Saint Death’s Daughter by C. S. E. Cooney is a brilliant debut. It’s well-written with a wonderfully unique world, a great main character, and a plot that doesn’t follow the worn patterns. It’s advertised as YA, but even though the MC is fifteen in the beginning, she’s an adult responsible for a child for most of the book. There are some dark themes too of childhood abuse and abduction that a delicate reader might find upsetting.

Miscellaneous Stones comes from a long line of sorcerers who have served the ruler for centuries with their murderous talents with magic. She’s the first necromancer to born in a century, and it comes with a rather unfortunate allergy towards violence and death. Even violent thoughts in her vicinity make her body break out in real wounds in response. To keep her alive until she reaches maturity and her full powers, the family has isolated her in their country manor. That hasn’t stopped her big sister Amanita from torturing her for all her life, until she mercifully left for a boarding school.

Then the parents are assassinated, leaving Lanie to deal with a staggering debt. Out of options, she summons Nita back. Nita promptly becomes an assassin to pay the debt. But she doesn’t come home alone. She’s abducted a man who can turn into a falcon to make him her husband, controlling him with his own magic. Mak hates Nita and Lanie, but to avoid having his memory wiped, he succumbs.

The book then skips seven years. Lanie is twenty-two and has come to her powers, though she still has a lot to learn—mostly from a murderous ghost of the previous family necromancer. Mak and Nita have a six-year-old daughter, Datu, who, having grown in a highly dysfunctional environment, isn’t exactly a nice kid. Mak still hates everyone but his daughter. And then Nita is assassinated, forcing Mak and Lanie to flee to protect Datu. To keep her family safe, Lanie has to face the powerful enemy who wants them dead.

The book takes a rather winding path to where it needs to go. Mostly we follow Lanie as she learns to be a necromancer. The book is solely from her point of view, and she is an excellent MC, strong, resilient, and warm-hearted despite her upbringing and the form of magic she wields. She maybe grows a bit too powerful towards the end, but she has friends to keep her in rein.

The supporting cast is interesting and not stereotypical. Mak was my favourite, but he wasn’t given enough airtime. Datu as a tantrum prone, murderous kid was wonderful. The enemies weren’t pure evil and could occasionally be allies too, and the friends Lanie made along the way were a good addition.

But I found the romantic subplot uninspiring. It’s seldom that romances work when they’ve begun before the book does, and this wasn’t an exception. I never felt any connection between Lanie and Lir (the great twist at the end failed to affect me in any way because of it). Mak and Haaken would both have been perfect for a wonderful enemies-to-lovers plot, but neither choice was in any ways utilised. However, the way the book ended gives me hope that the childhood infatuation will be forgotten and there will be a proper romance in Lanie’s future.

The world is interesting and fully developed, with a rich history that is constantly referred to, at least in funny footnotes, large pantheon of gods, and unique ways to practice magic. Nothing is overly explained, but the narrative flows easily and makes everything effortlessly understood.

The book has a good ending. It’s conclusive enough to satisfy, but with a few open threads that’ll hopefully lead to a sequel. I’m definitely looking forward to it.

I wanted to love this. I really did. And there were so many promising elements but they never led to something that I adored or was invested in. It just kept meandering and looping and being just... okay. I have no doubt this is an excellent book, it has a strong narrative and a unique, whimsical writing style but it didn't work for me at all, and whilst I did finish it, it took a lot to push to the ending and I didn't really enjoy it.

Beautiful cover and I'm sure it's perfect for someone, that someone just wasn't me.

Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for letting me read an e-ARC of Saint Death Daughter by C.S.E. Cooney. There is no way that I could write a blurb for a book whose events and plot twist and turn like Lanie’s hair on the front cover, so I’m just going to use the publisher’s:

“Nothing complicates life like Death.

Lanie Stones, the daughter of the Royal Assassin and Chief Executioner of Liriat, has never led a normal life. Born with a gift for necromancy and a literal allergy to violence, she was raised in isolation in the family’s crumbling mansion by her oldest friend, the ancient revenant Goody Graves.

When her parents are murdered, it falls on Lanie and her cheerfully psychotic sister Nita to settle their extensive debts or lose their ancestral home—and Goody with it. Appeals to Liriat's ruler to protect them fall on indifferent ears… until she, too, is murdered, throwing the nation's future into doubt.

