The Witness for the Dead almost feels like The Goblin Emperor was written more as a prequel, and not as something of a branch off sequel. The character Thara Celehar is not a major presence in the initial novel, but he’s got a full personality and sense of self and history in the follow-up novella. My only real complaint is that it feels kind of like you need to have recently read the first novel or have a pretty good memory of some of the nuances of the backstory and language used; I have read (and really liked) The Goblin Emperor, but that was a few years ago, so I’m pretty sure I’m not appreciating some of the nuances I’m supposed to.
In a lot of ways, this is a murder mystery, an inheritance mystery, and some personal exploits combined into one, which is a lot for a 232-page novel/la. Some of these plots do end up combining, but not all of them, and not always entirely cleanly. I don’t quite understand why some of the other clerics around Celehar have such a problem with him, and there isn’t enough information about the local politics, religious or secular, to really make some of that clear. Granted, Celehar has a bad habit (according to himself) of being more honest than is sometimes politically saavy or saying the quiet part out loud, and the chain of command (and his place in it) is a bit unclear as well, but that does not explain why Zanarin tries to mess with him during a side-plot that feels kind of disconnected to the rest of the story.
The place where most everything supposedly connects is the local opera house, and Celehar spends a good deal of time with the composer/director Pel-Thenhior who feels almost like the reason this story was written as ‘in the same world as’ the prequel but is not actually a direct sequel; it’s like there had to be some excuse to make him a focus. This isn’t a bad thing, Pel-Thenhior is a great character, and it would be easy to see him and Celehar doing the buddy-cop (maybe more than buddies?- there are hints) thing in a sequel (which was recently announced). The only place where the Opera part doesn’t work is in the connection to the murder mystery that brought Celehar into contact with them in the first place; there’s just not enough development of any of the suspects within the opera house for that eventual answer to mean much.