A little unclear for me, I loved the idea the story telling was great in the beginning and from then on I had hoped for more structure. I would still recommend to read it however due to the lack of balance in the end it was not for me.

Rather a long read, but so worth it!

I was a little uncertain at first, as Nita didn’t appeal to me as a main character, but once I realised we would be sticking with Lanie for the story, I was in. Lanie is an instantly engaging, sympathetic main character and I loved her from beginning to end, plus the majority of the side characters (with Nita as a notable exception!).

The worldbuilding is utterly immersive in this book – I was fascinated by the death magic, fire magic, fascination magic and shapeshifting, and how they all worked. The whole story – plot and setting – was spellbinding, and the writing displays beautiful use of language and imagery.

And just to lighten things up a bit amidst all the death and darkness of the main story, there are the silly ‘history fact’ footnotes, filling us in on the ridiculous deaths of various Stones down through the ages, among other miscellaneous and unnecessary titbits. It was all a bit early Terry Pratchett, and I enjoyed it as a little bonus worldbuilding (as it doesn’t really affect the plot at all if you were to just skip those bits).

I actually lived in this book. I gasped, swooned, cried and smiled, and couldn’t stop thinking about it when forced to put it down. In fact, despite the length, I wasn’t ready for it to end. Luckily the ending hints that there is more to come from these characters and this world, and I am definitely there for it!

I would love to find out what happens next… the sooner, the better.

Review by Steph Warren of Bookshine and Readbows blog

I found this very confusing. The cover looked very lovely and the premise interesting enough. The start was nice enough, I was interested in what would happen, but it sort of unravelled. The characters, location, plot points - it all sort of mushed together and I was struggling to find my way through it,

This book has a lot of potential in its bare bones. However, the finished project read like a jumbled mess without clear structure to guide the reader on a journey, The book itself was too long and had in my opinion too much description.

On the other hand, there were so many cool and fascinating parts to the world like Nat and Mak's relationship, Lanie's necromancy and the two languages. I loved Datu's character she had so much spirit and eagerness to learn and be the best. Lanie was the character I loved but wished she had gotten more out of this book especially her relationship with Canon Lir.

Overall, this book had some great parts especially the villain, what cool fantasy idea but ultimately it was too dense a read for me and I struggled a lot to finish it.

This started out mysterious but I wasn't interested in the overall story. I liked how complex was the worldbuilding (even weekdays had different names). The story and the way characters talked also seemed a bit childish.

I was granted a copy of this book by Netgalley, in exchange for my honest opinion.
The plot it is very interesting and unexpected everytime i discovered something new.
I enjoyed the world building, it was overwhelming at some points to keep up with all, too many information dropped at once, but the way that the author wrote this making it possible for us read it like we were there, living it. I feel like the start was slow-paced for me, it toke a wile to see things happening, made me put the book down a few times, but I kept me interested enough to know the end. The characters where very intense and interesting, the darkness and cruelty, almost sociopath characteristics. I overall enjoyed for how different was and dark for a exchange on my reading style.
I could feel my emotions change along with the development of the story, and I always love that in a book.

Thanks very much to the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this title. Many thanks, Dave

the writing style of this author is beautifully glowing about being overly purple. Its dark and twisted plot gives me a whimsical feel. The characters were diverse and intriguing drifting along the story effortlessly. Appreciate the new fresh take on the concept of a royal assassin and how Laney intends to get her family out of debt and restore her family to their rightful spot.. Thank you net galley for access to an e-arc.

I was incredibly looking forward to this book. C.S.E Cooney has written a lot of my favourite short fiction so to get a full length novel was something I was on tenterhooks to read. Unfortunately, whether because of my own expectations or because it’s a rather different vibe to what I’ve previously read of Cooney, i’m not sure the book delivered with quite the aplomb I was expecting. The parts I enjoyed were very strong however there were a couple of weak elements that meant I can’t wholeheartedly advise everyone to read it,