Hunted by Liriat’s enemies, hounded by her family’s creditors and terrorized by the ghost of her great-grandfather, Lanie will need more than luck to get through the next few months—but when the goddess of Death is on your side, anything is possible.”

C.S.E. Cooney has crafted a vibrant and vivid fantasy world with multiple intricate cultures based around 12 gods and their powers and if you can manage to get into it, the experience is lovely. That being said, there is so much exposition in this book that it took me about 10 chapters to figure out what was happening and you must be prepared for a very character-based book. The plot is an elusive creature ducking in and out of view at times and while I am personally okay with following Lanie through her daily life, I understand that not everyone would be. Cooney’s extensive vocabulary and use of footnotes to provide more family history for the Stones creates an atmosphere equally as eccentric as her main character.

Lanie makes a wonderful character to follow as she attempts to balance her own natural compassion against the expectations of her sister, their ghostly grandfather, and the rest of Liriat, that she be a coldhearted necromancer chomping at the bit to pull skeletons out of living bodies. The vibe of this book is borderline dark academia with the extensive amounts of studying and experiments that Lanie runs and scholarly friends that she makes throughout the book.

The romance that Lanie has with her love interest is one of my favorite things in this novel. The way that she can be as weird or withdrawn as she wants or needs at the moment and her love interest is still hanging on her every word. Their devotion to this macabre girl that could hole herself up in a lab and not talk to them for weeks to months on end is heartwarming. So many of my highlights in this book were just conversations between the two of them that I loved. Reading the letters that the two write to each other was lovely because you could just see how they want to tell the other everything minute detail that has happened in their life and the other wants to read it just as bad.

I loved learning about the different cultures and their views of the gods, specifically the original Quadiíb religion, which is the only one to still hold all twelve gods in equal reverence and balance, and whose language must be spoken in meter and rhyme. The variety of characters that we meet from there provide their own unique perspectives on the practice of magic. The question of heresy or honesty, compassion or judgment, is broached many times but left open for the audience to decide on their own. One of my favorite moments in the book was the acknowledgment of how trauma shapes not only one’s view of both their own culture and religion but of others as well.

The world Cooney has crafted is so effortlessly queer. Lanie’s love interest uses they/them pronouns as do their ommer (a gender-neutral form of aunt or uncle with the respective term for their descendant being niephling). On four Holy Days made up of the solstices and equinoxes, many people crossdress and use different pronouns. Anyone can be with anyone else regardless of gender. And the important thing about this is that none of it is questioned or unusual, it just is.

Overall I’d give Saint Death’s Daughter 3.75 stars. I truly enjoyed this book and am considering getting my own physical copy but the amount of time it took to get into it and the plot that comes and goes as it pleases was enough to bring it down from 4 stars.

What a wonderfully complex and entertaining read. I thought this was going to a be a quick YA story of a young necromancer navigating her powers but it completely blew my expectations away.

Firstly I wouldn’t classify this as YA - it’s leaning more to high fantasy with a MC that starts at 15 but ages. It is the same category I would place books like the Maleficent Seven and The Bone Maker. The writing in this however is wholly unique. The world building is fantastic. We get the history of this family and their famous terrible deeds (in very black comic detail). We get at least 3 different regions with unique languages, cultures and magic. We have 12 gods with differing gifts and abilities, and though Lanie our MC is dedicated to just 1 - Saint Death - the others all make an appearance. We also have loads of characters that are well defined, and aren’t written as 2 dimensional fodder. There is also sexual and gender fluidity, in a very casual understated way, that is just delicious. Not to mention plot and tension plus surprise twists in spades. That ending? It could be standalone but I hope there is a book 2 coming.

It is a lot (as you can imagine it is very chunky) so it’s not a quick or easy read, but it very enjoyable like a full bodied wine or a 50 year old aged whisky. You read slowly and enjoy. I had to take my time to think of how to write this review. This is a very highly recommended 4.5 stars that I will push to everyone that has the patience to read it.

