Nocturnal Book Reviews

Egalley thanks to Strange Chemistry

I'm a bit disappointed with this book, folks. In theory it should be brilliant - a pirate girl and an assassin... But in reality, it's a ragged, overly simplified and very short narration of a story that ended so suddenly I had to verify I had the full version of an ebook. Which I did. Perhaps it's meant for a younger YA audience despite that the main heroine herself is 17?

Ananna refuses to marry a fellow pirate's son, runs away without talking to her parents or friends or anyone, when he proposes, and his family sends an assassin to kill her for the offence. The whole situation from the very beginning is baffling... There is no prevarication, gathering the supplies or pleading her case with her parents. She. Just. Runs. For a pirates' daughter she sure acts incredibly stupid.

Naji, the assassin (mysteriously disfigured) has a certain curse on him, which activates when someone saves him, and that someone is Ananna. Now they are both trying to escape people sent to kill her and strange creatures from The Mist that constantly attempt to kill Naji, while our couple is trying to free him from the curse.

Ananna and Naji, they are an odd couple. Ananna doesn't think or analyse much, and we can not get into Naji's head at all. I don't know him. I only know what he does, and it's all just bits and pieces, so I couldn't grasp their characters at all. Naji also acts like a teenage boy incredibly vulnerable about his appearance most of the time although I felt that he should have been older and more mature. He kills people for living. It should provide certain air of soullessness not moping, shouldn't it?

Overall, it felt like I was supposed to like The Assassin's Curse, but I didn't get it. So sorry, guys! I wish you more luck with it than I had. Plenty of people loved it well enough, it just wasn't complex enough or deep enough for my liking. Oh well.