Bingo 16: Cult
This is “cult” in the sense of member of a guild of undead assassins dedicated to a specific goddess, not exactly in the sense of abusive religious or otherwise controlling organization. The Dead Cat Tail Assassins is a novella centering on Eveen who is a member of the titular guild of killers for hire dedicated to their goddess Aeril. The undead thing is part of the membership; somehow, when you dedicate yourself to this goddess and her cult, you have to die and be brought back without any memories of your previous life or self. There are 3 main rules for followers of the Matron of Assassins: 1-the killing must be just, 2- only kill the person named in the contract, and 3 (probably the most important)- once the job is taken, it must be carried out.
Eveen is doing fine, she’s good at her job, but she runs into a problem on a job; she can’t kill her target for…reasons. Now she and her target are on the run from the guild for breaking one of the rules, and of course it’s carnival season. Eveen has to stay ahead of her colleagues, her goddess, figure out what’s going on about her target and herself, and do so in the chaos of a festival.
The world is really the star of the story in a lot of ways, because it’s not really the plot which is relatively straightforward, and it’s not really the characters either as no one is really all that developed. Eveen can’t be as she’s not supposed to have memories, and most everyone else doesn’t get a lot of attention because they don’t get much page time or there just is not the time for that. The mystery of what’s going on with this impossible job is actually kind of interesting but without character or plot development, it’s mostly an excuse to spend time running around Tal Abisi with its lore and geography. This isn’t a complaint really, but it does mean that there isn’t much attention to some interesting questions like some of the details behind the service to Aeril or the magic/science involved in some of the buildup.