The Thief
Ratings170
Average rating3.7
Contains spoilers
I was enjoying this pretty well until the reveal that our working-class hero is actually nobility. Ugh!!!!!!!
2.5. some twists at the end. will continue the series since the reviews say the sequel is the more popular book.
This middle grades book has some outstanding mythology and storytelling. Probably a good one to go through multiple times. Once to read and the next to enjoy the story already knowing the world and its gods.
There are a couple of plot surprises that readers might anticipate but are still satisfying.
The detail of this story is strong enough to bring the reader in without getting to weighed down.
Very entertaining book: a jump into a world inspired by ancient Greece, a plot with several twists (some predictable, some less so), and interesting characters. Well narrated by HarperAudio, I listened to it in almost a single sitting.
I'm glad I picked this one up
The Thief is a great tale of a daring deed. I was entertained all the way through and finished it in record time. I'll be getting the next one as soon as this review is posted.
DNF at 30%. I've heard that the book (and the series) starts slowly but gets better as it progresses. Apparently that wasn't soon enough for me. Just one of those books that didn't speak to me.
21 March 2022:
I didn't expect anything other than “something” was going to happen.
The first part was a slog ngl, but at exactly the half things got really interesting. And I loved the ending.
I'm glad I stuck around till the end.
Final rating: 4.5/5.0
That was a delightful read. I think the crux of this book for me was the writing. But i really enjoyed the journey the protagonist went through and i found the dialogues between the characters amusing and entertaining.
I liked it enough to continue the series. I'm really in the mood for old school fantasy and this one seems to hit the mark. I also heard a lot of praise for the sequel.
An absolutely amazing book. Yes, I'm finally writing this review a year after reading it, but I still remember how much I enjoyed it. I've recommended it to at least 5 different people.
Gen is one of my favorite characters ever and I love how he works as a thief. This is also an interesting world and I like how guns were still included.
I suppose any book will accumulate reviewers who love or hate it, but I can't help being puzzled by both in this case. It seems to me a competent and sufficiently entertaining story, neither boring nor wonderful. It travels unhurriedly to where it wants to go, and readers who demand the clash of swords on every page may be bored, but I'm not one of them.
It's described as a fantasy novel, but it's not strongly fantastic. Like most fantasy, it's set in a world similar to Earth in mediæval times, but apparently not our Earth. I don't see any magic at work in it. There are gods that seem to be real; in this book, they could be argued to be figments of the imagination or hallucinations, but it seems clear from the sequels that they're intended to be real.
The first-person protagonist is a youth of unspecified age, apparently adult, and a professional thief (hence the title). Some readers like him a lot; I found him tolerable, but rather annoying for much of the time. In the sequels, he becomes intermittently likeable.
I'm also puzzled that this is described as a Young Adult novel. It seems to me a normal light-fantasy novel. The hero is a young adult, yes, but so are the heroes of very many other novels. Whatever next? Are we going to see novels categorized as Middle-Aged Adult novels or Elderly Adult novels? Bah, humbug.
The hero is described as a skilled and clever thief, but the author usually makes life easy for herself by showing the results rather than the process: we find out that he's stolen this or that, without seeing how he does it.
I really wanted to fall in love with this book since I've heard so many good things about the series. Unfortunately or fortunately, I couldn't really get into it until the last quarter or so when the action started to pick up. Now, I'm looking forward to reading the other books.
I know a lot of trusted bookfriends have big love for this series, so I checked it out even though the description isn't quite my cup of tea. It was a little slow going for me but ultimately satisfying. I think this series would be great to hand to fans of [b:The False Prince 12432220 The False Prince (Ascendance, #1) Jennifer A. Nielsen https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1585683740l/12432220.SX50.jpg 16221764].–I re-read this because I still keep meaning to read the rest of the series because it's so beloved but then I realized I'd forgotten most of the first one already. I feel like on 2nd read I'm bumping it up a star. I see that my first readthrough was in 2020 and my brain was uhhhhhh not optimized during that time
In order to be ready for the October release of [b:Return of the Thief 40650301 Return of the Thief (The Queen's Thief, #6) Megan Whalen Turner https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1531866321l/40650301.SY75.jpg 16439607], I have been rereading this entire series.The Thief starts off slowly and definitely picks up towards the end. However, it is nowhere near as good as its sequels and that's ok. It doesn't necessarily need to be. It does, however, serve as a wonderful introduction to Eugenides and to the lands of Eddis, Attolia and Sounis.
