The Tomb of Dragons

First sentences, and I am home. Katherine Addison’s universe is so rich, vivid, lived-in! I want all the food they are eating and the tea they are drinking. I want Vermillion Opera, and I want to read Barizheise novels.

In this particular book:

Thara Celehar is on a sabbatical of sorts, after the events of The Grief of Stones. He has PTSD, there are sorrows old and new.

Thara gets a new task – to look into an ill-managed cemetery. Cleaning out a hoarder’s office was interesting, and Thara was very wise about it. I liked that plot line a lot.
There is also a murder mystery connected to the first book in the series, which grows bigger than anticipated.

The most important, darkest, scariest part of the book is the Tomb of Dragons, of show more course. I love how Thara always, always strives to do the right and moral thing, no matter what it costs him. He ends up witnessing for dead dragons: ”They speak and have names and feel grief as well as anger,” I said. ”What more do they have to do before we cease pretending that they are animals?”
Thara gets the emperor himself to pass judgement! This makes powerful people very angry. This also means that we finally meet Maia again! Just a few scenes, just a few glimpses… Why can’t we have another book about Maia? Sigh.

The characters and their interactions are the ones I love best. It is still difficult for Thara to accept that he has friends that care about him, that his actions affect them, that it is ok to let friends help him. Thara, sometimes I want to shake you so much! Thara’s friends’ ”mixture of exasperation and fondness” was very spot-on.

Iāna and Thara have such nice interactions, with many fun and poignant moments.
”Didst need to see me so urgently?”
Iäna shrugged and his ears went sort of sideways. ”Did wish to see thee.”
Thara and Iäna finally talk through their relationship and friendship – friendship is what they both want. Phew, I guess.
”Thy friendship warms something in me that had been cold for a long time.” Awww.

Because of reasons, Thara also gets a bodyguard. That’s Captain Olvarezh, who is impressive and I like him a lot. Thara thinks of him as “my flamed-eyed captain”. Oh dear 🔥
”We regret that you are stuck guarding us.”
”We do not,” said Captain Olvarezh.
🔥
(I have hopes.)

The ending is dramatic and promising. Give Thara more adventures, more friends! (And maybe more Captain Olvarezh?) Above all, give me another book, please. show less

Thara Celehar lost his ability to talk to the dead, so his apprentice Tomasaren has taken over as Amalo's principal Witness for the Dead. However, his Archprelate still has work for him to do, and sends him to a cemetery that has not been functional for 50 years, where he finds a room stuffed with paperwork and a person in charge who's afraid to do his job. Then one day he is kidnapped and brought to a mine where a dragon asks him to Witness for the 192 that were killed 100 years ago.

As in the previous two books, there are lots of irons in the fire for Celehar and as we watch him methodically "follow his calling," the various stories unfold and interconnect. This was such an enjoyable book, and every time I sat down to read it, I just show more could not wait to find out what would happen next. The characters and their relationships have developed, Celehar is (awkwardly) learning to accept that people care about him, and the ending wraps up things nicely while still leaving the possibility open for more adventures. show less

Thara Celehar feels like his life is in limbo as he waits for an assignment from the Archprelate. When it arrives, things do not get much better: he's taking on a cemetery that has not been functional for fifty years, due to bureaucracy and low-level politics. There's an office with papers literally stacked to the ceiling that will have to be gone through by someone. Then, most unexpectedly, he is kidnapped by miners and taken to a mountain to negotiate with the remains of a long-dead dragon -- or die in the attempt...

I did not reread the previous books in this series because I was so excited to get to this one, and I followed along well enough -- though there were certainly characters and events that I would have remembered better with show more a refresher. So, I'd recommend coming to this after a recent reading of at least the previous two books featuring Celehar. By no means should you start here, if new to the series. That said, I relished this book for the characters and dialogue as well as the plot. An excellent addition to the series, and one of my best reads so far this year. show less

Not starting this until I've read the previous books, and I'm indulging by starting with The Goblin Emperor because I haven't read it in too long. Oh my. Thara does manage to get into very _interesting_ situations. Witnessing for a hundred and ninety-two dead dragons... And helping his successor solve a murder, that leads to solving a case of treachery, and a severe upending of political and economic structure of the empire. Nice to see the Emperor again, though only from the outside - nothing from his POV. And then to top it off, a nice rounding off of Thara's time in Amalo - leaving friends, but he'll never again be as isolated as he was before. They won't let him. As usual, a very rich story, and one I'll be reading again. A lovely show more ending. Hope she's planning to write more here, though I don't know about whom - doesn't matter, it'll be worth reading. show less

Tomb of Dragons is a very engaging read, the characters worth spending time with, the writing fluid and unobtrusive, and the action made up of the everyday with intrusions of life-threatening diversions not over-dramatized or made into big fight scenes. Those dramatic events may be motivators, but they aren't the focus—which I feel is the exploration of the world and of the characters and the relationships of the world to the characters and the characters to themselves and each other within the world.

I struggled a lot with the names and the language this time -- probably because it's been a while and I just don't remember as well any more, partly because there are a lot of similar written formal names and places and after a while it masks characters that I may have loved in the past, but can't really recognize now.

That said, I would characterize this as accountability fantasy, and it is so, so satisfying to read right now. And I hare that accountability and integrity are things of fantasy, but here we are. it was wonderful to be back in this world again, with the diffident and self-effacing Thara Celehar. It was comforting on so many levels to see him healing and returning to himself, and to see him leading the way for community show more services to be un-stuck and returned to service, for the powerful to be curbed on their behavior, and for the challenging embrace of change. show less

An excellent installment in what is now at least a 4 book series about Thara Celehar, Witness for the Dead. This book picks up immediately after the events of Grief of Stones. Thara is still recovering from what happened in the previous book and while recovering, is assigned a completely mundane task - find out why one cemetery is not operating and get it operating again. Seems simple, but as usual, along the way he gets sucked into a murder mystery, plus a bigger mystery - the dragons want revenge! Well written with excellent characters. This series is short on action, but good on characters and good prose. I'm looking forward to the next one.