Desdemona has been coerced into the latest, a benefit for the Phossy Girls, and has tried to liven it up by challenging her best friend, the trans Chaz, to see who can produce the most striking gown for the evening. Her mother is a suffragist and raises money for social causes. Mannering and heiress to the Candletown Company, previously heavily invested in coal, but now in the process of a change to oil. This review contains spoilers.ĭesdemona is the wealthy socialite daughter of H.H. Cooney has published two other works in this universe, The Breaker Queen (2014), and The Two Paupers (2015).

It was published 23 July 2019 by Tor.com and runs 224 pages. Other work includes Tor.com novella Desdemona and the Deep, and a poetry collection: How to Flirt in Faerieland and Other Wild Rhymes, which features her Rhysling Award-winning “The Sea King’s Second Bride.” Her short fiction and poetry can be found in Jonathan Strahan’s anthology Dragons, Ellen Datlow’s Mad Hatters and March Hares: All-New Stories from the World of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, Rich Horton’s Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy, and elsewhere.This novella is a finalist for the 2020 World Fantasy Award. Her short novel The Twice-Drowned Saint is included in Mythic Delirium’s anthology The Sinister Quartet. Cooney is the author of World Fantasy Award-winning Bone Swans: Stories. What a remarkable thing to be alive and writing fantasy, right here, right now, in the company of such artists as these. Secondly, I love that Forrester also did the covers for my friend Dora Goss’s The Extraordinary Adventures of the Athena Club books, which I’ve read and adored, as well as Zen Cho’s The True Queen (I’m a huge fan of Zen Cho!). Our necromantic heroine’s journey is a highwire walk between life and death-as she struggles to juggle undeath, third of the three states, without falling. Every detail holds meaning: the cavaquinho, the mouse, the hawk, the dagger, the lock-but most especially, the bursting-open blooms and the bones. But the goddess has other plans…įirst of all, I’m stratospherically pleased with Kate Forrester’s art for Saint Death’s Daughter. Lanie finds herself courted and threatened by powerful parties who would love to use her worryingly intimate relationship with the goddess of death for their own nefarious ends.

To make matters worse, family debt looms – a debt that will have to be paid sooner rather than later if Lanie and her sister are to retain ownership of the ancestral seat, Stones Manor. Especially if, like Miscellaneous “Lanie” Stones, you also have a vicious allergy to all forms of violence and bloodshed, and an uncanny affinity for bringing the dead back to life. To be born into a family of royal assassins pretty much guarantees that your life is going to be… rather unusual. Life gets complicated when Death gets involved.

Desdemona and the Deep by C.S.E. Cooney