It took me a long time to finish C.S.E Cooney’s novel SAINT DEATH’S DAUGHTER.

You would be wrong to think this is because it was a slog, or I lacked motivation to pick it up, or objected to its pacing. Exactly wrong, in fact! I took my time with the book for the same reason I take small (and increasingly smaller) bites of a delicious dessert. I wanted to savor it.

To extend the dessert analogy: this book is extremely rich. Every sentence is scrumptious. You can’t/won’t/shouldn’t skim over even a single line. Some lines you’ll want to read twice, just for the joy of it. That also, as you might imagine, made it take longer to reach the final page.

But let me back up. SAINT DEATH’S DAUGHTER is a fantasy tale about a kindly but determined necromancer named Miscellaneous “Lanie” Stones whose life is constantly complicated by family, by politics, by love, by circumstance, and by an inconvenient allergy to violence. At the outset, her parents (Abandon Hope “Aba” Stones and Unnatural “Natty” Stones have recently died, and her sadistic, forceful older sister Nita comes home to deal with the disposition of the family estate.

That’s all I want to say specifically about the plot, which is excellent and unpredictable, but also, I feel, isn’t really the point.  For me, the two main things that made the book such a joy were the characters and their relationships, and the language. Oh, goodness, the language! I could feel Cooney absolutely reveling in her words, rolling around in them, making them dance and sing, and tweaking them right on the nose when appropriate. And she wears that enjoyment gleefully on the sleeve of the book. I loved the names (and attendant anecdotes) of all of the Stones family, which are often presented in little footnotes like bite-size confections.  Gallowsdance Stones! Quick Fanastic Stones! Marrowcrack Stones!  (Not to mention a dog which a 6-year-old child names Underpants Stones because of how it likes to chew on undergarments.)  This book is not childish, but it is often child-like, in the most delightful way.

The tone is unlike that of anything I’ve ever read: fizzy and light-hearted despite a plethora of death-imagery, including some pretty gory, violent stuff. The main character is, after all, a necromancer, and there’s just as much (or more) death than you might expect! But none of it is (ahem) gallows humor, or Abercrombie-like “grimdark” that is all the rage these days. It’s hopeful, flamboyant, and full of unironic delight, even in its objectively darkest moments.

All of the traditional markers of fantasy are great – the world-building, the magic systems, the gods – and there’s a surprisingly rip-roaring epic battle at the end that’s magnificent. But again, those aren’t the reasons to bump this book to the top of your TBR. Do that because the writing is so damned good. I first read Cooney’s short  story collection Bone Swans, and then her novella Desdemona and the Deep, and it felt decadent to get to enjoy her prose-crafting for a full 475 pages.

Go treat yourself!

Saint Death’s Daughter is available now, you can order your copy on Bookshop.org