Lanie, the main character is one of my favourite things about this book. She comes across as childish and naive in the first section of the book, and she’s definitely meant to as a large part of the story deals with the tension between being able to do something and whether you should. It also fits her character of someone who has both seen the worst of human nature in terms of the violence people can do to one another, but also has had a very sheltered existence. Despite this, the book doesn’t have a YA feel. Lanie is an active aunt to one of the minor characters and her actions have real consequences, two things which tend not to appear in YA-style coming of age narratives. There is also a very strong and poignant description of depression and its incapacitating nature which I rarely find in fantasy without it

However where the book fell down for me was it was far too rambly. The prose is gorgeous and has the right balance between being descriptive and flamboyant without being over the top, however the plot gets lost under a lot of scene setting. While it did make for a very visual world, I did struggle at times to remember what Lanie’s want and need was for large stretches of the book – making it hard to see the plot or direction the book was going in. For those that love slice of life or more aimless books this might be satisfying but I didn’t love the world enough to relish the amount of time spent in it. I also didn’t have a strong sense of how the gods and goddesses work in this world – even with Lanie having one as a patron and the title reflecting this. This is the element where my hopes were high and somewhat unsatisfied – most of what I’ve read from Cooney was fairytale-esque with real world elements so I was interested to see what a more freeform world might look like.

Ultimately I think there’s a lot to like and the book definitely picks up pace in the second half, but the first half can be a bit of a struggle to get to the meat of the story. I’m intrigued enough to pick up the sequel when its released but may also go back to some of Cooney’s old short fiction as well.

I thought this book would be right up my alley as it has so many elements that really excited me such as necromancy, an intricate and interesting new world, complex characters with interesting relationships with each other, and found family elements. However, while I did sometimes enjoy it, overall it wasn’t really for me. The concept is so unique but reading this book often felt like a chore. I started this book at the start of the month and only finished it a few days before the end of the month, which, for me, was so out of character. I should have flown through this book but I couldn’t read more than a couple of chapters at a time.

This book drops you right in the middle of a complex fantasy world that’s so different to our own and expects you to understand but it was too much too fast and I found myself confused quite often. I’m a big fantasy reader and usually am able to slip into different worlds so easily, but this one felt like I was swimming through treacle. Every time I thought I finally understood something, there was something else on the next page that I then had to figure out. In some ways, I love that the author has such a deep understanding of their world because, once I was fully immersed, it really felt colourful and alive, but I wonder if we could have been more slowly introduced to the world so it didn’t feel so overwhelming.

The characters are fantastically written and I think they are the best element of this book. I love the idea of a quirky, sweet, somewhat awkward necromancer as a main character and loved watching her grow throughout the book. All of the side characters were also so colourful and alive and three dimensional. Every character felt intentional and like they had purpose, if not to the story but in their own lives and the world they live in. I like feeling like characters have a life outside of what we see them do in the story and these characters really embodied that.

In some ways, I wish this book had been split into two. I think that would have allowed for a slower and easier introduction to the world but also would have left the story feeling less dense. So much happens here and I think allowing the story to be split into two books could have also let the story breathe. little more. The last 30% felt a bit rushed and I would have liked to have had a bit more time with the final few events.

Overall, this book oozes of love and passion in every page. The author clearly deeply cares about this world, the story, and these characters and it really shows throughout. However, at over 700 pages, this book is dense and heavy and was hard for me to get through. It throws you in right at the deep end and expects you to follow along as if you know the world as well as the author does. I wish I’d enjoyed this more but I know that there are absolutely people out there who will love this book exactly as it is. The writing is fantastic and the characters and world are equally amazing but I felt exhausted whenever I read this and it took me entirely too long to read.

Unfortunately this book was not for me, it was a bit slower than I would like and it just didn't hold my attention. I am sure other people will love it!

“Saint Death’s Daughter” by C.S.E. Cooney was a wild ride that relishes in its whimsically dark vibes. Super unique. Recommend!

Thank you to the publisher and Net Galley for the advanced copy of this book in exchange for my honest, personal review. I went into this book hopeful that it would be an amazing read. Unfortunately for me, I was unable to complete it. There was countless characters and plotlines to keep up with and with all the information given, it was hard to really grasp the storyline itself. However, I do think it is worth trying to read because the premise of the book is very interesting. You have a necromancer born into a family of assassins and she has to pay a debt to save her family home. Give it a try, you might enjoy this one!

