Review: 'All the Dead Shall Weep'

 ©2023 All Rights Reserved Lynne Perednia

All the Dead Shall Weep
By Charlaine Harris
Paranormal thriller
September 2023
Saga Press

Through gunfights, magic-wielding skirmishes and battles, a growing family and a man who loves her for herself, Lizbeth has gone from being solitary Gunnie Rose to the center of a growing circle. That was only the first four books in the Gunnie Rose series by Charlaine Harris, including the fourth, The Serpent in Heaven, which focuses on her half-sister Felicia.

In the new book, All the Dead Shall Weep, coming out Tuesday, the action is divided by forces without and within Lizbeth's circle. It begins with her early miscarriage, so early that her family didn't know. Her husband, Eli, the prince, has seemed to turn away from her. Besides losing the baby, does he blame her for his having to move to her one-room shack in the middle of nowhere and give up his life in the Imperial Palace? Even after she rescued him from jail and a false charge of murder?

Lizabeth and Eli need to have some serious conversations.

Her self-sister Felicia is at a crossroad. She came into her own in the last book, which was told with her as the focus. In addition to the threat against the tsar to be solved, she had to navigate Eli's family. That especially meant dealing with his younger brother, Peter, who adores her, a newly discovered family connection to another magic-wielding grigori, the politics of being the new girl in school, and everyone discovering her significant powers as a grigori.

When Felicia and Peter to visit Lizbeth and Eli in their small cabin in Texoma (formerly Texas and Oklahoma), they need to have some serious conversations as well.

The two couples are separated when two buses of apparent soldiers appear in town, searching for a wizard. Everyone is soon on the hunt to discover who is being sought. And why. It doesn't help that soon Felicia will be expected to attend a semi-annual ball/marriage mart among the grigori Elite. For someone in the middle of nowhere, she's getting a lot of company.

During the ensuing mayhem, more than one person in Lizbeth's circle will pay a price while trying to set things right. But more than one also will see a way forward.

Harris, also author of such beloved series as those featuring Lily Bard, Aurora Teagarden, Sookie Stackhouse, Harper Connelly and the residents of Midnight, Texas, presents a fast-paced novel that has room for multiple characters and storylines, and big feelings. All the Dead Shall Weep builds on the stories of several characters. Harris is so adept at making it all make sense that sometimes the story is told from Lizbeth's point of view, and other times from Felicia's perspective. It appears that the two half-sisters are both protagonists in the series, and not just Lizbeth.

This fifth novel in the series brings forward what has happened in earlier books, and breaks new ground that promises developments in stories to come.