A review by obsidian_blue
Slither by Joseph Delaney

2.0

 

I finished Slither around 2 am today and honestly this was just not good. You know all the ways that made "I Am Grimalkin" so fantastic? Totally missing here. It doesn't help that even though she shows up, we don't get her POV which maybe would have helped. Instead we stay in the head of Slither (a terrible character) and Nessa (an oldest daughter forced to have to deal with the fact her father sold her into slavery and certain death). Also there is way too many plot holes and nonsensical world building in this one and the ending was not satisfying. I don't know if Slither will show up in the next two books or not, but honestly if he does not, the series is missing nothing. This was a filler book and honestly I think Delaney could have said, hey we don't need 13 stories, let's end with 12, but what do I know.

Fair warning, this one is a lot more gory than the other books in the series.

"Slither" follows a creature named Slither who is a Kobolos Mage (and no I have no idea in the real world what this corresponds to, it was so unclear and I just gave up trying to piece it together via other myths) and lives somewhere far north of the County and in a land that does not know about spooks, the Fiend, and even really witches. It's a land where the Kobolos rule and take blood from animals and humans. Slither has an agreement with a farmer that if he dies, that he takes his three daughters to his family, and the youngest are not harmed, but his oldest, his daughter Nessa, can be sold to him. Nessa of course is dismayed at the agreement her father made, but has no choice and does what she can to protect her youngest sisters Bryony and Susan.

The story shifts between Slither and Nessa's point of views. And if you think this is a girl falls in love with a monster story and vice versa, think again. It's harsh reading about what happens to the girls as they focus on getting to the family that they hope will take them in. At one point I even gave up following what was happening because the world building was all over the place. In one chapter we are told that the things that happened when Slither sought sanctuary shouldn't have happened, but then it does and they are forced to flee and then in trouble for the very things that should not have happened. The whole flow was disjointed and got worse when Grimalkin showed up. And it didn't even make sense what happened to her and how she even got there. I think that Delaney needed her to be the big deus ex machina because otherwise the ending would not work.

The ending you think may be going another way until you read that poem/song at the end and you go, whelp that was a dark way to end this. Lovely.