Laine (Miscellaneous) Stones is the youngest daughter of Unnatural & Abandon Hope Stones (the names are all out-there ridiculous).- a family with a long line of executioners, poisoners, & assassins - usually in the service of their country, Liriat. Laine is different as she is a necromancer & grew up with an allergy to death, & was mainly raised by Goody Graves, the revenant tied to the Stones family by magic. Her older sister, Nita, is away at school when their parents die within days of each other, & when Nita returns she brings with her a captive, Mak, a man who turns into a falcon. The story unfolds as the sisters attempt to stop a creditor from taking all their worldly possessions, including their home. Laine is in love with Canon Lir, a firepriest, but is also courted by the Blackbird Bride - ruler of the Rook Kingdom & enemy of Liriat. Nita agrees to become a paid assassin to the Liriat court whilst Laine is left to bring up Datu, daughter of Nita & Mak, but Laine's powers continue to grow & soon she cannot hide away any longer.

This is not my usual genre of reading material but I was intrigued by the synopsis. The world-building is first class, there's lots of LGBTQA+ & minority representation, & I grew to like Laine, Mak, & even Goody. It should really have been a four star book, but at times the pace was glacial. There's so much detail (there are footnotes!) that it slows down the pace too much - I swear at one point it took almost a full page just to describe how Laine hesitated too long, & I felt a bit impatient with how passive she is at times. I also wasn't keen on any aspect of Mak's captivity, especially as he felt like he had no option but agree to be Nita's lover. If there is another book, I will probably read it as I would like to know what happens after that shocking betrayal at the end.

My thanks to NetGalley & publishers, Rebellion/Solaris, for the opportunity to read an ARC.

TW: death, blood, suicide attempt, kidnapping, death, animal death.

Read this back in October and absolutely loved it. There is delicious whimsical prose, footnotes reminiscent of Terry Pratchett and Bartimaues, found family, really interesting necromancy,(and other forms of magic), some pretty gruesome scenes for what seemed like a cozy book, characters that are so vivid they're embossed in my mind, curses, revenge, forgiveness, non binary character, side lesbians, a betrayal that made me gasp out loud, a loveable child & dog (cw: the dog does not die but is tortured) THE best names ever….. You see why this book had to be 600+ pages.
This follows our protagonist Miscellaneous “Lanie” Stones, youngest of the only two surviving daughters in the infamous Stones family of assassins.Lanie is the once in a generation Stones necromancer, except she's deeply allergic to violence (a major problem with the family business being what it is). The story starts with her parents dying & her elder sister returning home to take up family debt & business, but the book covers several years and involves country politics as well on top of everything else I mentioned before. Only just learned this is part of a trilogy and can't wait for more.One of the foot rates had me wanting a spin off of a book just briefly mentioned and alas nonexistent. Read this for a good time.

Thanks to Rebellion Publishing and Netgalley for the ARC.
3.75/5 stars

Well, this story is just a bit mad isn't it?? I will admit it's hard to fathom where to begin and definitely sure my words won't measure up, but here we go. This story is a fantastical combination of dark magic, whimsy, coming of age, found family, eccentric, odd characters and many, many skeletons. Our protagonist is Miscellaneous "Lanie" Stones, whose family serves as royal assassins, but Lanie is allergic to killing and violence, but is excellent at bringing the dead back to life. Honestly, this book to a while to get into, but I was glad I stuck with it. There is a lot to take in, it's complex and trying to keep track of all the family members with their wondrous names takes effort. Once Lanie, Mak and Datu leave Stones Manor is really where it took off for me and kept me reading. It truly is a unique story with so much imagination and creativity. I will certainly be looking forward to the next book!!

This book is incredibly indescribable. It’s macabre, joyful, and heartrending by turns and utterly unafraid to immerse the reader in an astonishingly detailed (and very queer) fantasy world, full of necromantically animated mice, revenant nannies, and toe bones as love tokens.

Miscellaneous (Lanie) is the youngest of a long line of creatively named Stones in Liriat, a family with a colorful history and strong ties to the royals. Lanie is a necromancer, born with an allergy to violence. Given her parents’ jobs as royal executioner and assassin, she has to be raised in her own wing of the mansion, cared for by the family revenant, Goody Graves, an left to figure out her magic with the help of a lot of old books and a particularly crotchety ghost. Faced with a mountain of debt after her parents’ deaths, and the homecoming of her psychotic sister, Lanie’s set on avenging her family. But events prove there’s more going on than just a few simple murders, and if Lanie wants to keep those she loves safe, she’ll have to relearn everything she knows about being a Stones.

