Slither's Tale by Joseph Delaney (The Wardstone Chronicles: Book 11)

Slither's Tale is the eleventh novel of Joseph Delaney's Wardstone Chronicles, first published in April 2013.

Slither is a haizda mage who preys upon humans, drinking their blood to feed his dark urges. So when a local farmer dies, it's only natural that Slither should want to feast on his lovely daughters.

But then the farmer offers him a deal, and extracts from Slither a promise that will take him on a journey to the City of the Petrified Tree, to a fallen star-stone that holds great power, and straight into the path of Grimalkin, the Witch Assassin.

Although proclaimed as number eleven in a series of thirteen this novel really should be looked upon as a stand-alone as it does little to progress the main story arc involving Tom Ward's battle against the dark. Slither's Tale is in itself a pretty good book but it comes out as a strange time and other than allowing the reader to discover more of Grimalkin' exploits, it falls more into the category of a companion novel, inspired by a creature from within the Spook's bestiary.

The major problem with Slither's Tale is that readers are getting impatient for the end, they want to find out what becomes of the Spook, Alice and Tom. And although the final confrontation is now finally here many feel that it has been overly long in arriving. It is as if there has been a reluctance to close it out too quickly and the result has been a loss of momentum and the publication of Spook's novels that are, while of a consistently decent standard, inferior to the wonderful novels earlier in the series.

Hopefully the final two novels in the series, Alice and The Spook's Revenge, will provide readers with the conclusion they deserve and are arguably overdue.

As a site we have long been big supporters of Joseph Delaney's series and have been very happy to recommend it most highly. But our patience is wearing thin as we detect there may be rather cynical reasons in unduly elongating the series.

6/10 A decent novel but unfortunately it does not progress the series.