enne📚 reviewed The Dead Cat Tail Assassins by P. Djèlí Clark
The Dead Cat Tail Assassins
4 stars
This is a quick romp of a novella. I know it's overused to call something a romp these days, but this truly is a whirlwind of action, humor, and snark. The amount of banter and fight scenes make it feel like it's material that would also make a good comic, but I also quite enjoyed the unfolding mystery and worldbuilding.
This is also a much funnier book than a lot of Clark's previous work. There's ongoing jokes about assassin rules ("Assassin rule 305: always be ready to torch your safe house"). There's some great banter about work friends vs actual friends. I was also amused that Aeril the Matron of Assassins also runs really good restaurants (due to the knife connection), and one of the assassin bureaucrats is a foodie trying to angle their way into the restaurant business.
This is a quick romp of a novella. I know it's overused to call something a romp these days, but this truly is a whirlwind of action, humor, and snark. The amount of banter and fight scenes make it feel like it's material that would also make a good comic, but I also quite enjoyed the unfolding mystery and worldbuilding.
This is also a much funnier book than a lot of Clark's previous work. There's ongoing jokes about assassin rules ("Assassin rule 305: always be ready to torch your safe house"). There's some great banter about work friends vs actual friends. I was also amused that Aeril the Matron of Assassins also runs really good restaurants (due to the knife connection), and one of the assassin bureaucrats is a foodie trying to angle their way into the restaurant business.
