Review: The Curse Workers: White Cat; Red Glove; Black Heart

The Curse Workers: White Cat; Red Glove; Black Heart by Holly Black
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is probably the first Holly Black book that I didn't fall in love with immediately. I did like it, but I didn't find it quite as engaging as the Folk of the Air (a masterpiece series), Coldest Girl in Coldtown (a standalone under-the-radar masterpiece), or even the Tithe series.

Most of what I love about Holly Black is there - great characters, clever dialogue, a crapton of bon mots. The worldbuilding here (curse workers possess various cool powers but cannot use said powers indiscriminately) wasn't as strong as in other books, but I didn't hate it. I thought the concept of blowback (basically receiving back what you put out ten folder, so if you're a death worker you can kill someone with a touch, but you'll literally lose parts of yourself as a result) was smart, I was really engaged by the whole criminal underworld/con man focus, and I thought Cassel was a delight. Actually, most of the main characters were great (I very much enjoyed Cassel and Sam's dynamic, and Cassel's family is like a smorgasbord of train-wreck entertainment).

Given all that, I'm not sure why I only rated it 3 stars; in fact, I'll be generous and bump it up to 3.5. I think if I had to pick a reason, it would be, first, I didn't like Lila (the main female character and Cassel's love interest) at all. For a gangster's daughter, she was bland, and I couldn't for the life of me figure out why Cassel loved her so much. She's supposed to be some tough, cool girl, but I found characters like Jude from FotA and Tana from CGiCt much grittier, which is saying something, given that Lila is a mob boss in training. Also, this was a bind-up of three separate books, so I think it just felt like kind of a slog going through all three one after the other.

That being said, I'd still recommend it because there's enough of what Holly Black is known for and what she excels at present here to make it worth the effort in reading.

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