Assassin’s Heart by Sarah Aheirs: I should have known

Assassin’s Heart 

by 

Sarah Aheirs

Lea, also known as Oleander, is a Saldana, one of the Nine Families of Lovero. Lea lives in a city that worships the goddess of death and rebirth, the Nine Families participate in the highest form of worship: killing people. Lea works as a clipper, basically a legal assassin, and works to protect her Family from their rivals; who are always trying to discover and destroy the other Families in a bid for power, status, and money. At least, Lea works as a clipper when she isn’t engaging in a secret relationship with Val a clipper from the Da Via Family. The relationship is blown to bits when the Da Via family break into her home and kill every last member of Saldanas. That’s not a typo by the way, there’s family and then there’s Family. I’ll let Y’all decide which one is more important. Alone, and filled with murderous rage, Lea promises to enact revenge on the Da Vias for killing her Family...

Which she does by fleeing to a completely different city and messing around with the secondary love interest... because YA books. I regret this decision so much.

Note From the Editor: Well... That was anti-climatic.

Characters

Oleander: she is an assassin. I’d put something else here but she has literally no other character traits. Lea, I know you can stab a man and poison people like nobody’s business, but do you like anything? Food? Books? Poetry? You’re just looking a bit flat, Lea dear. Everybody needs hobbies, you know. Why don’t you take up knitting, or cooking, or something? No reason really, I just think it would be funny.

*sigh* 

At least she likes dresses; so, we sidestepped the Strong Female Character who has no time for skirts trope. That is honestly the only thing that stood out when it came to Lea.

Note from the Editor: Dude, are you trying to turn the crazy useless assassin lady into me? Cooking, kitting, and reading are my things.

Alessio: is honestly the only character with a bit of life. If only because he’s like a lost puppy who’s all like "You need me to kill someone? Okay, I’m going to kill them. Just point the way!" Though I do have to squint at the morally grey assassin who just wants to be loved thing. Doesn’t it seem like a bit of an oxymoron? Still, at least he had a personality. But his nickname was freakin Les! So I was stuck with Les and Lea. Why? Why do you do this to me book? I had to reread every name twice to make anything make sense.

Note from the Editor: He has a fantastic name! Alessio is an Italian name, and it comes from an ancient Greek name meaning protector or defender. 

Lea’s Family and her family: not that they really matter, since they all die in the first thirty pages. Anyway, there’s some sort of "blood is thicker than water" thing going on where your loyalty is first and foremost to your Family, one of the nine special ones, and family comes second. But I have to know; how do people know when you’re talking about "family" as opposed to "Family"? I know there’s emphasis and crap, but I can’t help wondering how many miscommunications happened because they refused to differentiate between the two, other than to add a capital letter.

Likes

The world has promise: I’m going to make it clear now that the world wasn’t developed very well and I have a lot of questions. But, that doesn’t mean it wasn’t interesting. I mean, there’s legal assassins! Does that not sound at least a little intriguing? Of course, I thought it was going to be a bounty hunter sort of thing; but, nope! If you get pissed off at someone, put in a complaint and some money at the clipper office. They’ll take up your job at some point. What? So as long as you're rich, you can off anybody you like! Who says they even deserve to get murdered! Do you have to be nice to someone every bloody minute just in case you get on their bad side, because they could buy your death? Man! I’d be dead ten times over by now. 

And this stuff isn’t addressed at all! It’s interesting and all, but as you can see it quickly falls apart.

Note from the Editor: Kat, I hate to break this to you, but you'd be dead more than ten times by now. 

Also, I think this world thing could be fixed. The price could be too high for just anyone; only the ridiculously rich could buy death, so the whole situation becomes similar to the more common idea of hiring assassins. This story would still have an interesting twist, but it would work logically. Who knows, maybe you could throw in that they will take payment in something other than money?

Dislikes

Is it just me, or are the words "he only thing that mattered was killing the Da Vias" said too many freaking times. Compared to my other complaints, this is a really small one; but the fact that I noticed how often she said that exact sentence is not good. I swear 50% of Lea’s dialogue was just that sentence, and it got really annoying after a while. Especially since Lea kept saying it and not doing anything about it. Dang it, Lea! You had one job.

Lea, is a literal idiot: I just . . . I don’t know how she was an assassin. I feel like the author gave Lea too many abilities, but didn’t show us the abilities. She had Lea compare herself to her adversaries and say that she was much better at X or Y. It got to the point where the author just couldn’t justify Lea being in any sort of danger unless it was some sort of extraneous/utterly-ridiculous circumstance. I’m going to call it the Superman Complex.

Her kryptonite? Forgetfulness. "Oh no! I forgot to grab my sword before I ran after my boyfriend, Oh no! I forgot that I’d been shot in the shoulder and it can’t take my weight, now I’m trapped because I can’t go all Assassin’s Creed on them and climb away from the bad guys, Oh no! I forgot that I have literal magical powers that could have been helpful on multiple occasions." You get my drift.

Note from the Editor: What? Magic? Why? The main character is a crazy assassin, and she's from a family of crazy assassins. There is no need for magic, especially the kind of magic that isn't defined.

The plot got derailed in favor of romance: in hindsight, I probably should have guessed that since it’s called Assassin’s Heart, so, this one is my fault. But, couldn’t we have worked out a fifty-fifty split here? Half Assassin, half heart? Instead of the, roughly, two instances of stabby-murder-death we could have had some scenes of Lea sneaking around and actually doing what she’s supposed to be doing. But no, we must focus on the ‘devilishly handsome’ clipper, that’s much more interesting.

I’ve read this book before it’s called the Dark Elf Trilogy: And The Dark Elf Trilogy, by R. A. Salvatore, was much better. And, that’s saying something, because it’s a tie in novel for the Forgotten Realms. For those of you not versed in the world of Tabletop games turned books, they’re usually not that good.  The Dark Elf Trilogy was a wonderful exception that holds a scary amount of similarities to Assassin’s Heart. Look, I made a list.

• City full of Assassins
• A certain number of families who are on the top of the ladder
• Worship to death goddess
• The goal of wiping out a rival family completely (if you don’t there are terrible consequences)
• The book begins with the wiping out of one family
• The plot revolves around the revenge for said family
• There’s magic and gods and crap

Basically, if you want real assassins, real assassin families, and actual moral greyness, you should go read the Dark Elf Trilogy, not this disjointed book.

Note From the Editor: Also, the main character of the Dark Elf Trilogy is totally freaking awesome. I have yet to read a better written book about morals, grey society, and morally challenged characters.