of cases. Mostly this arises from a request to Witness for a recently dead person -- requests he takes as sort of a civil servant. As the novel opens, he is trying to find a woman who was disappeared, and who her relatives believe was killed by her husband -- an unlikeable man they barely knew whom she had very suddenly married and who had died while pregnant -- supposedly due to enteric fever. Soon he is also enlisted to witness the last perceptions of a drowned woman just recovered from the river -- and he learns quickly that she was murdered, and that she was a roundly hated opera singer. Even as these investigations continue, he is hired to witness for a man who left two separate wills, in the hope that the dead man's memories will reveal which was the true will. A distant mountain village reports an infestation of ghouls, and Thara must travel there to find and quiet them. Other duties include tending to the victims of an airship explosion, and helping an old man, long exiled to Amalo for political reasons, to reconcile with a granddaughter he never met.

This perhaps sounds like a bit of a tangle, or an episodic fixup perhaps, but really the novel works very nicely as a unified work. The point is not the solution to the mysteries, but to portray Thara Celehar himself, and his milieu. The various stories to link up to a degree, and he is successful in doing what he can to resolve each situation, though such resolution can be complicated. The matter of the will, for example, leads him to legal trouble, as the politically connected man who loses out on the inheritance brings an action for fraud against Celehar. The airship explosion is in the end a wrenching tragedy, as is the case of the missing woman. The primary thread is about the murdered opera singer, and this leads Thara to meet some interesting people and to uncover some very unhappy secrets. Throughout, we are with Thara, and his stubborn virtuousness, his devotion to his duty, his refusal to play political games, and his deep pain over the loss of a lover (this another event covered in The Goblin Emperor.)

Much as with the first novel, I was enchanted. Thara Celehar is a character we root for, and one we admire. The events of the book -- the various mysteries -- are interesting in themselves. (I was reminded just a bit of Sarah Monette's long series of tales about one Kyle Murchison Booth, who, a bit like Thara Celehar, investigates various necromantic mysteries -- these stories are well worth looking for as well. Sarah Monette, of course, is Katherine Addison's real name.) One aspect I also appreciated was the novel's respect for religion -- for religious believers (like Thara himself), for the value of religious rites and observance, and for the inherent mysteries to sacred beliefs -- all while depicting the completely invented religions and gods of this fantasy world.