A third round of walking places and drinking tea, amidst the horrors.
Throughout the Cemeteries of Amalo trilogy, Katherine
Addison has made clear time and again that this is a complex world with
complex, intertwined problems, and none can be solved without having some
effect on several others. Each book shows Thara Celehar, a priest of the god of
the moon and death, called upon as a Witness to unravel knots that seem
impossible to be disentangled, and in so doing uncovering more and more
problems that need to be solved. In many ways, this is a thesis that runs
through Addison's other work in the same world - The Goblin Emperor -
in which Maia, the titular ruler, must learn the boundaries of his new role in
charge, and that every action has reaction, in order to begin to rule either
competently or successfully.
It is no surprise, then, that this third installment in the
series features what seems to be a culmination of this thesis – a problem so
intertwined that it binds up with the potential financial collapse of the whole
empire. If that were the case, if we did have a problem whose just resolution
was a mire of compromise, it would be a fitting end to a well constructed
trilogy.
Except… that culmination happens around ¾ through the book. And
while, in both its foreshadowing and the way the characters discuss it, it
seems to be fulfilling that entire purpose, in the execution and the aftermath,
it manages to undercut itself so completely as to hollow out the entire arc. A
deeply frustrating resolution to something so well crafted.
And yet, all is not lost, because there have always been
several things going on at once in these books. Alongside the steady emphasis
of complex problems, there has been an equally steady emotional progression
happening for Thara Celehar. When first we met him in The Goblin Emperor,
he was visibly depressed, burnt out and full of inexpressible grief, a
situation only mildly improved by the time he comes to us as a protagonist.
Through the course of The Witness for the Dead and The Grief of
Stones, Celehar manages almost unwittingly to gather around himself people
who come to care for him, often very deeply. Over time and with a pacing that
reinforces the difficulty and realism of the progression, these friends begin
to make him realise that he is not alone in the world, that he can ask
for help and be answered, that he need not suffer in silence, that he is wanted
and loved. This thread also reaches its crescendo in The Tomb of Dragons,
and where the other failed, this one, in a perhaps unexpected way, succeeds
admirably.
Part of that success comes in its definition – Celehar does
not finish the story full of renewed vigour, ready to tackle the entire world.
It ends, instead, in hope, and in the beginning of possibilities for new
things. His perspective has constantly been one with no presumptions on others,
no expectations, nothing that suggests he might hope for more than the bare minimum
possible. Through The Tomb of Dragons, however, we start to see
something kindling in him that sees people – new people – in a different light.
Little flashes of different patterns of thought, starting to catch himself admiring
a guard captain with vivid eyes, for instance. At the same time, some of his
existing relationships reach their own crescendo – there is a particularly
evocative scene in which he demands to know what one of those close friends
wants from him, a question thoroughly indicative of his way of thinking. The
answer is, of course, friendship. It has been clear to me throughout why his
friends seek him out. It is meant to be clear to the reader. The crisis point
is reached when Celehar’s determination to deny himself the truth cannot be
sustained anymore. Only once this crisis passes can something new begin to grow
in its place.
What Addison has, I think, done well here is to have this
crisis of friendship happen alongside that burgeoning attraction, but separate.
This has been a series very much about a man struggling with the experiences he’s
suffered and the world he lives in, with the grief of his lost beloved. Having
his friends be a fixed point, a certainty that grows and grows throughout the
series, feels like an anchor point to his healing, or a safe haven. Having,
after so long, a new attraction grow that is not entangled with this emotional
safety net feels like both a safe choice, and a healthy one. It also gives an
interesting contrast in how we see, through Celehar’s eyes, his approach to
someone he finds attractive versus the baffled acceptance of a new friend.
There’s a difference there, and being able to see it beginning from a fresh
spark makes it all the more hopeful.
