by Andi Ewington/Erica Marks
DETAILS:
Series: Bones & Betrayal, Book One
Publication Date: August 5, 2025
Format: eARC
Length: 286 pgs.
Read Date: June 12-24, 2025
What’s Bones & Betrayal: Silence of the Dead About?
Holtar is a former adventurer who has left that life for a quieter and safer option in the city. Sadly, as a necromancer, he’s only somewhat welcome. He’s a walking NIMBY target, really. Being a Dark Elf probably doesn’t help much, either.
But the Captain of the city guard has decided he has a use—who better to help than a necromancer who can call the dead back long enough to ask who killed them? It really tends to make solving a murder pretty easy (and, for all his good points, it really seems that Capt. Moorland isn’t incredibly well-suited for solving crimes). So it’s really not much of an event for Holtar to be called to the shop of a merchant specializing in strange goods to consult on his storeowner’s death.
It becomes an event when Holtar can’t raise him—in fact, quickly decides that his death points to a dark magic that runs a chill down his spine. Holtar and his partner barely start investigating this murder before another one happens. And there’s really no reason to doubt that the killer is just getting started.
Also…will the charming elven baker’s business be able to survive when the word gets out that her pies have been weaponized and turned into the murderer’s weapon? (assuming she isn’t the killer)
Holtar
I’ll be the first to admit, I’m not knowledgeable about necromancers. There’s the one in The Hobbit, and a couple here and there that I’m familiar with. Oh, and of course, Adam Holcombe’s Gam Gam. But that’s not really many—and really, the specialty doesn’t appeal to me. So, I really didn’t know what to expect out of Holtar.
I didn’t figure on a Dark Elf with anxiety and no natural grace (the guy can’t even climb wooden stairs without creaking like crazy—who knew that was possible for an elf?). He seems to have a strong degree of talent, with one trademarked spell—and, who knows, he might have more to develop if he wasn’t putting up with Moorland’s chores.
With his adventuring days behind him, he really just wants a quiet life—and who can’t relate to that?
It’s easy to forget what Holtar does for a living throughout the book, but the authors will slip in a quick reminder here and there to remind you that there’s something inherently creepy about Holtar and his magic. He is not a creep himself, but necromancers aren’t particularly popular people in this world. For good reason.
One way we’re reminded of the dark nature of Holtar’s magic is this impulse he calls The Urge, which is essentially an impulse to let the magic go wild and raise whatever dead happen to be in range of his abilities. Holtar’s worried enough about it that I can’t help but wonder if at some point or another, he didn’t resist The Urge to calamitous results.
Another way is Holtar’s friend/partner…
Seymour
Seymour is a thief—a full-fledged member of the Thieves Guild—who used to travel and work with Holtar until…well, for our purposes, we’ll call it an industrial accident. Remember that their industry involved parties of adventurers who included a necromancer. But thanks to the same necromancer, Seymour isn’t (as Miracle Max would say) all dead. He doesn’t have much of a body—or any organs, he’s simply a talking skull.
Somehow, he can eat, drink, and move around—don’t ask Holtar how any of that works. Which is great fodder for comedy and a pretty neat trick, all things considered. Seymour has a great sense of humor, he loves puns (I’m talking puns/wordplay that would make Burt Ward’s Robin distancing himself), and is not above joking about his body-less state. He’s also a loyal friend who has some pretty clever ideas from time to time (although he typically reserves his cleverness for quips and pranks). He’s the ultimate in wise-cracking sidekicks.
But Holtar is very aware of the optics of a necromancer carrying around a skull that he talks to all the time. So, he pretty much hides Seymour and only takes him out in private.
If you have only one talking skull in your literary life, go with Dresden’s Bob. If you have room for two, however, Seymour is your guy.*
* I can see myself being open to changing the ranking after another book or two.
The Tone
This is a buddy-cop kind of book, technically a buddy-P.I. (of sorts). A partnership full of banter and rarely expressed affection, and obvious loyalty. On page or screen, I’m a sucker for this kind of thing.
It’s best to think of this as a PI novel set in a Fantasy world—the tone and focus hold up better than if you think of it as a Fantasy novel featuring PI-types. (That’s still correct, but I think it gets the accent in the wrong spot).
There are hard-boiled elements, but it’s still light-hearted and comedic. It’s not a cozy, but it’s not far off from it. I think it’s a shade less cozy than Baldree’s Bookshops & Bonedust, for example.
While most of the banter comes from the interplay between Holtar and Seymour, that’s not all of it. The same kind of humor displayed in Ewington’s The Hero Interviews or the sillier parts of Peter David’s Apropos of Nothing books is more than evident here. I could bask in the jokes for a while (and have).
So, what did I think about Bones & Betrayal: Silence of the Dead?
There’s a lot to commend about this book, and very little to quibble with. There’s some really subtle world-building at work here, including some nice references to Ewington’s Hero Interviews, and this expands and adds depth to that world nicely. There are some wonderfully composed sentences in this book—they’re just so efficient that they can deliver a paragraph’s worth of meaning in them—moving the plot forward, or showing a character trait—while doing some effective world-building. Or a combination of the others. This happens often enough that I had to stop and admire them, because it’s one thing to do that once or twice—but Marks and Ewington did it often enough that it had to be purposeful, and it’s just so nice to see, particularly in Fantasy which has a tendency to take too long with this kind of thing.
This is a really good PI story, first and foremost. I think it takes Holtar a little too long to figure out what’s motivating the killer—I talked back a lot to the book on these lines. I don’t know if it’d have hurt things for him to suss that out as quickly as he should’ve. But the rest of the mystery elements are so well done that I can shrug that off (mostly). There’s some good comedy going on, but it’s not the focus–it’s a function of how Holtar’s mind works and the way he and Seymour relate. So, yeah, it’s funny–but it’s not a goofy mystery. It fits along Duncan MacMaster, Gregory Mcdonald, Lee Goldberg, and Marshall Karp’s early works. Which means it’s just what I want a steady diet of.
Then you get the whole Fantasy world of it all–so there’s the D&D-ness of The Hero Interviews. But also the Fantasy+mystery novel of Alex Bledsoe, Luke Arnold, and Keith DeCandido’s Precinct novels. Also, the tone of The Chronicles of Pell (that’s the closest match I can think of right now).
I really want to spend more time with Seymour and Holtar, for the sheer entertainment of the banter alone. But I also like seeing their partnership at work, and a solid buddy-dynamic like theirs should be celebrated as often as possible. I’d like to see something develop between the flirtation between Holtar and [name withheld] (although I’m not certain the attraction is two-way, but dealt with correctly, that could be funny). I could enjoy seeing Holtar butt heads with Moorland more, or Moorland being replaced by someone, too–really not sure I care. And, I’m super curious about the events that the ending sets up for Book Two.
This novel delivers the perfect amount of bang for your entertainment buck. It is a satisfying combination of mystery, tension, magic, and stupid jokes and puns. The friendship that forms the heart of this book will endear you to the protagonists as much as their banter will make you grin. Setting the whole thing in a Fantasy world that will be instantly recognizable to anyone who reads the genre or has played D&D, just makes the whole thing even more satisfying. I had a blast with this–and I literally have a list of people I’ll be giving this to as a gift. I’m eagerly awaiting another two or three installments in this series already.
Disclaimer: I received a copy of this ARC from the authors in exchange for some feedback, and I was invited to do this post, too. But I think I was also offered this ARC because Marks and Ewington are pretty cool froods. Any opinions expressed are mine alone and freely offered.
