The Orb of Cairado by Katherine Addison: Review by Abigail Nussbaum
The Orb of Cairado, Katherine Addison (Subterranean 978-1-64524-213-0, 120pp, $45.00, hc) January 2025. Cover by Tom Canty.
A similar question arises for the protagonist of the standalone novella The Orb of Cairado. Like the Cemeteries of Amalo books, it is an offshoot of Addison’s Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Award-nominated novel The Goblin Emperor (2014) – more directly, perhaps, as their actions kick off from the same event, the destruction of the airship The Wisdom of Choharo. When his friend Mara dies in the conflagration, Ulcetha Zhorvena receives an unexpected bequest – the artifact which, several years ago, he was accused of stealing, which led to the end of his career as a scholar.
Attempting to leverage his discovery leads Ulcetha to a thrilling archeological treasure hunt, but once this adventure concludes he is left with uncomfortable questions. Where did Mara get the artifact? Who stole it? Who killed the scholar who might have believed in Ulcetha’s innocence? The reader will probably work out the answers to these questions before Ulcetha does, if only because he would prefer not to recognize the truth. Once he does, like Celehar, he is faced with the question of what to do about injustice. Should he place his faith in a system that is not designed for him – that sees him, a merchant’s son with aspirations to academic pursuits, as an interloper? And even if he is believed, what will be the cost?
“Murder is ugly,” Celehar says, early in The Tomb of Dragons. “Uncovering the truth of a murder is therefore also ugly. And so often the answer is not what people want it to be.” He could easily be describing Ulcetha’s story as well as his own, and for both of them, the costs of unraveling murder and seeing justice done are high. For Celehar, however, they also open a door to a new way to pursue his calling, one that takes him away from Amalo, but perhaps offers greater freedom to address the injustices that so wound him.
Abigail Nussbaum is a Hugo Award-winning critic and the author of the blog Asking The Wrong Questions. Her writing has appeared in The Guardian, New Scientist, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and Strange Horizons, among others, and she is a regular contributor to the progressive culture and politics blog, Lawyers, Guns and Money.
This review and more like it in the March 2025 issue of Locus.
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