SAINT DEATH'S DAUGHTER

In this debut novel, the first of a trilogy, a previously reclusive young necromancer ventures out into a dangerous world.

Miscellaneous “Lanie” Stones is born into a family famous for its executioners and assassins; she herself has a violent allergy toward, well, violence and violent death…a sign that she is destined to have the power to reject death itself (up to a point) as a necromancer. As her abilities increase over the years, so do her responsibilities and troubles. Her ancestral home is on the verge of being lost to creditors. Her only reliable teacher in necromancy is the ghost of her great-grandfather, whom no one else can see and who absolutely cannot be trusted. Her glory- and money-seeking sociopathic sister, Amanita Muscaria, has accepted a commission from the Blood Royal for a series of assassinations that results in Nita’s own brutal murder, leaving Lanie with a (justifiably) resentful brother-in-law and a willful, vengeance-minded young niece. The murderer, the sorcerer-queen Blackbird Bride, is after Lanie’s niece (to kill her) and Lanie (to enthrall her into becoming one of her many spouses). Can Lanie keep herself and those she loves safe, trust the new friends she’s found, and possibly find happiness with her beloved pen pal, the nobly born fire priest Canon Lir, who has their own considerable store of secrets? Cooney’s stories (such as in her World Fantasy Award–winning collection, The Bone Swans, 2015) typically include violence, abuse, death, ghosts, and the afterlife—elements which in other hands would also be accompanied by gloom and dreary cynicism. But Cooney also always infuses her works with joy, (often literal) lust for life, improbably lighthearted humor, and the possibility of hope; it is an unusual and surprisingly charming and poignant admixture. The concept of a kindhearted necromancer who is a friend to death (and Death, in the persona of the goddess Doédenna) rather than its foe makes perfect sense in this context.

Grisly, dark, lovely, funny, heartfelt.