Full disclosure up front: I found out about The Butterfly Assassin because Finn Longman and I are both in the same Discord server, and I read the book because Finn was doing a chapter-by-chapter readalong on their blog (starting here). I won’t pretend these reviews are ever objective, but I may be more than usually biased about this book in particular. The Butterfly Assassin probably ins’t a book I would have picked out to read otherwise, dystopian cities and teen assassins not being things I particularly look for, but there’s a lot more going on under the surface that I really came to appreciate.
She hates herself for letting him see that, but not as much as she hates him for watching.
The Butterfly Assassin, Finn Longman
The Butterfly Assassin is tightly focused on its main character, who goes by both Isabel and Bella. While there are on-page assassinations, the story is really about Isabel’s struggle to escape from her training and the environment that went with it. Where some novels might treat assassin training as cool, Finn presents Isabel’s past as deeply traumatic, and engages skilfully with what character and personality development look like coming out the other side. While Isabel is indisputably the star, all The Butterfly Assassin‘s characters stand out as deeply complex. There are few, if any, easy choices presented on these pages.
As you might expect for a city run by two guilds of assassins, the setting of The Butterfly Assassin is dark, but not unremittingly so. The moments of defiant light emerge all the more clearly against a background that deliberately reflects the bleakest aspects of our real world. In particular, the relationships and connections between characters provide a sense of hope, even when the story turns tragic. It’s too rare to read about friendships being just as important as other kinds of relationship, but Finn presents them beautifully.
It seems at odds with the way he thinks he’s under some moral imperative to offer people biscuits at every possible opportunity.
The Butterfly Assassin, Finn Longman
While the prose of The Butterfly Assassin isn’t particularly descriptive most of the time, there are moments of visual beauty, mostly around pictures the characters have painted. The lack of description elsewhere serves to make these moments really pull the reader’s attention, and end up being one of the most memorable things about the setting. It’s also worth mentioning that the narrative voice is occasionally laugh-out-loud funny.
While this isn’t a review of the readalong, it definitely improved my experience reading the book and gave me a lot to think of in terms of metaphor and character mirroring. Finn’s careful not to spoil book two, but there are a few places where if you’re reading chapter-by-chapter, you will find out some things in advance of where they feature in the text. That didn’t spoil it for me, but I’m not a very spoiler-sensitive reader, so your mileage may vary.
Chalk Letters Books 