Woah this was awesomeeee! The beginning wasn't as slow as other reviews said it would be. This had a lot of character interactions. Gen was a magnificent character and thief. The second half flew by so fast. And OMG the ending
The ending was nice and I liked the last part of the book. I just didn't love the characters. I found them all annoying and irritating.
Slow to start, I wasn't sure why I should care about any of the characters for the first half of the book. I liked the stories inside the novel about the God's and the beginning of the World and I did grow to somewhat like the main characters. However, the whole book just felt like it was a set up for the next books in the series and not much happened. Because of that I'm not sure I'll read any other books in the series.
It's so sad. This book started out wonderfully and could have easily been a great read for me and the kind of book I'd adore.
We had a main character (Gen, who, unfortunately, was a guy but most of the time read more like a girl) with a sense of humor that I actually found funny. He had some wonderful remarks and internal asides and I was loving him a little for it. Then, adding to the wonderful, we had a secondary cast of dissimilar people all setting out - for their own reasons - on a quest together.
Awesomeness and the first hundred pages were lovely, telling a story of a journey across at least moderately interesting lands. We also had the first hints of what could have been some wonderful friendships.
At this point, I was starting to wonder what could possibly go wrong. Well, I've learnt the hard way to never ask a question you don't want the answer to. Because pretty much everything went wrong. (lol After reading this book, I checked the reviews and everyone else says the first hundred pages weren't very good but the next hundred plus pages were really good and the next books are even better. Yeah, won't be reading the next books if they're more like the second half than the first half.)
The first hints that not all was kosher came to me when characters that were a little abrasive turned downright snippy, surly and abusive. About the same time, Gen started loosing a lot of his humor too, and in several places read like a typical ‘spirited' lead in YA fantasy. (Where spirited is just a code word for bitchy.)
This story is told from Gen's first person perspective. Which means that we are about as intimately inside his head as possible in writing. This is not a POV I particularly like, but when it's done well it can be consuming. You get to see the world from this character's eyes. You learn everything they are thinking, feeling and can see how every tiny act effects them. I have read books that do just that, pulling me into the story so completely that to imagine the story being told any other way is to imagine the story being less impactful.
This was not done well.
Apparently, even though we are inside Gen's head the entire time, he still has time to turn into a kleptomaniac packrat without - you know - telling us he was lifting things. This goes hand in hand with the fact that the author seems to like explaining things after the fact. (Like don't describe the lantern until well after we first see it. Which means I was picturing a totally different type of lantern.)
Oh, yeah, and Gen telling us after the ‘small reveal' (not to be confused with the ‘big reveal,' which I'll get to in a moment) that he suspected all along. No, actually, he didn't because he never mentioned it or thought it. This is either Gen not willing to admit there was something he didn't know (possible) or the author thinking it is acceptable to not play fair with the readers (probable).
Then we have forty pages of...well, what I call sick narration. It's when the main character is sick and things don't follow a easily follow-able path. I've read this before and I always hate it. Really, this was no different.
Finally, the ‘big reveal.' Oh, wow, gee, I never saw that coming. To me, this goes beyond unreliable narrator and right to ‘author didn't want to work hard to give little hints to the readers.' This to me is a clear case of ‘ooh, lookit what I can do. Bet you never saw this coming. Course, I can't actually make my story interesting and intriguing while giving you all the information at my narrator's disposal. So I'll just cheat.' (Sure, there is one slight clue - one! - but the narrator never reacts to it. Sloppy, sloppy.) And the second ‘big reveal?' Yeah, I knew that was going to happen. By that point I didn't trust the narrator at all so I knew what everyone else thought happened hadn't.
Blerg.
(Originally posted on my blog: http://pagesofstarlight.blogspot.com/)
I got this book free via book bub. I saw the reviews on here that said to just keep reading. “It's worth it!” I was having a hard time getting into it. Since it was an ebook I would read it in spurts during my lunch break or waiting for an appointment.
I found the whole first half to be incredibly slow. I had a hard time keeping track of who was who. I just found I didn't care, and reading it in spurts over a long time didn't help.
When I got to the second half it was like a 180. I loved it! I can't wait read more.
I think I'd enjoy the second half much more on the second reading of this. I think there were many subtle things I missed. I'm glad I listened to the readers on here and kept going