We’ve been wanting to order this book since it won the World Fantasy Award last year. The author is a fairly young and very exuberant woman, who began writing the novel when she was in college in 2009. We finally tracked down the publisher at the WorldCon in Glasgow, and now have trade paperback copies in stock.

Miscellaneous Immiscible Stones (called Lanie) is a young necromancer, born into the powerful Stones family, which has long served the Blood Royals of Liriat as assassins. Necromancy is a rare and valuable skill, partly because the talent comes with a literal “allergy” to violence. Just hearing about some of her family’s exploits is potentially fatal to Lanie. Despite this, she remains kind and cheerful and without resentment. She is genuinely in love with dead things, and with Doédenna, Saint Death, the god who oversees death magic.

With the help of a dead woman called only Goodie Graves, Lanie has managed to survive nearly to adulthood. She spends her days in Stones Manor, happily gardening and learning to raise small things from the dead. She is almost ready for mice! She is secretly in love with her childhood friend, a non-binary priest of Sappacor. She is being tutored, somewhat unreliably, by a prior family necromancer, Irradiant Radithor Stones (also called Grandpa Rad), who won a war for Liriat generations ago. He is trapped disembodied inside the lock of a coffin containing his many enemies, and makes no secret of the fact that he intends to take over Lanie’s body some day. But all of their plans are put into disarray when both of Lanie’s parents meet expectedly violent ends, and Lanie’s appropriately-named sister, Amanita Muscaria, comes home to deal with their enormous debts.

Cooney has invented an exceptionally detailed, unique world. There are numerous types of magic, all tied to one of twelve wonderfully quirky gods and worshipped slightly differently in different counties. Many interesting people are vying for both Stones Manor and the throne of Liriat. Liriat itself has a long history of oddly amusing violence. (Also oddly hilarious are the famous assassinations and much deserved deaths of various Stones family members, often related in footnotes.) Every page seems to bring a new and delightful twist of customs or religion or tradition. Lanie’s necromancy is full of unexpected beauty.

Through all the plots and raising of the dead and cruelty (always distant because of Lanie’s allergies), Lanie remains a wonderfully sympathetic character, an uncomplaining perky goth necromancer, in love with both the living and the dead, and everything in-between. But, with her warped upbringing, will she ever understand what her beloved Saint Death really wants from her?