The Dead Cat Tail Assassins

In P. Djèlí Clark’s book, The Dead Cat Tail Assassins, those sworn to the Matron of Assassins are resurrected from the dead, are absolutely deadly, and are completely devoid of any memories of their past lives. They must follow three unbreakable vows: 1, to accept just contracts; 2, to only kill the contracted; and 3, to carry out all accepted jobs. 

Eveen the Eviscerator is one of the best in the city, but even her talents may not prove enough when she takes a contract that brings her face-to-face with a past she shouldn’t remember and, for the first time in her afterlife, she realizes she may not be able to fulfill a contract. Eveen must fight her way through the rest of her guild to make sense of this latest contract and find a way to survive if she can’t fulfill her professional vows. 

Eveen accepts her contract over breakfast and has until dawn the next morning to complete it or face the worse-than-death consequences. But when she reaches her target and discovers a face she recognizes, albeit she doesn’t know why or from where since she should have no memories of her past, she realizes that something isn’t right and the consequences of completing her contract could be worse than the consequences of breaking one of her vows. 

The novella takes place over less than 24 hours so the story is fast paced and the anticipation builds pretty quickly. Despite the short length of the novella at just a little over 200 pages, Clark manages to squeeze in a surprising amount of world building and character development. And of course, with a guild of undead and thus unkillable assassins, you get some very entertaining fight scenes. A darkly comic and exciting mix of magic and mystery, the novella is a fun and fast read with just the right amount of violence and gore for a book about assassins. 

Looking for more great fantasy? Check out Even Though I Knew the End by C.L. Polk, Book of Night by Holly Black, Three Parts Dead by Max Gladstone, and Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James.