Interesting, but not for me

DISCLAIMER: Dnf at 50%

Even if I did not finish the book, I would like to write a small review explaining why.
The beginning of the book wasn't as gripping as I would have liked, although the world seemed interesting enough. I didn't really like the writing, which slowed my reading and prevented me from getting pulled into the story as I would have hoped. It's a very personal view. I didn't really get attached to the characters and found the plot a bit confusing. I could see that the story and world have a lot of potential, but I guess the way it was written just didn't agree with my personal tastes and I chose to stop reading instead of forcing myself and potentially dislike the book even more.
In the end, it wasn't a bad book, I think many of you will like it, but it wasn't for me at all.

This has got to be one of the weirdest books I’ve ever read, but that’s probably only because I haven’t gotten to Gideon the Ninth. And yet… once I pushed past my urge to DNF it due to impatience, I really liked it. “Why did you almost DNF this?” you may wonder. Honestly, it’s because it was kind of slow at the beginning and weird as shit so it took some time to acclimate.

Miscellaneous “Lanie” Stones writes to her darling elder sister Amanita to inform her of their parents' untimely demise and begs her to come home and settle some financial matters before their family home is swept from under them by debt collectors. Amanita, or Nita as she’s usually called, is a stereotypical Stones - sharp, bloodthirsty, and not altogether sane. Nita is a terror and when she comes home dragging a man who can shift into a falcon (a gyrguardi) as her new (and forced) husband so she can continue the Stones line. In an effort to restore their family’s financial status, Nita takes on a monumental task from the royal line the Stoneses have served since the founding of their country to kill a powerful magician called the Blackbird Bride and her twenty-four magician spouses. This takes her away from Stones Manor for great lengths of time and there’s also a nice seven year time skip to progress the story to the point where it really begins to take off.

Lanie on the other hand is less typical, as she has spent much of her life sequestered in another wing of the house and raised by the undead servant of the Stones family, Goody Graves,  so her odd allergy to violence (a defining trait of necromancers) wouldn’t be as frequently triggered. She’s surprisingly good considering that most of the Stones necromancers were sinister on their best days and murderously evil on their worst. Don’t be fooled by the lengthy description of Nita Stones - Lanie is truly the main character of the story, but you have to have a grasp on Nita first. Lanie is fiercely protective of her family, particularly her strange little niece Datu, and those she cares for like Canon Lir and a few new friends made along the way. Obviously, this means when the Blackbird Bride seeks revenge for her slaughtered magicians Lanie must really step up and own her dark powers.

This story is immensely character-centric and while there is some lovely worldbuilding going on it’s rather small scale. Individual locations are nicely detailed and you can feel the warmth and homeliness or conversely the cold boney-ness. There's so much going on that I understand the folks who were put off by being introduced to a dozen gods and goddesses and new months and days of the week right at the start. But honestly, it’s mostly irrelevant information. The deities show up here and there, but they aren’t terribly important for most of the book and you can throw memorizing new days/months right out the window if you want. Not important - just fluff. The important things are more or less explained as you read the book, though you should be prepared for so much new vocabulary! 

This book has so many things for so many kinds of readers, but the most important is that you like strange, quirky stories unlike anything you’ve read before. The range of feelings this book can induce is wide and varied. I mean, literally everything from horror at the site of gruesome murder  to unrequited love and all the things in between. It’s really quite something and Saint Death’s Daughter will likely continue to reign supreme as the weirdest book of 2022. I wouldn’t mind seeing more books set in this strange, diverse world of magic and interesting lands.

Thank you to the publishers, author and NetGalley for the free copy of this book.

Its not often these days that a book gets put on my "will definitely buy and re-read" list but this 100% is going there. This is definitely a hefty novel, with a lot to get through but so worth it. The characters were wonderful, the setting and world building very well done. I would absolutely recommend giving this a try!

3.5 stars rounded up!

Saint Death’s Daughter is an ambitious novel of family (both living and undead), murder, and dark magic. This is the read for those who want a mashup of Naomi Novak’s A Deadly Education and Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Mexican Gothic.

The world-building in this book is immense, including invented days of the weeks, gods and goddesses, family histories, and bizarre (but hilarious) names. This is not a book you can quickly read; it takes focus and it’s long, but it’s worth it. I won’t pretend to have caught every detail on this first read, but if you are comfortable with confusion while reading, you will enjoy this book.

At its core, looking past the darkness and murder and resurrection, this book is about protecting those you love, and building your own future with what your ancestors have left you.

Thank you netgalley.com for providing a free copy of this inventive book!

I have very mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand there were things I absolutely loved, but on the other there were times where I wanted to give up, put this book down and never come back to it.

