…suddenly, a bright pink mist was drifting all about her, and her god was there, laying the gift of tongues upon her tongue. It tasted like grapefruit.
“Tits and pickles,” she whispered.
Then, remembering herself, the necromancer Miscellaneous Stones bellowed in a voice to rival the raging hurricane…
Last April, C.S.E Cooney released Saint Death’s Herald, a sequel to her epic saga of Miscellaneous Stones (Lanie), the joyful necromancer with a literal allergy to violence, who won the love of the goddess of death herself.
Spoilers to follow for Saint Death’s Daughter, which you really should read. In fact I’d recommend everyone reread the first book in the series anyway, since there are a lot of details to keep track of, and the best way to experience C.S.E. Cooney’s writing and the world of Athe is to immerse yourself in it up to the eyebrows.
If you’re remember, Lanie finished Book 1 by defeating her enemies and saving her entire home town of Liriat and everyone she loved. And her reward was to be banished from Liriat. Forever. Her best friend/lover/ruler of Liriat may have had very good reasons to brand Lanie a traitor and send her into exile. And maybe one day Lanie will understand them. Lanie still starts Book 2 heartbroken and technically homeless.
Fortunately she’s got her found-family companions: the Falcon-Defender Duantri and her gyrlady Tanaliin. Lanie’s niece Datu, and Datu’s father Makkovian (who’s technically Lanie’s brother-in-law, but the less said about Lanie’s psychotic and thankfully-deceased sister Nita the better). And let’s not forget Mister Underwear Stones – Datu’s loyal revenant wolf cub – and a flying tiger rug named Stripes. Lanie will need the help and support of all of them in tracking down a rogue spirit. The spirit of Miscellaneous Stones’s long-dead Great-grandfather Rad has escaped, and nobody is happy about it.
Her great-grandfather was pure poison, a blight upon the planet. She wanted Irradiant Stones eradicated from Athe, all memory of him erased. She wanted nothing to do with him.
Except, he was her job.
This book has a darker tone, a tighter focus, and it’s quite a bit shorter than the previous novel. Not surprising; Saint Death’s Daughter was the full story of Lanie going from terrified underage student of the undead who could just barely resurrect skeleton mice in her backwater home in Liriat, to full-blown necromancer, traitor to the crown, and avatar of Saint Death herself, all while painting a glorious, sprawling picture of an entire world and its gods and what their high holy feast days looked like.
Saint Death’s Herald is a single quest.
Great-grandfather Rad won the Northernmost War against Skakmaht by trapping his soul in a sarcophagus with the three thousand Skakmaht sky wizard souls that he spent the next century feeding on. He’s out now, and his main goal is to get back to Skakmaht, hop into one of the many empty sky wizard bodies that have been patiently waiting in the ice, and then pick up the genocide where he left off. In the interim he’s going to possess any body he pleases, scheme, terrorize, maybe do a little light theft of an entire race’s next generation, and thwart his great-granddaughter’s attempts to capture him at every turn.
Not that there isn’t still a lot of tasty world-building going on here as well. In Book 1 the discussions of the sky wizards were mostly confined to what Irradiant Stones did to them, and Lanie’s dealings with the current Skakmaht ambassador and her three sons. Here, we get to see what being a sky wizard means, what their floating castles look like in the frozen north, and what effects you can get from a magic that’s based entirely on ice.
Now his mouth sparkled with icicles in the shapes of incisors, canines, molars, premolars. Every time he spoke, his teeth flashed and shimmered with foxfire…
Grandfather Rad also takes a side trip that I thought was going to be a brief diversion/monster hunt, but ending up being something much, much more. The mysterious city of Leech is home to the Skinchangers, a race of monsters who eat people. Okay, that’s not entirely fair. Skinchangers absorb the substance of their prey – the knowledge, the memories, the soul – and they can shift to the shape of anything they’ve absorbed in their life. Their city has its own religion and laws, and a very strict system that lets non-Skinchangers live within the city in exchange for an official contract for a Skinchanger to absorb them the moment before they die of old age. They’re very civilized. But they are also most definitely creatures who eat people and then choose which previous meal’s shape they’re going to wear, like picking out an outfit for the day.
It shouldn’t be a surprise to find out that Lanie is completely enthralled by the entire concept. She probably would have found a reason to visit Leech even if she wasn’t desperately trying to stop Irradiant Stones from stealing a Skinchanger body and becoming even more of a soul-devouring monstrosity than he already is.
I’m not sure I can fully describe just how chock-full this book is of, well, everything that C.S.E. Cooney’s writing is known for, a smorgasbord of gothic-horror-weird-sorcery-madcap-fantasy-religious-awe-tragedy-and-joy. There’s a battle aboard a floating ice castle, with the ticking clock element of knowing that at any moment the method of keeping that castle aloft is going to fail and send the whole thing crashing to the ground. There’s another battle/contest/trial-by-combat that lasts, not kidding here, seven chapters, and every moment of it is more strange and violent than the last. We see the story from multiple viewpoints, and some of them provide revelations about the history of the mostly-eradicated sky wizards that will make you lose a lot of sympathy for them, even as you’re hoping that some of the last remnants will get their revenge on Irradiant Stones. The book has trauma, and grief, and a poignant goodbye to someone I never thought I would care about, and the touching loyalty of an undead tigerskin rug.
And at times the book is also ridiculously cozy. While Lanie is on her quest, Makkovian and Datu are living a nomadic life traveling from tent-city to tent-city on the Caravan School Road, with said tent cities being big enough to have their own libraries, restaurants, and concert halls. C.S.E. Cooney’s footnotes remain deliciously off-kilter and hilarious, characters break into iambic pentameter when the mood strikes, the food and costumes in each location are an endless supply of fan art ideas, and I need to see just one picture of the open-air tea house Lanie visits in the middle of the Feast of the Bone Shark festival in Nurr.
Lanie herself is maybe a little more damaged here, but not a bit more wary, still happy to get carried away by the latest thing she’s fallen in love with. Lanie falls in love a lot. With her found-family, who are all of course completely besotted with her. With a perfectly lovely scattering of bones. With old friends/former enemies. With Skinchangers. With gods. With frikkin’ limestone. (Limestone is the Best Rock Ever, and it’s not even a close contest.) Lanie’s death magic has expanded to the point where – with the help from some friends – she can convince an entire pantheon of gods to swing by, maybe offer some assistance (with all the wildly glorious images that would entail), and that opens up a lot of opportunities for what else Lanie can do. The ending of the book doesn’t quite set up a sequel, but it doesn’t not set up a sequel either. I’ve seen a few people comment that this book is sort of the satisfying ending we’ve been hoping for since the end of Book 1, but I feel like there are enough elements still up in the air for Cooney to turn into the future adventures of Miscellaneous Stones and her Delightful Traveling Contraption Made Entirely Out Of (no I’m not going to spoil that for you, go read the book.)