I Am Grimalkin – Book Review

Grimalkin: The Witch Assassin

(Wardstone Chronicles #9)

by Joseph Delaney

Greenwillow Books,2012

387 Pages

Middle Grade (8-12 and up)

I am in love. How could you not love a protagonist who is beautiful and dangerous, who is a paragon of strength and determination, the star of her family, and always comes out a winner?

This is one of the best entries in the long-running series called The Wardstone Chronicles (for no apparent reason,) published as The Last Apprentice in the U.S. and as The Spook’s Apprentice in the author’s native U.K. (The only reason I can see for the change of name for American audiences is a possible confusion with an archaic racial epithet.)

Formerly, Rise of the Huntress was one of the best, with Bony Lizzie taking over a small Celtic island and nearly bringing the Spook to his knees, but then Delaney followed it up with Rage of The Fallen, where Tom teams up with the witch assassin to fight the Devil himself on Irish ground. That story introduces Thin Shaun, and even includes a visit from the Great God Pan. The story line gets more intense and more frightening as Delaney goes deeper into the mythology of the witches.

This book is a narrative told in Grimalkin’s voice, the story of what happens to her once she leaves The Spook and Tom Ward in Ireland to keep the head of the Devil safe in a sack. At the same time, we learn through flashback about Grimalkin’s past and how she rose to her position through ruthless determination. Grimalkin was born into evil, and through strength of character, intelligence, and her own individual sense of morality, is able to rise above the slime-crawling witch-eat-witch world to become the best of the best.

With a sharp blade in her hand, a witch assassin dies fighting her enemies. Why should it be any different for me?

We lack the usual storyline involving Tom and his journey, his unspoken love for Alice, and the tension between Alice and the Spook, but without losing the ambience of the setting. In fact, the dark woodland atmosphere of the County returns after a short hiatus, pulling us deeper into the politics of Pendle Hill and taking us a step forward in the fight against the Dark. In this book, we return to the Witch Dell to grapple with undead witches, visit Malkin Tower, and even swing by Chippenden.

Delaney always gives us a new interpretation of mythological horrors. It is one of the strengths of the series. We learn about undead witches that can go wick and slither under your bed, blind wights that lurk under the water, leylines and boggarts, and now he explores further the Lamia and their gibbets. And…finally… we encounter (I was holding my breath for so long): a werewolf!

We watch as Grimalkin walks the Earth, imagining what it must feel like to invite a woman with filed teeth and a finger bone necklace into your home, knowing that she carries the head of the Devil in her bag, knowing that the host of Hell follows close on her heels, seeing the campfires light one by one, each surrounded by a company of witches, fearing that somewhere in the dark lurks a werewolf that was born of a demon, with you between it and its chosen prey. The story comes to a slow boil as the tension between Grimalkin and the wolf builds. If the witches and their allies catch Grimalkin and retrieve the head of the Fiend, he will once again walk free, and Tom and Alice will be his first targets.

I was thrilled to see Grimalkin has taken on her own apprentice. Spitting on tradition, she decides that a clan with multiple assassins will be all the stronger. She makes mistakes here, though. Grimalkin lets go of secrets that should be kept closer to her heart, like sharing with Thorne the story of the night she committed an unforgivable crime against the entire Deane Clan. Also, once Thorne has to save Grimalkin’s life because they were sparring bare-handed, Grimalkin’s knives laid out on the ground, when she is suddenly dragged under by a water abhuman. Any assassin worth her salt would never be caught without some weapon upon her person. Yet even after that lesson, she then agrees to join a knight for dinner unarmed. Are these really mistakes, or is Grimalkin showing weakness? Does her heart open too much to her protégé?

Beware: more than one character we care about dies in this chapter of the Wardstone Chronicles. Grimalkin also reveals some unexpected magical skills. One is The Voice, so obviously, she’s been studying with the Bene Gesserit. (And with Harry Potter as well, since we revisit the spoken word spell Avaunt (Begone.)

“You have crossed a line!” Needle hissed. “I rule here. This is the place of the dead, not the living. Do you come to challenge me, Grimalkin?”

The only weakness I can find in this book is that too much of it is spent apologizing for Grimalkin. (Well, that and the horribly clichéd witch names ‘Grimalkin’ and ‘Thorne’…) She isn’t nice to Tom because he’s got spunk, but because he is her only possible path of escaping eternal torture by the Fiend. Grimalkin is a force of nature. This is a creature that carves scissors into trees to strike terror into the hearts of her enemies. She doesn’t just kill her victims, she enjoys torturing them. She isn’t a sociopath– no, she relishes every ounce of horror and pain as it enters and charges the bones so valued in her art.

One of the best things about this series is that it has never pandered to the envisioned need for horror stories aimed at younger audiences to be filled with good-hearted people and have the good guys win in the end. We know the Spook’s former Apprentice died horribly, drained of blood by a boggart. We have also already watched Bill Arkwright, another Spook, willingly walk to his death, and seen Tom’s family tortured. I wish Delaney had not tried to make it “acceptable” for Tom to be allied with such a monster as Grimalkin by showing that her heart is really good and redeemable deep down. It seems too much in contrast with her original character. The Witch Assassin shouldn’t need to seem good. On the other hand, we see Grimalkin truly humbled here, and she grows from the experience.

This is a high stakes game, and the only way to fight overwhelming evil is by using a little of its own savagery against itself. We have seen this as a recurring theme. Tom has already sold his soul to the Devil, (only in order to save the ones he loves), and Alice is constantly using her dark magic to aid them in their quest to defeat the Fiend. Only John Gregory stands to remind us that the ends don’t justify the means. Delaney, however, doesn’t give us any answers to this ontological dilemma. He treats his audience as adults rather than leading us down a paved road to a sappy moral.

Why kill the weak when you can fight the strong?

In the final pages of this book, The apple of my eye returns more to her true character, in such a way that we root for it like a savage, black magic Rambo. But it isn’t a blood bath. It is prose, a journal entry that celebrates the beauty of vengeance. Do we want to be placed in a position of feeling empathy for Grimalkin? I think Delaney uses her sense of honor to walk the narrow line and allow us to question for ourselves. In the end, there is no resolution to the problem of the Fiend, but we do know that Tom must return to Malkin Tower in Pendle to face his next challenge while the Spook re-builds his home.

Unfortunately, Delaney has promised that the series will end in only three more books. Lure of the Dead releases next month, next I am Alice is on deck, and then sadly, “The Final Chapter.” (I suggest purchasing the hardcover U.S. edition with the haunting Patrick Arrasmith artwork. It is worth the wait.)

One thing has been hinted at in the stories: Alice will sacrifice herself for Tom. (Tibbs told us this in Attack of the Fiend.) Alice is herself a sin, a child of a witch and the Devil, and after the whole blood jar thing, I believe the only thing that can save her from the clutches of her father is sacrificing herself for another.