I will admit that for the first few chapters I was, well, not very entranced. The author’s writing style tends to the verbose and flowery (in a very dour sort of way) and is just A LOT combined with being thrown into what feels like the entire history of Liriat and the Stones in the first few chapters. But once Lanie raised the mice? Oh, then I understood where the book was going.

“As Lanie cradled those scampering handfuls to her breast, the mice curled their bony bodies against her, sweethearting love and devotion from out their very ribcages and tailbones, from every slender socket and delicate articulation, from each curve and knob and needle-like protuberance.”

There’s a lot of dark, dry extremely macabre humor (especially the footnotes on the untimely ends of various Stones), but where the book really excels is its exploration of love. I mean, there’s a lot going on about vengeance and justice and familial trauma. Family is a complicated thing for Lanie. The mostly silent Goody Graves is more her family than any of her blood relations, especially her sister, and things just get messier with the introduction of Mak and Datu. Of course, there’s Lanie’s adorably sweet romance (so much pining!) with Canon Lir, but what she truly loves? Her necromantic creations, like the mice, the first creatures Lanie actually raises. It’s joyful, it’s messy, and from that moment on I wanted everything for Lanie. So much of her journey is tied into the ideas of love and family, but I won’t say too much else as it’ll get into spoilers.

The worldbuilding is fabulous. This is the type of book that has footnotes detailing the deaths of various Stones, in particular one ancestor who was strangled by necromantically animated pants. There’s multiple distinct cultures, including one where they tend to talk in rhyming verse, various forms of magic, and all sorts of overwhelming details that are generally not necessary but add a lot of vitality (and humor) to the world. It’s also extremely queer. The main character’s love interest is nonbinary, and gender is much more fluid – cross-dressing is an act of worship, in fact – and several side characters have various pairings, including polycules. My main criticism would have to be the uneven pacing, as there were several sections that felt like they should’ve been tightened up. It’s a bit hypocritical for me to say that, though, as as soon as I finished the book I immediately wished there were at least another ten chapters.

Overall, I doubt this will be everyone’s cup of tea, but recommended for readers who enjoy their humor on the macabre side, immersive fantasy worlds, and explorations of love and family (blood or found). I am extremely hopeful that this is the first in a series and will definitely be keeping an eye on this author!

I received an advance review copy of this book from NetGalley. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Lanie comes from a long line of Necromancers, a family of assassins. And yet, she is quite different from the rest of her kin. She actually cringes in the face of violence and yet she has a duty to protect her family home and do what her family does best.

While Lanie is the kind of character I love to explore and the premise of this book is amazing, there is so much going on in the story that it was challenging to acclimate to the plot, the narration and the world that was created. With a whole new system of measuring time, and narration where tue language is unique and changes to differentiate between colloquialism and the formal, and the number of characters that keep appearing in the story, took away the enjoyment of this book.

So while I love the premise of the story and Lanie is a sweet, clever and amazing character, I wanted more to be able to invest emotionally into this world and the characters.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Rebellion Publishing for the digital review copy of this book.

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I loved the cover and found the blurb interesting, the plot is even better and I had a lot of fun in reading this funny and well written story as fast as I could.
Great world building, full of humor, well developed characters.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

Whimsically gothic and satisfyingly deep coming-of-age fantasy




Miscellaneous Stones - Lanie to most people who know her - is a necromancer, and one of the last surviving members of a family of grim royal assassins in the country of Liriat. Having been born with an allergy to violence, to parents whose professions revolve around assassination and execution, Lanie has grown up with almost no company beyond her family's revenant, Goody Graves, and the spirit of the family's last powerful necromancer, Irradiant Stones, who has trapped himself in the padlock of a sarcophagus that contains the trapped spirits of his enemies, and now divides his time between training Lanie, berating her, and plotting to steal her body.

