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A review by ap_87
The Dead Cat Tail Assassins by P. Djèlí Clark
4.0
3.5 - half stars should be a thing
Edit: read another comment; what I refer to a dialect/accent is meant to be Creole apparently, a language I had completely thrown out of my brain so apologies for my forgetfulness and ignorance here. That said my point still stands regardless if it’s a written language/dialect/accent.
So this is one where I saw everything coming from 100 miles away plot-wise unfortunately. To me everything in this novella was just predictable and came as no surprise. I almost guessed the plot from page 1. :( That admittedly was a bit of a let down. When that is said, I did enjoy the story, the worldbuilding and the overall concept and would have loved to have had a few more pages to the story revealing a bit more about the characters and Eevens past in the end.
I also liked the writing style with the exceptions of the written accent, which is meant to be a language thing in the book, from two characters at the end of the book. I’m not a fan of written out accents/dialects in general. I get why it was made a thing and if I am assuming correct it has to do with perhaps drawing some sort of inspiration from hoodoo/voodoo/Baron Samedi, but at times it rendered parts of the dialogue incomprehensible to me personally aside all I ended up thinking about was stereotypes from a certain part of the world as well as the trolls in WoW. It’s not a bad thing as such but as a non-native English speaker accents/dialects written out that way is just very difficult for me. I might have understood it better had I had the audiobook at hand, but the written part made my poor neurodivergent brain go all haywire trying to correct spelling and figure out what some of the words were meant to be. Basically I lost a lot of immersion at the end of the story when it was being wrapped up, which was somewhat of a bummer.
That said now I know what to expect when I get to read one of the author’s other books, and I know I enjoy his writing style overall aside the accent thing.
Edit: read another comment; what I refer to a dialect/accent is meant to be Creole apparently, a language I had completely thrown out of my brain so apologies for my forgetfulness and ignorance here. That said my point still stands regardless if it’s a written language/dialect/accent.
So this is one where I saw everything coming from 100 miles away plot-wise unfortunately. To me everything in this novella was just predictable and came as no surprise. I almost guessed the plot from page 1. :( That admittedly was a bit of a let down. When that is said, I did enjoy the story, the worldbuilding and the overall concept and would have loved to have had a few more pages to the story revealing a bit more about the characters and Eevens past in the end.
I also liked the writing style with the exceptions of the written accent, which is meant to be a language thing in the book, from two characters at the end of the book. I’m not a fan of written out accents/dialects in general. I get why it was made a thing and if I am assuming correct it has to do with perhaps drawing some sort of inspiration from hoodoo/voodoo/Baron Samedi, but at times it rendered parts of the dialogue incomprehensible to me personally aside all I ended up thinking about was stereotypes from a certain part of the world as well as the trolls in WoW. It’s not a bad thing as such but as a non-native English speaker accents/dialects written out that way is just very difficult for me. I might have understood it better had I had the audiobook at hand, but the written part made my poor neurodivergent brain go all haywire trying to correct spelling and figure out what some of the words were meant to be. Basically I lost a lot of immersion at the end of the story when it was being wrapped up, which was somewhat of a bummer.
That said now I know what to expect when I get to read one of the author’s other books, and I know I enjoy his writing style overall aside the accent thing.