The Dead Cat Tail Assassins

I received an advance copy via NetGalley.

The Dead Cat Tail Assassins is a brilliant dark fantasy novella. Deep world-building. Plentiful trope twists. A shocker of an ending. It really has it all.

Eveen is an assassin dubbed the Eviscerator. She's also undead, having signed away her life to a goddess, and for reasons unknown to her. She remembers nothing of her life-before-resurrection. Then she's assigned a job commissioned by an anonymous patron, and realizes the victim has her own face, albeit younger. Eveen breaks the commitment to the job, saving her own younger self--and risking the wrath of her bosses, peers, and even worse, her overseeing goddess.

I loved the originality of the setting, the developing relationship between Eveen show more and her other self, and how, even though I predicted some plot developments, I was still gobsmacked by others. It was sheer fun, all the way through. show less

This book is so much fun. I love P. Djèlí Clark's writing, it is fast paced and evocative and shot through with crackling humour. Eveen is an undead assassin, with no memory of who she was before her soul was given over to the goddess of knives, but she ends up face to face with... her own face? on what should have been a routine assignment. This triggers a hair raising time sensitive quest to find out the truth and see if it can be undone, with her fellow assassins on her tail and the city's magic running high.

There is blood, and death, and assassinations, and demon dogs who eat people, but the tone never becomes too grim. It is so well balanced with humor and burgeoning friendships and I highly recommend it. I need to go read the show more rest of the author's books right now. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for access to the eARC in exchange for an honest review show less

P. Djèlí Clark steps away from alternate history (with extras) and builds a brand new world as a setting for this short novel. Eveen is dead. But before she died she made a deal with a Goddess so she is brought back as an immortal assassin and with no memories of her past life - a clean break to allow her to function properly in her new role. And she is very good at her job - to the point where she had been nicknamed The Eviscerator (although ask her and she will point out that it was just one time). Until the day when she is contracted to kill someone whose face triggers a memory in her brain - something that should be impossible. And things go downhill from there.

Time travel, parallel universes, a procession of undead characters show more (there are a lot of ways to be resurrected) and magic get mixed into the story and all of that someone works together. In order to survive, Eveen needs to find out what happened to her and why. And while that happens, we get to learn more about our Dead Cat Tail Assassin (Eveen's guild name - noone really knows why it is called that but it is what it is after all) - she is a lot more than meets the eye and it makes one reconsider what makes one human. Of course there is a villain in the whole thing and he has his motives which end up being instrumental to solving the mystery of that impossible memory but I could not even be annoyed at just how shallow his character was (but then he needed to be - he could not have been anything else).

The story is playing hard on some of the fantasy cliches and even parodies some of them and it somehow works - the humor which one expects from P. Djèlí Clark is all here and it makes a very dark story much more readable than it would have been otherwise - the story is very gory in places and the world it builds is cruel). By the end I wished for it to be a start of a new series - it is a self-contained story just like "The Haunting of Tram Car 015" or "A Dead Djinn in Cairo" are but it opens the door for a lot more stories in the universe.

The one thing that annoyed me was the choice to use dialect when the Goddesses spoke to the humans (dead and undead) and to each other. While I can see why the author made the choice, it made that part of the story much harder to read than it could have been (and as some of the story's resolution relied on deciphering the dialog there, it was important not to miss too much of it).

If you are in the mood for something dark and humorous at the same time, that may be a great way to get introduced to P. Djèlí Clark. Although it may actually work better if you get to know his style in his jinn stories so that you can then compare and contrast them.

PS: And it may be a good idea for the cover illustrator to read the book they are illustrating - or someone who had read the book to provide them with some feedback. The cover may look very nice but it contradicts the story... show less

Series Info/Source: This is a stand alone book. I got this on ebook from NetGalley for review.

Thoughts: I always love Clark's novellas and this was no exception. The amount of world-building that happens in this small novella is impressive, and the characters are engaging and entertaining too.

The story takes place in Tal Abisi, an ancient city with a deep history of magic and mythology. I was incredible impressed by the world-building here and hope that future stories take place in this world. There is a subtle steampunk theme to this world but there is also magic and an intriguing structure of gods. We are reading the story from Eveen the Eviscerator's point of view. She is a dead assassin who can't remember her past, although her most show more recent target changes that. Now she is left struggling to figure out if she should break the third and most simple rule of the guild, "Once you accept a job, you must carry it out."