Luckily for Lanie, things are about to take a turn for the interesting. Unfortunately, this is going to require the death of her parents; the return of her conniving, manipulative sister and the shapeshifting falcon-man she has captured from a foreign excursion and intends to force into marriage; the schemes of the rival Scratch family and their attempts to take over Stones Manor (and marry Lanie to one or more of their three sons); and, after a neat little timeskip, the fallout from her sister's years-long campaign of murder against a foreign country's mage population (who all happened to be married to its ruler, The Blackbird Bride - oh, and she's keen to add Lanie to that list of spouses too) and its broader political consequences. All of this pushes Lanie, Goody, her brother-in-law Mak and her niece Datura out into a wider world that has plenty of its own intrigues and dynamics going on, and Lanie gets to deepen relationships with the few people she knew in her old life - like Canon Lir, the sibling of Liriat's heir - and build new connections with the people of Liriat, particularly the diaspora from Mak's homeland, Quadiib. To talk about any more plot points would start to spoil what is a very episodic, twisty book, so let's just say that things happen, a lot, and it's up to Lanie to figure out how to do right by the people in her life and rise above the grim legacy of her family and everything it has taught her, and avoid being charmed into any marriages or possessed by the spirit of her own ancestor.

All this is to say: Saint Death's Daughter has a lot of story to tell, and it doesn't hold the reader's hand when it comes to building in worldbuilding elements that make that happen. The broad aesthetic here is "whimsical gothic": regular footnotes detail the lives and creative deaths of Stones ancestors, and early chapters have a real Ghormengast-y vibe, with isolated characters rattling around in a grim, closed-off mansion (although Nita's arrival makes it clear that this isn't going to be a novel about upholding tradition or ritual in any standard sense). That aesthetic persists through later sections, even as it becomes clear that Lanie's family are very much the outliers in this world, and somehow Cooney balances the fun aspects of that lens with a story that builds increasing nuance around its different factions and cultures. It's particularly noticeable when the story returns to characterisations that were set in early parts of the story, like when Lanie finally gets around to realising she doesn't know Mak's real name, only the nickname that her sister gave him, or her discovery that the Scratch family's three identical, dull sons are actually their own people, and their too-identical, oversimplified names have also been changed for Lirian consumption. All of this happens in Cooney's wonderful prose style, and with attention to elements like the workings of magic and how it interacts with the wider world. I particularly enjoyed the inclusion of "surges": days of magic at the solstices and equinoxes where people's magical abilities are at their strongest and most intoxicating, and which provide various turning points and catalysts for Lanie's decisionmaking each time they come around.

The sheer amount going on here and the way it's handled in almost episodic format also makes Saint Death's Daughter shine as a coming of age novel, and this is one of the best I've read since Rachel Hartman's Tess of the Road. Because each part of Saint Death's Daughter comes with its own story beats and climaxes, and each offers challenges that Lanie needs to grow past. As the story progresses, we see Lanie shift from being a mostly passive, trapped protagonist with the ability to make decisions only at the most intense moments, to someone with a much greater amount of agency and the ability to work with others to change things for the better. The length gives Lanie time to make mistakes and then fix them, push people away and then have them come through for her anyway, and it also gives her the opportunity to learn how and when to let the judgement of other people affect her, and what her legacy as a Stones really entails. After its first section ended in a timeskip and propelled its characters into an unexpected new situation, I accepted that I was never really going to know where Saint Death's Daughter was going next, and it made for a highly entertaining experience, with lots of satisfying twists and turns that all made sense for the characters and what they were going through.

I can see how this book won't work for everyone: the sheer amount of information and the sometimes slow plotting are a choice, and if you don't gel with the main character or the prose style, this is going to be a long read. For me, though, Saint Death's Daughter has gone straight to the favourites list, and I can't wait to see where the adventures of Lanie take her.

Unfortunately I think I'm going to have to admit defeat with this one. Although Saint Death's Daughter has a lot of the elements I typically love in a fantasy novel, such as necromancy and bargains with God's, the writing style and overall slow pace just really put me off. There's a lot of information thrown at the reader right from the get go, and it really threw me out of the story as I struggled to get to grips with everything. As a, result I found I didn't connect with any of the characters or plot. It's just all a bit dense and weighed down with information over story progression. Not for me I'm afraid.

