Book Review – The Thief

From Goodreads:

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.

Eugenides, the queen’s thief, can steal anything – or so he says. Then his boasting lands him in the king’s prison, and his chances of escape look slim.

So when the king’s magus invites him on a seemingly impossible quest to steal a legendary object and win back his freedom, Gen in no position to refuse.

The magus has plans for his king and his country. Gen has plans of his own . . .

This is one of those books where I wondered why I sat on it or so long. I love a good heist novel and this one is a great heist novel. I really enjoyed it and I can’t wait to jump into book 2. This had so many twists and turns I just didn’t see coming. It had great elements of a road trip book at the start then merged in a really well paced heist novel with amazing reveals of how it all came together.

At first Gen was utterly detestable as a character in the best possible way, in fact all the characters were pretty unlikable but by the end I adored them. the all had such great story arcs as they got to know each other on the road we got to see different sides to them and they developed in such detail that you just wanted to know more. This gave the plot a really good pace. I loved the use of the campfire stories to give us lore about the world. The world building was really detailed and we got to learn so much from ancient gods to the political power between realms.

The Ending was fantastic, it had both bitter sweet moments, a great twist and a little bit of a happy ending too. It made me really want to continue. While it was a fantastic self contained story it also seeded so much for the continuation of the story.