In this book we are following Miscellaneous (Lanie) Stones, a necromance who is allergic to violence. Her family have served their kingdom as executioners and assassins (and occasionally as necromancers) for generations. But now Lanie’s parents are dead under suspicious circumstances and her and her older sister Nita (a ruthless assassin) need to figure out how to save Stones Manor from creditors who have every right to take it thanks to their parents’ unpaid debts. The ensuing decisions made by Lanie and Nita are an incredibly wild ride, not to mention the backdrop of political intrigue that further complicates their situation.

Things I loved:

The characters in this book are amazing! We have a really diverse cast and numerous complex relationships that are explored in ways that really bring them to life, despite the fact that many of the characters are quite absurd on the face of things. (Can you really call a character Miscellaneous and not have her be at list a little bit absurd?).

In the same vein the way that familial relationships were explored was really different from anything I have ever seen in fantasy. We get both blood family relationships, like Lanie and Nita, and Lanie and her niece. We also get familial bonds created through marriage with Lanie and her brother-in-law. We get romantic relationships, and we get found family.

I also really loved the magic in this world. Even though bone magic/necromancy has definitely been done before the way that it was done in this story felt really original and I liked how it was explained in a way that didn’t take away from its mysteriousness (Lanie’s power comes from the goddess Saint Death after all).

The tone of this book is also something that I enjoyed tremendously. The way that it mixed brutality and violence with deadpan humor was really fun. I particularly liked the interactions between Lanie and the ghost of her Grandpa Rad.

Things I hated:

The first 20% of this book is really not good. It doesn’t scaffold the reader in a good way to help them understand what the world is, which is so important for fantasy, and nothing interesting happens. I understand there was a certain amount of set up that needed to take place for things to make sense later. But it was so underwhelming but also terribly confusing that I almost stopped reading. Thankfully around 20% the story shifts and gets way better as the characters have more of a direction they are travelling in instead of milling about bumping into the walls.

The pacing overall is not great. As mentioned above the first 20% is really stagnant with nothing moving the story forward, then we get big action for awhile followed by a period of stagnation, followed by an ending with one of my favorite battle scenes of all time, followed by more ending which is really just set up for book two.

The fits and starts of the pacing could be overlooked if it weren’t for the fact that the worldbuilding was so clunky that there were parts of this book that just had me wanting to walk away and not look back. It’s not that the world that Cooney has created isn’t good, I actually loved it, the problem is how the exposition happened. There was no subtlety, it really felt like there were whole sections that were just there to explain the world, it felt a bit like in theatre when an actor breaks the fourth wall to tell the audience something out of character. And this jarring feeling of being told what the world was like instead of discovering it through the story took away the immersion (or suspension of disbelief) that is necessary to enjoy fantasy.

So overall I am giving this book 4 stars because despite it’s flaws I did really thoroughly enjoy it. And I look forward to reading the sequel. But I think it is important to know going in that this isn’t your typical fantasy.

For more thoughts see my video review here: https://youtu.be/CFnFK70At0o

*Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a free eARC in exchange for my honest review*

4.5 stars.

Fantabulous!

And that's what my impression of this book was for days after finishing this funny, frenetic, rich, and beautiful book.

Miscellaneous "Lanie" Stones is a necromancer, from a long line of necromancers who work for a ruling Brackenwild family in Liriat (in Athe). Interestingly, though her family are assassins for the Brackenwilds, Lanie cannot tolerate being around violence: she experiences allergic symptoms ranging from sneezing to copious nosebleeds.

Her elder sister (and longterm bully) Aminita Stones takes on the family mantle after their parents and aunt are dead (maybe murdered) and the sisters are saddled with their relatives massive debts.

Nita secures a longterm contract with the Brackenwild to murdering the twenty four wizards of Queen Bran Fiakhna of a neighbouring land. On one of her trips back home. Nita brings a man back with her, Mac, whom she has kidnapped and glamoured into compliance, with the intent of using him to create the next generation of Stones. He's naturally furious about this.

Some years later, Nita returns in a panic, and with the queen's wizards hot on her trail. Not only does Nita have herself to protect, but there's also her sister Lanie, her captive mate, and the next generation of Stones, her daughter (and scene stealer) Datu.

Needless to say, things don't go as planned, and Lanie, Mac and NNNN go into hiding. At the same time, Lanie and Mac also want to give Datu the opportunity to spend time with other kids and to go to school.

And that's the beginning of this big, gorgeous, detailed (did I forget, there are numerous footnotes(!) adding bits of context or history to a situation), and fantastic story. C.S.E. Cooney brings Lanie, Mac and Datu to glorious life, as well as a supporting cast of quirky individuals, and has Lanie work terrifically hard to keep Datu alive against assassination threats from the queen.