An intricate and meandering fantasy filled with sarcasm, wit and character development, Saint Death’s Daughter is a strong and beautiful fantasy. The story follows Miscellaneous (Lanie) Stones; the newest necromancer from a family whose business has been Death on behalf of the Kingdom of Liriat. Unfortunately, the Stones family was better at assassinations than arrearages, and upon the death (read: murder) of her parents, Lanie discovers that the Stones family has very little to their name other than massive debt and a history of erratic, psychotic and frivolous family members. And so begins our study of Lanie. Because really, this is a coming of age story as Lanie differentiates herself from her predecessors.

There is adventure, blood and gore, magic, and the righting of wrongs. We are following a loose line of
action, but each subplot and rabbit trail continues to sharpen the reader’s perception of who Lanie is. She studies, she listens to ghosts pontificate, she falls in love.

There is LGBTQ+ representation, which flows organically through the story line.

The reader has to do some work of world building along the way - there is so much to absorb in terms of gods and days of the week and months and religious practices and cultural practices. And a chart or calendar at the beginning of the book would be a helpful tool to the reader.

I mentioned a few times on my bookstagram page, but I got strong Wes Anderson vibes - particularly in the beginning half of this book. I could see the colors and characters vividly in my mind’s eye, along with facial expressions and characteristics. That is how vividly C.S.E. Cooney describes the characters and scenes in this book.

Interested to hear where the next book will take us, as I didn’t have a strong idea of the direction of the next book when I finished the first. I would recommend to anyone who likes strong character development centered fantasy. This novel requires some effort, but it is worth the time spent in it.

Thank you for the free ARC e-book in exchange for an honest review, #netgalley

### Overall Thoughts

*Saint Death’s Daughter* by C.S.E. Cooney is whimsical and character driven, with poetic prose and a casual narrative tone that does meander a bit. The first half-or-so of the book felt as though it primarily wanted to establish a quirkiness and eccentricity of the characters and world. The prose and footnotes both seem to relish leading the reader astray with gleeful use of an extensive vocabulary, frequent metaphor, and tidbits of tangential family history. I found this initially a charming characteristic, but eventually felt a bit exhausted by it, and really just wanted to get on with things. It’s not a short book, and the sometimes trying nature of the narrative style did not serve to shorten it for me. However, this is the sort of book that I can see working absolutely perfectly for a reader who is looking for that offbeat quality in their fantasy. It is the first book in a trilogy and at the end of the book there is clearly more of the story to be told, but it doesn’t end on a cliffhanger and does manage to be satisfying in its conclusion. It was overall a very enjoyable read, but one that I think will have varied reception depending on the reader’s preferences and expectations.

Miscellaneous “Lanie” Stones is born with an allergy to violence and death—the mark of a necromancer—and the Stones family is one filled with professional killers. This allergy sets her apart by necessity, as proximity to her murderous relatives triggers her allergy in painful and potentially life-threatening ways. She’s the odd one out of the family, with compassion and a respect for life that is not shared by her sister or family members that came before. We meet her as a 15-year-old as she stumbles her way through self-taught necromancy for the first third-ish of the book, and then timeskip to 7 years later for the rest of the narrative. She is an endearing main character, and her kindness and peculiarity worked to charm me into rooting for her early on.

The worldbuilding here is intricate and fascinating, with twelve (perhaps more) real and occasionally present gods, each presiding over a type of magic. Magic is predictable and somewhat scientific but vague in its workings, and magical ability is at least somewhat hereditary. Above all else, the world has that quality of eccentricity that pervades every element of this novel. I do look forward to getting broader worldbuilding in subsequent entries, as this one focuses primarily on only one nation, though politics local and abroad play a large part in the eventual plot of the book.

### Recommended Audience

Readers who enjoy whimsical fantasy, especially fantasy with dark or horror-y elements that doesn’t feel dark or pessimistic in tone.

Readers who love found family, narratives of dealing with family legacies, righting wrongs (some ancient, some recent), and characters coming into their power and finding a place, purpose, and agency for themselves.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the eARC. I DNFed this one about 20% in because I was really trying hard to be invested, but the opening is dreary instead of being mysterious.

C. S. E. Cooney has crafted an incredibly rich and whimsical tale with 'Saint Death's Daughter'.

The world-building alone for this book is so rich, detailed, and imaginative that it's impossible not to get sucked into the world of Miscellaneous 'Lanie' Stones, a young necromancer stepping to her power. It's a brick of a book - something to really sink your teeth into - and the prose is so beautifully written that at times it seems almost lyrical.

