Book Review: The Outlaw Varjak Paw by SF Said (Varjak Paw #2)

 

Finally getting to book two! Spoilers ahead!

Varjak and his friends return as they now have to stand up to Sally Bones and her gang, who are oppressing the Free Cats of the city. Will Varjak succeed in bringing down this mighty foe?

Yeah, okay, so I know I didn't like the original book of this duology a lot, but I actually really enjoyed this sequel. It's not perfect or anything but yeah, I enjoyed this quite a bit.

I think one thing I definitely liked better here is the conflict, that being dealing with Sally Bones. It just feels more defined and less vague than whatever the Gentleman was doing in the last book. This time we just have to beat an oppressive bad guy (or girl, in this case), simple conflict but it really works. The Gentleman conflict of the previous book is like not even really brought up at all. One can almost go into this book blindly without having read the first book, literally all one needs to know is that Varjak Paw can do cat martial arts and that he's faced Sally Bones gang before. 

I also like how we're finally getting more resolution on the Sally Bones stuff as book one did a lot of setup regarding her but there wasn't much if any payoff to the conflict. So this book being the definitive conclusion to that setup was nice.

The characters I found myself also really getting fond of by now. I don't know why they didn't do it for me in the first book, but in this one I quickly found myself getting attached to them, especially Holly and Tam who are my favorites. Varjak also goes through a neat arc of standing up for himself and others and becoming somewhat of a leader and liberator figure to the cats of the city. Just a neat arc to follow. And Cludge, while not the most interesting character of the bunch, is also just genuinely pretty likable. Heck, I even found myself getting attached to Razor, who initially was a one-dimensional villain but has a pretty solid arc this book.

If I do have a gripe, it is that I do still find the concept of cat kung fu a little hard to buy at times, but I guess I've gotten used to it by now in book two. I still think that the idea of cats practicing martial arts would've come across better if these animals had been fully anthro rather than ferals who are otherwise pretty grounded in reality, but oh well. Guess we can't have everything. 

Overall this was a pretty enjoyable book with high stakes, neat characters and an interesting conflict. Not the most complex book you'll ever come across and if you can't get into the "cat kung fu" concept I do see why this might not be for you, but for me this sequel really worked where the OG didn't.

 Rating: 3.5/5