THE ASSASSIN SERIES: Three horror novellas by Tim Lebbon

Dead Man’s Hand, Pieces of Hate, A Whisper of Southern Lights by Tim Lebbon

The three novellas Dead Man’s Hand, Pieces of Hate, and A Whisper of Southern Lights make up Tim Lebbon’s ASSASSIN series. They were originally published in 2004, 2005, and 2008 by Necessary Evil Press but were reprinted by Tor.com in 2016. Tor packaged the first two stories together under the name Pieces of Hate.

The ASSASSIN series tells the story of a man named Gabriel who has, for centuries, been hunting Temple, a demon who slaughtered Gabriel’s family. Gabriel can feel when he is close to Temple and uses this sense to follow him all over the world. Every time they meet, Gabriel is battered a little more, but he is compelled, or perhaps cursed is the better word, to continue the struggle. He seems to have become immortal and he doesn’t know how long this will go on.

In Dead Man’s Hand (1.6 hours long in audio format), Gabriel arrives in a Wild West-type town called Deadwood, looking for Temple. When a local shopkeeper named Doug notices the brooding Gabriel, he is intrigued. Then Doug gets caught up in their epic battle, experiences many horrors, and has his entire worldview altered.

In Pieces of Hate (2.3 hours long in audio format), Gabriel has taken passage on a pirate ship as he follows Temple out to sea. Like Doug the shopkeeper from Deadwood, the pirate captain is intrigued by Gabriel and soon the pirates are involved in his conflict with Temple. Both the print and audio versions of Pieces of Hate also contain the novella Dead Man’s Hand.

A Whisper of Southern Lights (2.5 hours long in audio format) takes place in Singapore during World War II. Japanese soldiers are hunting a troop of British soldiers as Gabriel is hunting Temple. While trying to deal with the horrors of fighting the Japanese, one of the British soldiers discovers a dangerous secret that Gabriel is desperate to learn. As with the previous stories, this man is unwittingly dragged into the centuries-long conflict between Gabriel and Temple.

I have to say that I didn’t really enjoy these stories for a few reasons. One was that they were gruesome and unnecessarily, often shockingly, violent. Here’s an example:

“So it’s said, he slaughtered his family while they all slept. Mother, father, and three sisters. Raped his sisters’ corpses, cut off his father’s head, then went to Portsmouth and signed up with the first privateer he found.”

There were bleeding eyeballs, crows pecking out eyeballs, hangings, torture, and lots more grisliness. Yuck.

Another issue was a lack of originality in, especially, the first two settings. The Wild West town and the pirate ship (along with their denizens) felt like set pieces and caricatures. The setting of Pieces of Hate reminded me of the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disney World — gold-toothed pirates drunkenly singing bawdy songs while waving bottles of rum.

Lastly, I just didn’t find the story very interesting. I didn’t really care about Gabriel’s quest and there wasn’t anything else to the plot other than Gabriel hunting Temple. There was no complexity, no layers, no tension. We know Gabriel is hunting Temple, we know he will find him at the end, we know they will fight, and then both will probably survive and do it again in the next story. I guess I just didn’t really see the point. (Although finally, in the very last sentence of the third novella, something interesting does happen, suggesting that a fourth story must be coming and might not follow the formula set by the first three stories.)

I listened to the audio versions produced by Macmillan Audio. Scott Sowers does a great job with the narration.