This is a great book when it comes to world-building. It has detailed character concepts and has good humor. An interesting take on talking about the concept of death.

This is a sprawling, turbulent, gruesome, fascinating and very entertaining story that starts in a manor with the Stoneses family that is rather dysfunctional to put it mildly.

From there we see Miscellaneous "Lanie" Stones, the youngest daughter of the house, necromancer in hiding and allergic to violence of all sorts, emerge from the manor and find a hiding/living place in the city, as her family has life debts to pay.

As the story unfolds we get to learn more about her ancestral family and the many splendid, eccentric or cumbersome characters it bore.

We also see her making new friends in the city as she carves out a living for herself, and the family that has accompanied her from the Manor House, amongst them her niece, one of the best written child characters I have so far encountered in adult fantasy.

At times the story gets dark, gory, bloody and deadly, to then again focus on lighter matters. It is a celebration of life in the face of death quite literally. I found it thoroughly enjoyable.

I love fantasy, however, this book just wasn't for me. I didn't think there was anything wrong with the book I just didn't gel well with it, I found it a little slow both in terms of plot and getting to know the characters and I found it challenging to get through.

Saying that it did pick up halfway through but if I were reading purely for my choice and not to review I probably would have DNF this book.

I love a good fantasy book. I’m reading through most of the genres that are out there, but fantasy has a special place in my heart. So when I saw that a new series is coming out it instantly caught my eye. Even more so with the title and description suggesting death magics at play. And a very interesting main character with the most deliciously crazy name I could have imagined. So my expectations were set quite high for this book and after a few long hours that I’ve spent with it, I can say that they were (almost) fulfilled.

I really liked the setting and the world where the author has decided to place her characters. Naming convention for all those generations of Stoneses of Stones Manor is absolutely brilliant. I love how she was playing with words to make the book more fun. Although, I wouldn’t mind at all having a very detailed genealogy tree to get a grasp of who’s who and how they are related to each other. Speaking about characters, I cannot omit that there’s quite a wide representation of LGBTQ+ protagonists and I love that the author has decided to create for them a world much better and more accepting than our own. I’m putting a huge plus in here.

What I didn’t like in the book was that it was too… long. I usually say that I don’t have enough of reading, of the world and characters, but here I was sometimes quite bored by not enough action. I get that the purpose of it was to set up the world and characters (alive and dead alike) in it, but it was just dragging too much. Maybe it’s just me, but up to the 50-60% of the book it was simply boring in some places. I was still hooked enough to keep going, but there were moments when I just couldn’t be bothered to turn to another page.

All in all, I really liked this book and highly recommend it to just anybody. Now, all I can do is to wait for the second installment in this very interesting new fantasy series.

I was so intrigued by this book, but it was such a chore to read. My main problem with this book is that it was trying way too hard to be weird and different. With a main character named Miscellaneous and new names for the days of the week and months of the year there was too much going on. The names were really hard for me to take in. I like the idea of them because they are different and strange. But we would get introduced to a character with their nickname and then briefly get their full name with a long introduction. Then the story would switch between the nickname and full name so randomly that I couldn't connect them as one character. There were pages and pages of random flashbacks about dead members of a family we were supposed to think of as important and impressive. Those details are not the kind of thing that should be present at the beginning of the story. If I was a hundred pages in and invested, maybe I would have cared. However, the writing was just weighed down with too many unnecessary details in an attempt to create atmosphere. I can appreciate good world building, but this was done to such an extreme that it felt like the world building took up more of the book than the plot itself. There were moments when I enjoyed it because I was genuinely interested in the story as a concept.

I love death magic and necromancy and I appreciate that the author was trying to do something different with it. Unfortunately, that involved taking all of the parts of dark magic out that I enjoy.

The chapters were long and the story was heavy with gratuitous information making Saint Death's Daughter too much of a struggle to be enjoyable.

Sorry, this book did not really work for me. It was a little too weird and I didn't see why it was tagged as a romance.

I love how so many things happened in the book. I could not keep myself from the book because it was so good