You gouge your customers by upselling mass-produced boats at a criminal markup, and you convince people that they need to be preserved in Tanrian heartnut sap because it’s ‘sanitary.’ And then you gouge them for that, too.īut Hart is wrong: Mercy is trying to run an ethical, stable business that doesn’t price gouge, and hand crafts each funerary boat, unlike a rival business that indeed buys wholesale and sells egregious markups. He’s got the same negative opinions about the mortuary industry in his world that I do in mine: Hart adores Mercy’s dog, Leonard (who is a very very good dog) but he does not like Mercy on sight, merely because she’s an undertaker. His late mentor both raised him, and left him with some large misconceptions, including one about the morticians. He’s an isolated loner, he’s grumpy, he’s lonely, he’s grieving* and he’s got a dangerous job that he’s had since he was 19. Hart, meanwhile, has so many chips on his shoulders I’m surprised his shirts stay on. Turns out, he secretly studied history when he was supposed to be studying undertaking, and he is not interested in becoming yet another son in Birdsall and Sons. Zeddie is not cut out for mortuary work, poor thing. Mercy has been running the business herself, but when Zeddie finally shows up after finishing his educational program to learn the process, he turns green, freaks out, vomits, and runs. Roy’s had a heart attack, and under doctor’s orders he’s supposed to not do things (he does things anyway). Her father inherited Birdsall and Sons from his father, and Mercy and Roy, her dad, have been expecting Mercy’s brother, Zeddie, to take over. Funerary services in this world are a Whole Thing, involving sail cloth, salt, incantations, ships, and a trip across the Salt Sea, where a god (there are many) welcomes souls into the world beyond. Mercy, as per the title, is an undertaker. Those souls get violent as they have to then find a new body, because dead bodies are really poor investments in terms of maintenance and upkeep.
Hart is a marshal who journeys into a magical world called Tanria and basically hunts zombies? Sort of? They aren’t called zombies (they’re drudges) but they’re corpses reanimated by a soul that takes over the dead body. Hart and Mercy do not like each other at the start of the story. If you like grumpy, taciturn characters with squishy, gooey insides, characters who struggle to become who they are or be recognized for who they are, and, above all, you like a major epistolary element to your stories (I have raised all my hands to that list) you will really like this. This is a book about loneliness, about living a life when constantly dealing with death, and about being seen and heard and understood.
0 kommentar(er)