I loved this. The premise is a bit crazy once you get in to the story. Eveen, and the characters that surround her, have amazing depth and are highly entertaining. I am always impressed by Clark's ability to engage me with his characters so completely in such a short page space. Additionally, this is just a downright fun story. The action scenes are really well done, the dialogue is witty, and the mystery Eveen is trying to solve is complex and keeps you guessing.

I was incredibly impressed with every aspect of this story and douby impressed that all this was contained in this novella! This was incredibly readable and entertaining and my only complaint was that it was over too fast.

My Summary (5/5): Overall I absolutely loved this. The world-building, story, characters, and action in here are all amazing and innovative. I am stunned by the complexity of both the world and characters that are created in such a short page space without seeming confusing or info-dumpy. This was an entertaining and flat-out fun read that I really enjoyed. I hope we see future books set in the complex ancient city of Tal Abisi. I eagerly await Clark's next story. show less

The title is priceless. Unfortunately, this is not a Djinn book.

Here we are in Tal Abisi, a port city in a fantasy world, with all that this entails. It’s an interesting and unique place that I liked very much.

In this universe, there are guilds of assassins that serve a goddess. The assassins are dead (as in dead-dead) and reanimation sorcery is at work. They are not zombies, mind you, they look nice. Sometimes they forget to blink, though. The goddess of assassins is very particular about contracts, so some people are off-limits. (Is the author trying to justify writing a fun book about assassins?)

Eveen the assassin has yet another job to do. Do I need to tell you that it doesn’t go as planned? There is a lot of action! Lots of show more fighting! Lots of complications! Lots of mysteries! Lots of hilarious dialogue! Lots of black humour!

Case in point: “Her pain threshold would make a masochist blush.” (There are a few advantages to being a dead reanimated assassin.)

There are cool details, such as that Eveen loves to read “Terribles”, which are the penny dreadfuls of this universe. This is hilarious. Also, I don’t know why their gods speak patwah, but I loved it.

I should have had a lot of fun! I expected to have fun. My problems were:

☹️ The book is dark. The cruelty is too casual. This doesn’t always mesh together with the humour. The hilarity started to feel repetitive and grate on me about 30% in.

☹️ When badass undead assassins talk like a clique of high school girls, it gets annoying fast. This makes the supposedly dramatic scenes look ridiculous.

☹️ There was too much world-building crammed into 200+ pages; too much info dumping, too many “oh, by the way” things appearing out of nowhere. Messy.

I loved this author’s Djinn books, so I am hoping to read more of them. This one had a lot of potential, but left me with a strange aftertaste. Many other readers felt differently, so you might like it better than I did :) show less

Eveen is undead, a member of the Dead Cat Tail Assassins (no, they're not cats, it's just a name). She and the others in her guild have three unbreakable rules: accept the contract if it is just, don't kill those not on the contract, and once you accept the job you must carry it out. Her latest job is an anonymous contract, but when she goes to carry it out, she realizes that the person she's supposed to kill is her younger self. Can she do that? And if she doesn't, can she avoid the consequences brought by her own goddess?

A propulsive, slightly mind-bending novella set on a fantasy world with a fascinating mythology and pantheon. Clark has a way with descriptions and world-building that I appreciate, even more impressive when the story show more is so compact. I was a little taken aback by the level of violence (my own fault - of course a fantasy story about undead assassins is going to be gory), but I would be interested in another book set in the same world. show less

Oh, I loved this book! I listened to the audio, and narrator Lynnette R. Freeman was a treat to listen to. She really brought the characters to life. There were a couple of characters that I had difficulty fully understanding, but I got the sense that was because their speech was written partially in a creole language and I would have had difficulties with it written, also. (I was still able to understand the meaning of what was said, even if I didn't always catch the actual words.)

This is a very action-packed book, with lots of violence (as you would expect from something with "assassin" in the title) but since lots of the participants of the action were undead, there wasn't as much actual killing as I had initially expected. There show more were also some very funny moments, a bit of a mystery to solve, and a couple of scenes that went in a more science fiction direction instead of fantasy (which makes this a great example of speculative fiction).

Highly recommended, as long as you are okay with discussion of death and killing. show less