The Grief of Stones

What a lovely, dignified book. This may be the first "cozy novel" I read and genuinely enjoyed in part for its coziness. At least... I think it qualifies as cozy? The subject matter is anything but: ghosts, ghouls, murders, blackmail, and as the title says.. grief. It's a lot. But the narrative style is so straightforward and calm, the opposite of overwrought. Just really direct and enjoyable. I find the protagonist incredibly sympathetic and bringing in a foil for him and maybe even a love interest in this book were good choices.

The plot structure still confounds me a little. I guess it's a murder mystery story? Certainly most of it is investigation. Also the setting confounds me; is it really a fantasy novel? The trappings of fantasy are used to transport the story into a fictional milieu I find compelling, so yes. But then it's hardly a swashbuckling adventure tale or fable of eldritch strange worlds. Just enough.

I also continue to be annoyed by the writer's habit of dropping in made up fantasy words as if they were normal. Most of the time it's pretty straightforward to figure out from context what is meant by the extra word, even if it's a little hard to keep all the honorifics and proper names straight. But occasionally a sentence occurs like "I did not know if Anora knew I was marnis. I knew I did not want to tell him." and there's no real clue here what marnis might mean. It turns out to be important int his case! ("Gay", or maybe "Queer"). Perhaps I was supposed to remember it from the previous book. It's powerful to use new words here because the meaning might be subtle and unique to the book, not exactly like "Gay" or "Queer" to an American reader. But it'd be helpful to give a little more hint to the reader. Harumph! It's a minor quibble.

I've now read 3 of 4 of Addison's novels and enjoyed them all. Remarkable writing!