Book Review - The Perfect Assassin by K.A. Doore

[Ky Greene]

Title of the book: The Perfect Assassin
Author: K.A. Doore
Series: Chronicles of Ghadid, Book 1
Genres: Fantasy, Suspense

Short summary of the story:
Amastan Basbowen has trained his entire life to become an assassin to serve the Drum Circle of Ghadid in meting out justice through contracts. The group of assassins that serve the Drum Circle are collectively known as family and refer to each other as cousins. The Drum Circle consists of drum chiefs that oversee the workings of Ghadid. Amastan finishes his assassin training only to find that there are no contracts, and therefore no work. Shortly afterwards, he stumbles onto the corpse of drum chief Yanniq, and finds himself in the middle of an investigation into how Yanniq died. Throughout the investigation, there's another big problem - Yanniq's jaani hasn't been quieted. Every person has a jaani that has to be laid to rest after death, with a preferable window of three hours. Marabi are specially trained to lay jaani to rest, but whoever killed Yanniq went out of their way to hide the body so that his jaani was not quieted. A jaani that has not been quieted attempts to possess the living, and Amastan finds himself constantly fighting off jaani while he is trying to find Yanniq's killer.

Good points / bad points:
The story is well-written and fast-paced, which makes it an easy read. There are some interesting ideas in Doore's world that I've never seen employed before; the concept of the jaani was an exciting addition to the already suspenseful nature of a book that deals with assassins.

One of the other really cool things about the book was the normalcy of all types of relationships; bisexuality is treated as the norm in the world of Ghadid, and that makes this book a rare find in that regard. There's no stereotypical behavior or tropes employed as gimmicks, which makes a refreshing change.

There are not a lot of bad points in this book. I personally figured out who the killer was about halfway through the book, but that is typical for someone who reads a lot of suspense novels. I found that a little cliche at first, but the character development is so strong and the motives so well-explored that it was hard to be annoyed for long.

Overall, I would say this book is one of the best new fantasy novels I have read this year, and I highly recommend it.