Tangled Mind

[They say] that keeping them here in the pits is too much, that it goes beyond war. They say we should just kill them, make them slaves or send them home, but ah, I like the pits. It reminds us that all things must change. I recall the Athenians as they were a year ago: their armour flashing like waves when the moon is upon them, their war cries that kept you up at night, and set the dogs howling, and those ships, hundreds of ships gliding around our island, magnificent sharks ready to feast.[loc. 131]

I reviewed this back in December 2023: prepublication review. Since then, I've been puzzled by readers saying they'd expected something light-hearted and humorous -- then I discovered that it won the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction 2024, and that it was being promoted as 'bold and funny', 'Fierce, funny, fast-paced', 'hilarious' etc. Reading these plaudits, you may be surprised to find that the novel's mostly set in a concentration camp, where prisoners (chained and starving) are regularly beaten to death.

“The real reason necromancers keep being born to the Stones line is not because the Stoneses are blessed of Saint Death. It is because the first necromancers of the Founding Era instigated a wrong long ago, and Saint Death wants to put to right. [loc. 6868]

My review from January 2024. Reread to prepare for my ARC of the second in the trilogy, Saint Death's Herald, of which the review is imminent. There was a lot in Saint Death's Daughter that I'd forgotten, and some of the novel resonated differently this time round. (The Blackbird Bride misgenders Lir!) Still splendidly complex, lexical, comic, tragic and inventive.