I had seen a review of Cassandra Rose Clarke's book The Assassin's Curse here on Goodreads and was really excited about getting my hands on a copy. I'm only giving this book 2 stars because it wasn't what I expected. The kernel of creativity in this story is very good, but I was disappointed with how quickly it fell into stereotypes. The spunky/streetsmart heroine and the dark brooding love interest. I also didn't realize this was the first book in a series, and got about 50 pages from the end and realized there was no way that the author would be able to break the Assassin's Curse in that many pages.
Some of my gripes with this story are:
1. The author doesn't reveal the age of the main character until 3/4 of the way through the book so I had been picturing a 10 year old most of the story only to find out she's 17. That's like imagining Annie only to find out you've been saddled with Katniss.
2. Ananna, the main character, uses beauty as a method of judging trustworthiness. Yet, the man sent to kill her is hideously scarred and still somewhat attractive.
3. I realize that the author was trying to denote a marked difference between Naji and Ananna's education, but Ananna is the only one who can't use proper grammar. It feels very forced and makes it hard to read any dialog.
4. There is obviously some background to this story that I am missing. I found out there are two short stories that precede the events in the book. However, I can't just read them online, I can only download them from Amazon. Really annoying. Catherynne Valente has the short stories for the Girl Who series freely available to read online.
What I liked about this story:
1. The curse is actually a really interesting device. It requires the characters to stay together and that affects how they interact with each other and the people around them.
2. The secondary characters are really well done. Although I think the main characters are alittle flat, Marjani, the River Witch, and the Isle of Skye wizard are teasingly vague yet lend themselves to the intricacies of the story more than Ananna and Naji do.
3. The potential for this story to get better. The cliff hanger was well done and I do want to read the next book. The author is taking a classic fairy tale plot, a quest with three impossible tasks, and hopefully turning it into something new.
4. It is an easy read and engaging. I finished this book in under 24 hours because I wanted to know how it ended.
I am looking at this book with the eyes of an adult who writes reviews as part of her job, but as a normal 12-15 year old I think this book has enough of the elements of adventure, romance, and magic in it to be a perfect recommendation for a girl who might not be the most adventurous reader, is a little bit of a tomboy, and likes pirate stories. It is a good training book before moving on to someone like Tamora Pierce.
