The Witness for the Dead

I read and absolutely adored Katherine Addison's The Goblin Emperor a long time ago, and I've had The Witness for the Dead sitting in my Kindle account ever since. Somehow I never got round to reading it until this year, and now I'm wondering what took me so long. It follows one of the characters from The Goblin Emperor, Celehar (the titular Witness for the Dead), as he investigates several interconnected deaths in the city of Amalo. As with The Goblin Emperor, Addison doesn't spoonfeed her readers. She's created a world with a large array of naming conventions, customs and… show more.

I reread The Witness for the Dead at least three times in the first months after I got my hands on it and have bought it in both physical form and ebook. This is a great secondary world fantasy and murder mystery. It’s on this list because of the portrayal of Thara Celehar as a man struggling with depression, haunted by past trauma and the bleakness he expects of his future while carrying on doing his duty by those who depend on him, combined with his unfailing mixture of wisdom and kindness and his awkwardness in accepting kindness and friendship… show more.