And then, there is a third strand, a little subtler under
the other two, of the winds of change beginning to blow through the empire. This again has been seeded throughout Addison's books in this world, and again is starting to bubble a little closer to the surface in this final part of the trilogy, though still quite subtly. In some ways, it makes sense - the world of the books is patriarchal, hierarchical, tradition-bound and rigid. Of course change would come slowly. It is one of the many interconnected problems of the books. So to an extent, the very limited scope of the end point of this arc - seeing Celehar change the way he thinks about the world, catching himself when he observes a group and instead of seeing "ah, a bunch of elves", realising it's a bunch of elven men - is in keeping with what we've seen so far. This is a world where change is limited and incremental. Why would it be different here? And yet, at the same time, it is somewhat disappointing to see. Celehar's colleague, Tomasaran, has become a core part of the circle of friends he has gained, and has been instrumental in his beginning to recognise the gender-based flaws of the society in which he lives. It feels cold comfort that the best she can hope for is "a man starts to see she maybe was kind of right that everything sucks for her".
But this is the core tension of this world. Much though I love The Goblin Emperor specifically and the series generally, it exists within the problem of its themes, and those themes - all things in a complex society are connected to other things, power has a price and limitations, even an emperor cannot act unilaterally and without consequence, people can only do their best and try to make things a little better if they can - come with downsides. A "burn it all down" approach simply would not work within what Addison has set up. From the starting point we are given, fixing a racist, hierarchical and sexist society incrementally would take an extremely long time (if it is indeed possible). And so there cannot be, without upending everything the series leads us to expect, the kind of true, whole resolution that would be emotionally satisfying - much as Celehar's personal emotional arc ends on the hope of better things, so too does this sense that things are moving towards the better in the empire. And while, when those limits are imposed only on the scope of one person, I find them not only reasonable but more satisfying than the alternative, I cannot necessarily say the same when the scope widens out to a societal level.
This is a theme that simply cannot get closure, unless Addison plans to keep on writing through hundreds of years of in-world history, or write a revolution. I recognise the narrative necessity of it, and my own frustration, and both are legitimate, but in tension with one another. I wonder if that's the point - am I intended to feel this frustration, and that to be part of the emotional payoff? This is a series that works within something flawed and terrible to tell stories digging into specific ideas. To expect full catharsis would go against my understanding of the terribleness of the world. If it was intended to make me keep thinking about it, it's certainly worked.
Possibly, on an emotional level, I want something impossible. I want this story about a man walking places, drinking tea, and solving connected problems that require compromise and imperfection, and I want something that comes to a grand, satisfying conclusion that fits within my own views of the world and what a "good" ending looks like. And I want those both to happen in a way that feels well-written, plausible and grounded within the thematic framing of the world. But I can't have all of them. So perhaps the solution is to reframe my thinking a little.
Stories, to be worthwhile, do not need to come to conclusions that fully satisfy my moral expectations of the world. It is possibly to explore something in a bad or messy situation, and have that story achieve something thematically interesting through the mechanism of that exploration, without necessarily "fixing" all the problems. Through this lens, though there are still problems, I think The Tomb of Dragons succeeds much more admirably. If anything, the problem becomes and insufficient commitment to the thesis of eternal compromise, rather than an inability to reject it.
And so… two incompletely successful strands to the story, and one successful.
And yet… I found I liked it anyway. There is something deeply comforting in the
repetition throughout this series of Celehar’s walking between places and
asking for things, and going to tea with people. There is always purpose in
both, enough to sustain a plot drive, but at a pace that just feels…
comfortable. It’s so mundane, amid occasional intrusions of strangeness and
excitement. Whatever else Addison does or does not do, I always find myself
happy to spend the time as Celehar wanders about, trying to solve problems in
small, connected ways, and it is just as present here as in either of the other
two books in the series. While there is that disappointment that some of the
thematic promises were not fully upheld, Addison did hold up what turns out to
have been the most important part of the bargain for me – this quiet,
meandering experience of Amalo, tea shop and bureaucratic problem by tea shop
and bureaucratic problem. It is the feel of the thing, more than anything else,
that I craved. And I got that feeling. Whether the lingering thoughts about the bounds imposed on the scope of the story resolve ultimately into something I like or dislike, the fact is that I am continuing to think about it. And that, too, I craved.
--
The Math
Highlights:
- Continues the tone and pacing well-executed in the previous books
- Murders are indeed solved, can confirm
- Tea, walking and cats
Nerd Coefficient: 7/10
Reference: Katherine Addison, The Tomb of Dragons, [Tor Books, 2025].
POSTED BY: Roseanna Pendlebury, the humble servant of a very loud cat. @chloroformtea.bsky.social