Saint Death's Daughter is an absolutely grand and glorious fantasy epic which deserves to be savoured over the long (yet well spent!) hours it takes to devour.

Thank you to NetGalley and to Rebellion (Solaris) for providing me with a copy of this book.

I honestly don’t know what to say about this book. Everything great, everything needed was given (interesting and creative idea, incredibly thorough world-building, well drafted characters) - but it was hard for me to read and I have to admit that I had to DNF this book. It just wasn’t for me but I do think that many people will love it.
I myself couldn’t vibe with the writing style. It was confusing and it felt like a Uni book to read. It felt like work and I really had to make sure I put all of my brain cells to use and even then I couldn’t make sense of what was going on. I also think that the author tells, instead of shows.

I think part of it was that English is my second language and seldom have I encountered such a complex book. I do not fault the book for that.

I really, really wanted to love this book and, while there were parts of it I did enjoy I ended up DNF'ing it at around 30%.. I loved Lanie as a character, and thought her aversion to all things dead, as a necromancer, was an intriguing and fresh take, but the magic system in general was just too much and I never felt like I had truly gotten my head around it. As well as this the world building was a little too quirky and ill explained, there were a lot of players and I didn't really understand what parts they had to play in the story.

Thank you to Rebellion Publishing and NetGalley for letting me read an e-arc of this book!

This is the weirdest book I have read in a long time - and yet it’s weirdness is charming and somewhat reminiscent of the families in What We Do in the Shadows or The Addams Family and their unusual misfit behaviour.

The story is told from the perspective of Miscellaneous ‘Lanie’ Stones, daughter of an Executioner and an Assassin, and one of many interestingly named members of the Stones family, which includes Quick Fantastic Stones, Abandon Hope Stones, Delirious Stones, Unnatural “Natty” Stones and Irradiant “Grandpa Rad” Stones to name but a few…

Lanie is a fifteen year old necromancer in the first part of the book, learning her trade from the ghost of her grandfather who resides in the padlock of a sarcophagus. She also learns cooking from the family housekeeper, Goody Graves an extremely long dead and enormous revenant, who acts as a kind of replacement mother for her, since she never had very much to do with her actual mother. Lanie is allergic to violence and her sister Nita is extremely violent so she spends a lot of time hiding from her, or experiencing nosebleeds and copycat wounds.

The book is filled with amusing side notes of how people died, snippets of family history and is very detailed - which leads to it being a long and sometimes difficult book to tackle. The world of necromancy and the various religions and intertwining family politics are built with great care and detail and this strange family and the world in which they live becomes fully fleshed out the further we read.

One of my favourite episodes in the story was a scene where Lanie reanimates nine mouse skeletons and develops a macabre yet very cute relationship with them. They adore Lanie who brought them back to life with panthaumic energy during her High Fire Feast Day surge:

“As Lanie cradled those scampering handfuls to her breast, the mice curled their bony bodies against her, sweethearting love and devotion from out their very ribcages and tailbones, from every slender socket and delicate articulation, from each curve and knob and needle-like protuberance.”

Indeed she experiences more warmth and love from these undead mice during their short existence than she ever did from her family members.

Part 2 takes place 7 years later and Lanie's sister Nita has had a child with her kidnapped shapeshifting peregrine falcon/human guard who she has kept under her thrall. Raising the child has become Lanie’s responsibility and she takes her role seriously, trying to protect her from the expected retaliation from the Parliament of Rooks who Nita has been picking off one by one as decreed by her employer, Erralierra, The Blood Royal.

As I stated earlier, this book is like nothing I have read before - making it highly original and amazingly imaginative. If you like things that are a little off the wall I would recommend you give Saint Death's Daughter a try - you will not be disappointed!

I enjoyed this book way more then I orginally thought! The world building and magic system are fantastic. I love every character in this book and I don't say that lightly. They are so well developed and I especially love the stone family. They are all so unique and the family tree is so interesting. I will say this book is very long but worth the read. There are some slow parts but I enjoyed the writing so much that I was able to move past the slower parts and keep going. The ending is amazing but if there ever happens to be a book 2 I am definitely adding it to my TBR!
Genre: Fantasy Romance

Thank you to netgally and Rebellion Publishing for the eArc in exchange for an honest review!