Sire, Oleander isn't dead! [Yet] - T.I. Avens - ★★★.¼

AUTHOR: T.I. Avens

ILLUSTRATOR: Adrian DKC

GENRE: Middle-grade Fantasy

PUBLICATION DATE: May 11, 2026

RATING: 3.25 stars.

In a Nutshell: A middle-grade fantasy about two friends caught in big trouble. Interesting fantastical characters, but too many of them to remember easily. Nice plot, but develops slow. Creative world-building, though the sizes of the inhabitants were tough to judge. Not as comic as the title and cover seem to suggest. Slightly dark storyline that includes curses and zombies. Recommended but go in with the right expectations to enjoy this better.

Plot Preview: (I have gone far beyond the initial 10-15% in my preview this time because the story is quite slow-moving at the start.)

Oleander is a young slayer who feels the pressure of upholding his family legacy of killing monstrous beasts while protecting his guild. Once, he makes an error in judgement and opts for a shortcut solution by using a potion to kill a beast. This mistake turns out to be deadly [pun intended], for the beast is now undead and returns for vengeance on Oleander. The only person who can help him fix this mistake is his best friend Marlow. But unknown to Oleander, Marlow is harbouring a dark secret of her own. If she reveals her secret, she might save Oleander but could forever destroy their friendship. Can the two fix Oleander’s error without endangering their lives and their friendship?

The story comes to us in the alternating first-person perspectives of Oleander and Marlow.

Bookish Yays:

🐦 Oleander. An interesting lead who isn't shown as perfect but as striving for perfection. His behaviour creates a lot of learning opportunities.

🐦 The friendship between Oleander and Marlow, and some more members of the guild of slayers. It’s almost like found family, except that the group also bickers without hesitation.

🐦 The depiction of how the pressure of familial expectations can lead to unwarranted stress and impulsive decisions. Growing up with a legacy isn't easy.

🐦 The imaginativeness of the characters’ identities. I love that the slayers are portly larks. 😅

Bookish Okays:

⚔ Marlow. A fab character and I did love her a lot. But she lied too often for my comfort, and she got away with it most of the times. Some of her reasons for lying are understandable but I wish the instances hadn’t been so frequent.

⚔ The illustrations, though cute, are minimal and are present only in the chapter heads. I wish there had been more plot-related illustrations as well, especially ones that could help us picture the characters. I must add, the map at the start is wonderfully intricate.

⚔ The title is amazing, but I don’t think it suits the story perfectly. I don’t know if this is just a me-thing, but I expected a more humorous story because of the title (and cover.) 🤔 However, the plot is mostly serious and at times, even dark and/or sad. Some parts might be a bit too dark for younger middle-graders.

Bookish Nays:

🐉 The slow development of the plot. There’s barely anything happening in the first quarter of the book, and even beyond, the action takes time to develop. The final quarter is full of action and big reveals. A more balanced spread would have been preferable, especially considering the low attention span of youngsters these days.

🐉 The needless complication caused by having way too many new characters, too many subspecies, too many fancy uncommon names (of characters and species), too many concocted new words. Some characters’ species are referred to by multiple variants. All this made it very difficult to keep track of who’s who and who’s what. After a point, I gave up on figuring out the individual identities and just went with the flow. Middle-graders might find the species vocabulary challenging.

🐉 The difficulty in visualising certain elements of the plot, specifically related to the main characters and the monsters they fight. Given the cover, it is tough to imagine how such tiny beings can easily push over larger monsters. Even the relative difference between two characters’ heights is tricky to understand. I wish the character heights/sizes had been detailed better or presented via the illustrations.

Overall, while I liked the overall plot and the unusual characters, I wish the extraneous elements had been chucked away and the pacing (especially in the first half) improved. The story contains several important themes, but because there are too many characters and identities to keep track of, the themes get a bit lost in the clutter.

This is officially tagged as a middle-grade fantasy. However, given the nature of the content and some of the themes, I am not sure about advocating it to that age group wholeheartedly. I think this would have been a great YA book with some tweaking in the cover and content. The themes are dark enough to be palatable to that age group, and the cutesiness evident on the cover is anyway non-existent in the plot.

Recommended to teens (11+) who enjoy darker stories with quirky characters and don’t mind slow pacing or too many characters.

My thanks to author T.I. Avens and Over The Tall Shelf for providing the DRC of “Sire, Oleander isn't dead! (Yet)” via NetGalley. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.