mackle13 's review for:

Grimalkin the Witch Assassin by Joseph Delaney

2.0

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If anyone's been following my progress on this series, they'll know that I really liked it in the beginning, but I've become more and more meh about it as the series has continued. For one, it's kinda of bugged me that Tom's voice and demeanor hasn't really changed, even though he's gone from 11 to 15. For another, I feel like a lot of the books are filler and the series, as a whole, feels needlessly prolonged. (I'm starting to think that the author was hellbent on having 13 books in the series, despite the story not really being enough to quite fill the time.)

So why continue?

Well, I'm determined, at this point, to see it through. It helps that there is an end in sight, so it's not one of those series that never seems like it will ever conclude. It also helps that they are pretty quick reads, even when I procrastinate with them - as I did with this book.

Anyway -

All that said, I was interested to read this installment because it's from Grimalkin's perspective instead of Tom's. We got a bit of this in one of the short story collections before, and I thought that a story from her perspective could reignite a bit of the old spark.

I was mistaken.

For one thing, this book definitely seems to fit in with the filler theory. I mean, not much happens throughout the story to progress the arc, as a whole, along. A few things here and there, maybe, but nothing that couldn't be fit into a regular story.

Also, I never really felt any real tension, especially towards the beginning. Things take a bit of a turn in the middle, and it seems like the stakes might be raised a bit, but then you ahve the thing, towards the end, where Alice

Spoiler

heals Grimalkin from the poison that weakens her, so not only is she as invincible as it seems she usually is, but she's even more super charged by the end.

Ironically, if there's any longterm consequences in this book for the larger arc, it seems to belong more to Alice, who's only in the book briefly.


That aside -

The whole story is pretty much Grimalkin fleeing from those who are pursuing her after the events of the last book, she's put in a position where she has to turn and fight, she fights a bit to get to the point where she can flee again, and the pursuit begins again. This gnerally pattern is repeated several times through the story.

And, despite Grimalkin being one of my favorite characters usually, she just comes across as kind of dry here. It doesn't help that when she's telling stories of her past to Thorne, it feels very telly. (Well, the whole book does, really. "I did this. I thought that. I knew this.")

Speaking of Thorne, she was a pretty decent character, and it was nice to have her around.

Spoiler

Pity that she dies by the end of the book, so any hope of having another interesting character/ally in the series goes nowhere.

Overall -

This could've been an interesting short story, but didn't have enough meat to flesh out a full length story.