Death of the Necromancer by Martha Wells

I bought this book a long time ago, in the discount section of the local literary megastore... back in my teen days when reading about necromancers was cool and vampires were only in Anne Rice novels.

This book was really good. A well written standard horror detective story, but told in a different point of view. The characters are extremely interesting and compelling but the beginning was hard to follow. It starts in media res, so much so that I felt like there ought to be at least two books before this one. But I did some research, and this is supposed to be a standalone novel. All the other novels set in the same realm are not related to this storyline or are 100 years off this timeline.

The main character, Nicholas, is so complex that it seems weird that there is only this one book about him. He is the son of a disgraced aristocratic family. When his father died, his mother ran away from his paternal family and eked out a living in the city but soon died of natural circumstances. He fell into petty crime and was arrested. By luck, he was adopted by an academic philanthropist. His adopted father was doing experiments that combined sorcery with natural philosophy in the hopes of creating a device that allowed normal people to do sorcery. However, his device never quite worked the way it was intended to, and was framed for practicing necromacy and executed. Nicholas then grows up and creates a criminal mastermind alter ego to enact revenge on the man who framed his adopted father and caused his death. ALL of that should have been its own novel, but we don't get to read about it... just bits and pieces as Nicholas gripes about his feelings of injustice in the world.

This story is set in a version of 17th Century Vienna, where magic is alive and the fay invaded 100 years ago but still cause fear in the general populace. Necromacy is an executable offense.

The plot starts with Nicholas and his crew performing a heist. In the middle of their heist, they are interrupted by a creature that tries to steal something else in the same house. Curious, and to make sure this creature doesn't come after them, they start to investigate this creature... in the process, they find a revived dead necromancer, zombies, and golems. With so much danger, Nicholas feels compelled to save the city from this new monster than continue with his criminal activities.

I really liked the story, and almost wish I read it earlier. But I don't think I could have handled the disappointment of knowing that this was the only book about Nicholas.