Spoilers might be present from this point on

The book is a sequel to When Among Crows. Even though I rolled my eyes countless times while reading that one, I still decided I wanted to give the sequel a try.

To Clutch a Razor is a bit longer, and you get a better introduction to the book’s world. Unfortunately, you still need to read the first book for what happens in this one to make sense.

This time, the action takes place in Poland, where the strike team made up of Dymitr, Ala, and Niko is driven by different motives, but all of them have something to do with Dymitr’s family. More precisely, each of them seems to need to kill someone in his family—some to recover their soul, others to avoid losing their life, and some just to sleep better without nightmares 😅.

There are a few things that somehow annoyed me or felt very easily overlooked / brushed aside. There will be some spoilers from here on while I complain about these things.

So, we have the scene where all the extended family, relatives, and acquaintances are in Dymitr’s family home for the wake. Many of the people there are knights, so they specialize in hunting and killing monsters, yet throughout that whole scene no one intervenes except the key characters. It somehow feels like a curtain is drawn and everyone else is separated from the story.

No one comes into the house to check why the mother and grandmother are missing, no one hears all the commotion and noise, no one follows them after they leave the scene having killed someone. Somehow these people, who literally dedicate their entire lives to killing and tracking monsters, suddenly forget what they do and become the most basic NPCs you could come across.

We all like heroes who survive in the end, no matter how difficult the trials they went through were. We also like impossible love stories that still find a way to come true despite all adversity. All of that happens in the book by the end. The problem is that it all feels very predictable.

While reading, I kept thinking, “Don’t tell me he survives. I mean, that’s what everyone expects, but don’t tell me that’s exactly what happens.” It feels like the easier path was chosen when it came to some of the decisions about how the plot unfolds.

The book is better than the first one, that is clear. And the world it explores has quite a lot of potential.

For example, I liked the way Ala ends up receiving the “gift” of speaking Polish in exchange for losing her voice for an equivalent number of days after returning from Poland.

There are many good ideas in the book, but the main story feels telegraphed.