Despite its length, the book's pacing is good, with events moving along nicely, and Lanie's evolution as shy daughter of the Stones, to a caring aunt and sister-in-law, a powerful necromancer, and a friend to this small family's circle.

I loved this book so much, and struggled to articulate how I felt about this effervescent, bright and totally enjoyable book.

Thank you to Netgalley and to Solaris for this ARC in exchange for my review.

This was a hard one. I seriously considered dnf a couple of times, but i was too intrigued by the story to do so. I loved the characters and the plot, but getting through it all wasn't easy. So much information was given but not all was properly explained. It made for an sometimes confusing read. That being said, i am glad that i continued the journey with Lanie and finished the book.

I got this arc in exchange for an honest review.

I liked the concept and and tried to get behind it but found it a struggle to keep myself focused on the page. I liked the dialogue but needed to feel more grounded in the world. Unfortunately, it was a DNF.

An interesting concept!
This is quite a long book filled with a lot of ideas. I liked our MC Lanie. She's motivated, fierce and her determination. I thought the world-building was quite a lot to get my head around, but when I did, I enjoyed it. The writing was great and the Nita and Goody were fantastic side characters. The necromancy element was unexpected because I forgot the blurb when I began reading, but I thought it was very well done!
I only wish it was slightly shorter so it could pack a bigger punch.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for an e-arc!

Saint Death’s Daughter was quite a read. There is A LOT going on. Not necessarily in a bad way, more like a Game of Thrones type of way. There is so much to keep track of. Sometimes things got confusing or I had to kind of back track or look at the footnotes just to get things straight in my head again. I thought the plot was well thought out, but the amount of information thrown at the reader to achieve the plot made this book more of a burden than anything. I found myself getting easily side tracked or only reading a few pages and then wanting to put it down. Overall, it wasn’t for me but I don’t think that makes it “bad”

This was a beautiful book. I loved the lively, diverse set of characters and the generous prose of the novel. The scenery was set so well, the world building was incredible, but I did find myself lost in some of the prose during very important scenes. The beginning of the book was very enticing, but then got a little lengthy before the story truly began. Good read and I'll recommend to my students.

DNF at 15%
I really wanted to like this but it feels like work to read. There is just a constant barge of information that prevented me for getting into the book. I picked it up a couple times just to make sure, because the blurb sounds so great, but that wasn’t the case.

Our main character is a necromancer in a family that has always dealt in death. After her sister is revenge assassinated, she had to go on the run and hide with her young niece and her sister's enslaved/forced husband. She needs to figure out if she can defeat the extremely powerful bird wizard who is now after her niece.

I found this a very difficult book - it's ridiculously overcomplicated, it's hard to read and it's far too long. I feel like the author got carried away with dumping in absolutely everything they'd thought of, with consideration to plot or pacing, and no one reined them back in. It could have been half the length without making any difference to plot or character development.

The whole book is full of irrelevant information which just keeps stretching out the book. I'm not sure if all the asides about ancestral deaths were supposed to be comedic, but there were just so many. And maybe this was just the formatting of the arc, but having footnotes only at the end of very long chapters just meant it was either difficult to find where I'd been, or I couldn't remember what they referred to if I just waited until I got to them.

I really don't want to have to work out what a word means from the context every few paragraphs (whether they're made up words, or very archaic word choices). And when that wasn't the issue, you had to contend with the fact that it seemed like the synonym checker had been used for every other word to make sentences as unwieldy as possible. This slowed down the book even more for me, and my normal reading speed was cut down to 30-50% from normal.

It's so complicated that when there was a big reveal in the latter section of the book, I had to read it multiple times to understand what was going on. And I'm still not sure why certain decisions were made in that rooftop scene.

It also contains repeated torture of a 7 year old child, which is an irredeemable line for a villain to cross for me (and yet was somehow... acceptable in the book?)

3 stars, rounded up from 2.5

I am a necromancy fiend, you present me with a book about necromancy - you bet I'm going to want to devour that book! I was pleasantly surprised by Saint Death's Daughter which is a whirlwind of a story of many disparate parts but with a whole lot of heart (and bones...so many bones).
I loved the character of Lanie, our protagonist, so much. Not only is she a fantasy character with glasses - always a win - but she also captures a heap of incredibly nuanced emotions and feelings across the breadth of this book. Lanie and the other main characters are thrown into all sorts of circumstances across this story and I always felt like Lanie's response to those things, for better or for worse, felt incredibly genuine.
I also enjoyed the magical aspect of the story, the necromancy itself was fascinating and did one of my favourite things a magic system can do - having some core ideas but multiple different applications and plenty of room for experimentation and discovery. I've read many a bad take on necromancy but this one was very well done.
My biggest criticism of this book is that I think it is about 100 pages too long, I'd probably want to cut down the beginning and get into the meat of the story a little bit quicker - though there is a lot of set up to be done I grant you - it was just a little bit hard to get to the 30% mark and I did consider DNFing. In this instance I'm very glad that I didn't as I think the mid-end portion of this book is so well worth reading and contained some truly remarkable scenes. Just a tiny bit of a more ruthless edit might have been necessary for this to get an extra star from me.
I look forward to reading more from C S E Cooney in the future, this worldbuilding, these characters, the magic- there's going to be great things in the future I'm sure!
I received a free digital copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley all opinions are my own.

