The Thousand Deaths of Ardor Benn by Tyler Whitesides – Review

Published: May 15, 2018

Publisher: Orbit Books

Series: Ardor Benn #1

Genre: Fantasy

Pages: 784 (Paperback)

My Rating: 4.5/5.0

A copy of this book was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Synopsis:

“I’m hiring you to steal the king’s crown.”

Ardor Benn is no ordinary thief. Rakish, ambitious, and master of wildly complex heists, he styles himself a Ruse Artist Extraordinaire.

When a priest hires him for the most daring ruse yet, Ardor knows he’ll need more than quick wit and sleight of hand. Assembling a dream team of forgers, disguisers, schemers, and thieves, he sets out to steal from the most powerful king the realm has ever known.

But it soon becomes clear there’s more at stake than fame and glory -Ard and his team might just be the last hope for human civilization.

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The Thousand Deaths of Ardor Benn is one of those fantasy books that just hits ALL the right marks. I mean seriously, the magic system is based on dragon poop. Dragons are fed things, they poop it out, and people collect the contents, process it into something called grit and use it to light their homes, blow things up, and summon powerful god-like beings. Oh yeah, it’s also a heist book that’s nearly on par with The Lies of Locke Lamora. If those two factors don’t sell you on this book, then I might be doing this whole review thing totally wrong… or perhaps you don’t read fantasy (why are you here then?).

This is a book that starts one of those action packed scenes that immediately draws you in, despite not understanding characters, plot, magic system etc. Following the epic introductory scene, all of these details begin to unfold – you learn more about Ardor, Raek, Quarrah, and Isle Halavend, the substance known as grit, and the worldbuilding. Essentially, Ardor and Raek are hired by a priest (Isle Halavend) to steal the royal Regalia, which is this fancy headgear and robe get-up made out of dragon eggshells. Why do this? The priest wants them to make Visitant grit, which when activated will summon a Paladin Visitant who will theoretically save the world from the spreading moonsickness. There’s considerably more to the plot than that (subplots, actual details) but I’m not here to summarize it for you, I’m here to review it so you can decide to read or not to read.

One of my favorite parts of this book was the infiltration of the palace by elaborate disguise and false identity. Quarrah simultaneously cracked me up and made me terribly nervous because she would say some wild stuff and was clearly out of her element. She was a burglar, not ruse artist like Ardor who could talk his way out of almost anything. I also liked Isle Halavend’s POV much more than I expected. He was uncovering all these deep dark secrets of the Wayfarist religion as well as government cover-ups and I was constantly waiting for him to get busted or slip up. I did think parts of this book strongly mirrored The Lies of Locke Lamora, but overall it was different enough that I didn’t mind. It’s almost like paying homage to one of my favorite fantasy books ever written and I’ll absolutely recommend this book to those who are looking for something similar.

I loved the magic system – the use of Grit for everything from thievery to lighting lamps to summoning a flaming religious figure is just way cool. I thought it was explained and used well throughout the book and never really felt that there was an infodump with all of the details – it was explained organically through use. There is a glossary at the end with further details if you need a refresher. For the most part, the setting isn’t all that memorable. It’s much more focused on plot and character than describing the intricate scrollwork above the palace doors, so in that respect it was a little flat, but at the same time this book was already long enough without that extra detail. Some of the bigger plot points that were probably intended to evoke a strong emotion mostly didn’t do so. Like, I never wanted to weep but I was going “OH NOOO” on the inside so it definitely doesn’t compete with Scott Lynch’s books in that respect (they made me want to baby cry on several occasions). Overall, this was a great debut novel and a series that I’ll be continuing on with and I think future books will only get better!