Notes from the Shelf

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The Dead Cat Tail Assassins by P. Djèlí Clark is a 213-page fantasy/mystery novella. Set in Tal Abisi, Eveen the Eviscerator is a skilled, discreet, professional assassin of the Dead Cat Tail Assassins guild, who are not cats, nor have tails, but they are most certainly dead. Resurrected from the dead, wiped of all memories, they are sworn to kill for the Matron of Assassins. They just have to follow three unbreakable vows. One, the contract must be just. Two, the assassin may only kill the contracted. Three, once you accept a job, it must be carried out. When the Festival of the Clockwork King turns the city upside down, Eveen’s newest mission brings her face-to-face with a past she isn’t supposed to remember and a vow she can’t forget.

P. Djèlí Clark is a pen name as he’s an academic historian and publishes academic articles as well. I think this shows through in his writing for The Dead Cat Tail Assassins, with how precisely everything is laid out within this novella. There is nothing that is not relevant to the core story, but still the worldbuilding was done beautifully and felt very easy for me to fall into the world and understand what’s going on very quickly.

I loved the style of writing! It was such a fun read with it being a little irreverent and adding in sound effects. It was a bit goofy, but I loved it. I also loved how Tick Tick was introduced, I thought it was really clever.

I did find Eveen a bit hard to read as a name. I kept changing it to even so I was having to reread things a lot, then about halfway through I got used to it but then was changing even to Eveen, so the opposite problem and still had to reread sometime. It interrupted the flow of the story for me for sure, but it was still very fun to read.

Another thing that confused me at first was when Sky was introduced, I thought she was a child, like 10 or something, so at first I thought maybe she’d be Eveen’s daughter, so her being 19 took me by surprise a bit. It was also a bit hard to understand some of what the goddess was saying at first, but it was easy to adapt to it. Although I will say, when she said “mansplain” it took me out of the book a bit.

I definitely couldn’t have predicted the ending to this book, it was crazy but at the same time seemed logical to the story, like of course it would come to this! Such an enjoyable read from start to finish, and a quick read, too, since it was a novella. I finished it in two days.

I give The Dead Cat Tail Assassins 5 stars.

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