The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner – Review

Published: February 28, 2017 (orig. 1996)

Publisher: Greenwillow Books

Series: The Queen’s Thief #1

Genre: Fantasy

Pages: 320 (Paperback)

My Rating: 3.0/5.0

Synopsis:
The king’s scholar, the magus, believes he knows the site of an ancient treasure. To attain it for his king, he needs a skillful thief, and he selects Gen from the king’s prison. The magus is interested only in the thief’s abilities. What Gen is interested in is anyone’s guess. Their journey toward the treasure is both dangerous and difficult, lightened only imperceptibly by the tales they tell of the old gods and goddesses.

Megan Whalen Turner weaves Gen’s stories and Gen’s story together with style and verve in a novel that is filled with intrigue, adventure, and surprise.

If you’ve ever wanted to read a book that mostly focused on the characters walking and/or riding a horse, The Thief is the book for you!

Over the years I’ve heard much praise for The Queen’s Thief series and I admit, I expected something really amazing just based on the way people speak so fondly of it. If I hadn’t been in a patient mood I might not have stuck this out because half the book is spent journeying to the location of an item Gen must steal. And he gets treated so poorly by his traveling companions that it really doesn’t help matters!

Let’s back up a little – Gen is a talented thief who managed to get caught when he stole the king’s seal and he’s been languishing in the palace dungeons for probably a few months. The king’s magus gets him out so that he can steal an item that will legitimize the king’s rule in exchange for Gen’s freedom. Gen, the magus, and their other traveling companions spend hundreds of pages journeying to the location of the item whilst trading barbs and generally mistreating poor Gen, who does come across as a bit of a whiner.

While it’s an interesting premise and the long travel time does help to develop your feelings (either good or bad) toward the characters, it was slow going. I will say that it did make up for the tedium in the latter portion of the book (like the last 15%) because there were some excellent bits of drama and reveals that left me wanting to check out the next book in the series. It’s also rather interesting to check out a book that was originally published in 1996 and see how fantasy has changed (or remained the same) over the years.