Reading order

Cemeteries of Amalo reading order

Sarah Monette

  1. The Witness for the Dead2021
  2. The Grief of Stones2022
  3. The Tomb of Dragons2025
3 volumes
Volumes
2021–2025
Published
about 21 h
Reading time
Ongoing
Status

Quick answer

The Witness for the Dead
Start withThe Witness for the Dead2021 · Volume 1 of 3

Affiliate link: buying through it supports BookRank at no extra cost to you.

Publication order

3 volumes2021–2025Ongoing

  • Katherine Addison’s quiet fantasy mysteries set in the world of The Goblin Emperor.
  • Thara Celehar is a Witness for the Dead, a minor priest who can touch a corpse and briefly share its last memories, living modestly in the city of Amalo, where he settles inheritance disputes, identifies the murdered and is pulled into larger crimes.
  • Gentle, melancholy and full of bureaucracy, tea and kindness, about a lonely man doing his duty well.
  • Katherine Addison is the pen name of Sarah Monette.
  • No book has enough ratings yet.
  • Read in order.

A plan for the whole series

3 volumes, 1,120 pages, about 21 hours. At 45 min a day that is about 4 weeks.

  • The series is still running; the last volume came out in 2025. You will wait for the next one anyway, so no need to rush.

Stages

2 stages, with 1 short book from outside the series between them. You finish around November 29, 2026, 4 days later than in one go.

  1. Stage 112 h16 daysby November 14, 2026
    • 1. The Witness for the Dead2021 · 384 pages · 7 h
    • 2. The Grief of Stones2022 · 256 pages · 5 h
  2. Short breakThe Fire Next Time · James Baldwin · 120 pp. · score 8.82 h, by November 18, 2026. A short book from another shelf, so you come back to the series hungry.
  3. Stage 29 h12 daysby November 29, 2026
    • 3. The Tomb of Dragons2025 · 480 pages · 9 h
  4. The end of the series
    November 29, 2026
In one goNovember 25, 2026about 4 weeks
In stages, with breaksNovember 29, 2026about 4 weeks · +2 h of other books

We count 1.1 min per page, the pace of an average novel reader. Faster? Move the slider.

How this plan is calculated

The plan comes from the pages and ratings of each volume: we split the series into stages of about three weeks’ reading, size each break to the stage before it, and read the chance of finishing from how many readers rate the last volume compared with the first. How we work out the plan →

Every volume in order

Read: 0 of 3

No volume in this series has enough ratings to enter a ranking yet, so the list carries no scores — the order and the volumes are still complete.

  1. The Witness for the Dead
    The Witness for the Dead2021Start hereBuy
    –Not ranked yet
  2. The Grief of Stones
    The Grief of Stones2022Buy
    –Not ranked yet
  3. The Tomb of Dragons
    The Tomb of Dragons2025Buy
    –Not ranked yet

Order checked by hand · Order and years: Wikidata (CC0). Spotted an error? Tell us. · Data updated October 28, 2026

Frequently asked questions

Which Cemeteries of Amalo book is the longest?

“The Tomb of Dragons” is the longest at 480 pages; the shortest is “The Grief of Stones” with 256 pages.