2023-04-11 21:21:24 ¶ ●

Nobody does “haunting the narrative” quite like Tamsyn Muir. Characters who died ten thousand years ago and still irreparably alter the fabric of the universe, who we’re still wondering about and obsessing over. Cristabel, Anastasia. Characters like Nigella, Loveday, Alfred, Samael - characters who we barely know a thing about, but who haunt the story in the things they left behind, the people they left behind, the people who knew them and loved them and hated them. They’ve got civilisations founded for them, a single word of their personality lives on in the names of the people they died for. Joy. Patience. “Love is a revenant” indeed. We watch our characters walk the empty rooms they once lived in, read the words they left to outlast them, dress in their clothes which are too big or too small.

Dulcinea Septimus, dead before we meet her, collateral damage in life and in death, sick of roses and horny for revenge. Ortus Nigenad is dead in act one, gone and unimportant, and then he changes the course of the second book. We only get to know him properly after his death, like Protesilaus, like Dulcie. Then there’s Awake Remembrance Of These Valiant Dead, taking the haunting literally. (Not to mention Gideon and the Body)

It makes sense that a series about necromancy would have plenty of haunting but god it’s done well