The Witness for the Dead

The Witness for the Dead by Katherine Addison.

I came here to drink tea and solve murders

The more I read of this the more convinced I became it was partway through a series, but I never really felt compelled to put it down and check. Celehar's very matter-of-fact approach to decidedly not matter-of-fact situations is a perspective which seems like it should make him a boring character, but never manages to. Instead he's just a competent guy trying to get his job done in the midst of murder, undead and office politics.

We begin with the introduction of an overarching mystery Celehar spends the whole book chasing, then end up on several entertaining and (mostly) unrelated diversions before the climax. These diversions include laying a ghoul to rest, having a sleepover with ghosts of an ancient battle and reuniting a family (with added explosions!), providing a nice break from and occasionally tying back into the main thread.

After finishing I finally got around to checking if it was midway through a series and what do you know, it's technically the start of one! Apparently it's the first book of 'Cemeteries of Amalo'. On the other hand, I strongly suspect having read at least 'The Goblin Emperor' would help with all the angsty references to a past love called 'Evru' and the reason the emperor seems to owe Celehar. Goodreads seems to agree, listing 'The Goblin Emperor' as book one of the 'Chronicles of Osreth' series, which also includes this book as the second (after books 1.1 and 1.5 of course, both of which were released after this -__-).

Overall an enjoyable read despite references to events I had no knowledge of and the steep vocabulary learning curve, with a whole lot of 'Min' and 'Amaloth' and 'Ulis' being thrown around with only context to guide you. I'm excited to start the series in the intended order now and see where it goes.