The Dead Cat Tail Assassins
by P. Djèlí Clark
Reviewed by Galen Strickland
Posted August 10, 2024
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The Dead Cat Tail Assassins are not cats.
Nor do they have tails.
But they are most assuredly dead.
Another novella from Clark, published this past Tuesday. It is possible I missed a reference, but I don't think the name of the assassin's guild is ever explained. Doesn't matter though, since quite a few other things aren't explained, you just have to accept certain things as the way this world works. It is set in and around a port city known as Tal Abisi, or possibly that is the name of the whole island, or it could be a peninsula off a mainland. Again, that doesn't matter. It is a secondary world fantasy, but perhaps in a similar milieu as our world's Caribbean, with magic and sorcery thrown into the mix. Later in the book, when a couple of this world's gods appear, they speak in a heavily accented creole patois, some words of which I could understand, others not.
The main character, Eveen, is one of the assassins, and she is dead. Or rather, undead, since she had been resurrected after death by the goddess Aeril. There are other assassin guilds other than the one she works for, and I assume they are also dead, at least the assassins themselves, but perhaps not the heads of the guilds. The head of the Dead Cat Tail Assassins is Baseema, and one who would probably be considered her assistant/secretary, is Fennis. He is the one who assigns Eveen her latest job by giving her just the address where her victim will be. In this particular case, Fennis cannot tell her who commissioned the assassination, it was anonymous, at least to his knowledge, but maybe not to Baseema? An undead assassin has been rid of any memories of their former life, but when Eveen enters the tower room to ship her victim (her term, as in "shipping off the soul to Aeril"), she experiences something like a memory, but it is confusing. Why does looking at the person she is to ship remind her of looking at herself in a mirror?
There are several basic rules for assassins. First, they must assume their assignments are just, but that is above their pay grade. Second, only the contracted are to be killed, no one else. Third, once accepted, the job must be carried out, or else the assassin will be hunted and killed by the godesses's hounds. Eveen had previously went against the rules, for which she had been punished. Her original indenture to Aeril was for one hundred years, but because of an overreach, killing someone outside of a contract, that had been extended an extra century. Now she chooses to stall on completing her latest contract, and in getting her intended victim out of the tower she does fight guards, but refrains from killing anyone. She has to figure out how and why her contract is a younger version of herself. If Eveen kills Sky, will Eveen cease to exist? She goes back to Fennis, whose brother is a thaumaturgist, but Ennis declares that Sky being pulled forward in time is impossible. Yet it happened. Bits and pieces of their overlapping lives come to the surface. Eveen knows nothing of her previous life, how long she had been dead before her resurrection, or why she agreed to be an assassin. Sky is apparently about twenty years younger, but Eveen may have been dead for an extra forty years. Eveen also didn't know what her name was before, but it can't be a coincidence that she chose a name that may have been her mother's. Eveen was Sky's mother's name.
Fast paced and exciting, with well written fight scenes, interesting characters, and an intriguing backdrop. The current events take place at the time of a festival which commemorates a conflict between the Clockwork King and the Pirate Princess. That had ended with the original port being encased in the Shimmer, an envelope of magic. The festival is celebrated in other places around Tal Abisi, but no one goes into the Shimmer. Except when they have to, in order to unravel the mystery of time and space, of memory, of revenge, and quite possibly of redemption. This gets another strong recommendation from me.
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