This was laugh-out-loud hilarious and the characterization of the individuals in this book were wonderful, I can't wait to read the next book in the series.

Saint Death's Daughter by C.S.E. Cooney is a vividly imagined fantasy, the first in a planned trilogy, that from the very first pages takes the reader and drops them into the middle of an unfamiliar world. There is a lot of humour in the book, at times the writing style, particularly the footnotes, reminded me of Terry Pratchett, however at times it was a little too meandering for even my tastes. The characters are interesting and that is what kept me reading at first, as the first section of the book is something of an info dump and I was struggling to find a reason to keep going around the 50 page mark. However I am glad I did and overall I did enjoy the book, though not as much as I hoped I would from the blurb and summary. Once the book moved forward in time and we were introduced to some more (very interesting ) secondary characters, I found it much more interesting and I was glad that I had kept going. The magic system was clever and well explained, and I am keen to know more.
I read and reviewed an ARC courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher , all opinions are my own.

I tried so hard to read this book!. I really struggled getting into the world of Lanie and Nita. Lanie was a necromancer who had a heart of gold which is rather unusual seeing as she's supposed to be a killer!! I really warmed to her character, and although Nita her sister was a darker character, she loved her sister and valued the gifts she had.
What put me off was the use of long and rare wordings that I spent a lot of time looking up to be sure to follow the story. In doing that I then lost the flow of the story which was very aggravating. I persevered but just got totally fed up with the strange words, names etc. The characters themselves were well described and I got to know them but it all got too much and I had to give up. This is only the second book I have not been able to finish so you can tell I usually persevere.
CSE Cooney you have a wonderful and fanciful imagination but I would have preferred it if it had been easier to read and absorb as a reader!
Thanks to Netgalley for the free arc book for an honest review.
#Netgalley, #SaintsDeathsDaughter, #csecooney.

Thank you to Solaris and NetGalley for providing an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review!

This book was utterly and delightfully weird and so wonderful. I don't think I've ever read a book so centred around death that also manages to feel so alive. There's so much heart in this book; the author does an incredible job conveying Lanie's emotions to the reader. I felt everything she felt right along with her, and it was such a pleasure to see her grow into both her powers and her self by the end of the book.

I loved all of the different types of magic in this magic, but especially Lanie's necromancy. Necromancy in media is often presented as an unsavoury form of magic, so I really enjoyed this version of it, along with the care Lanie has for her creations.

I also loved all of the secondary characters who become Lanie's found family! They're all so warm-hearted and welcoming, and they're also extremely queer which was absolutely delightful.

I really enjoyed the extra little tidbits of worldbuilding/info that were in the footnotes. They threw me a little at first because there's no set up for who's writing them, but once I got used to that they were really fun.

This is the first book in a trilogy and I'm very much looking forward to finding out how it continues! I really want an explanation for the thing that happens between Lanie and Canon Lir at the end of this one!!

𝚁𝚎𝚟𝚒𝚎𝚠 𝚃𝚒𝚖𝚎 💀

Saints Death’s Daughter - C.S.E Cooney ⭐️⭐️⭐️✨/5

I was super excited to receive my first ever arc! And OMG it did not disappoint, such a good book 🙌🏽 (it is an unedited arc so there were some grammar mistakes but honestly, I can’t even write in Spanish (my native language) so I’m not complaining 😂
Anyway.
The book itself is super original: a necromancer that’s allergic to death and its born in a family of assassins… What could go wrong?
Though there were some points in the story where I was like…WTF? But it was easy to go back to the plot and I was in for the ride.
(I did want a different ending for the protagonists but that just me being a romantic so whatever)
Have you ever receive any arcs?

This book was a wild ride! The world building is one of the things I appreciate the most in a book and I love how complex and interesting it was, the magic system was just so cool! I am weak for cool magic systems. I have to confess I hear necromancy and I was into it already, however, the writing was a bit complex and it took me a while to get hooked. But this is a really enjoyable experience and I really liked the diversity in characters, the rep was great! In general this was an amazing book and I really recommend it!