Review: The Spell of the Black Dagger

The Spell of the Black Dagger by Lawrence Watt-Evans
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The blurb, and the early part of the book, give the impression that Tabaea the Thief is the protagonist, and maybe that was the author's original plan - but she becomes the antagonist partway through, with the protagonist being the Minister of Investigation, who has to try to figure out (with the help and sometimes hindrance of a number of magicians) first who Tabaea is, and then how to stop her.

As the blurb conveys, Tabaea creates a magical black dagger. It enables her to steal life and inherent (non-knowledge-based) skills from people and animals (animal lovers may want to give this one a miss, though the descriptions don't get too explicit). (view spoiler)[For a long time, I thought it might itself be corrupting her; she went rapidly from "I've never killed anyone, but this stuck-up person I used to know maybe deserves it, though not really" to being a serial killer with no evidence of mercy, doubt, or regret. But it seems that was just her character arc, not the influence of the dagger - unless the other person who got hold of the dagger was just better at resisting it. (hide spoiler)] The way she degenerates from somewhat sympathetic protagonist (at least as sympathetic as several of the other protagonists in the series at the start of their books, anyway) to pitiful crazy person doesn't make this one of my favourites in the series, though it's well executed.

We get a return visit from the wizard of With a Single Spell, which is more linking together than this series usually provides. There's quite a lot of assorted magic, in fact, which is one of the strengths of the series, and the main thing I enjoyed.

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