The Thief (original 1996; edition 1996)

I thought long and hard about what I wanted to say in my review of this but after a full 24 hours I still don't have much. I've heard wonderful reviews about this 'series', not this book in particular, so I was always interested in finally reading it and seeing what my personal thoughts were. Truthfully, I was pretty disappointed with this book and would have given it 2 stars if the writing wasn't so engaging and continued to keep me interested.

Luckily, I'd say about 2/3 of the way through the book something finally starts happening. I'm not going to do my little blurb on the storyline because the Goodreads summary will suffice and I don't want to give too much more away anyways. I'll probably go back and update this after I've read more in the series since I've been advised to not give up if you were even slightly disappointed by this one. ( )

To be honest, I was bored with this book. Although it was interesting , it just didn’t “pull me in.” I read this book because my teacher showed it to me.

Excellent. The story, the characters, the pacing, everything. I've been unable to keep updated here so I've actually read the first three of these and I'm having a hard time now evaluating this independent of the next two in the series but the story, as of the end of the first three books is definitely one of the best things I've read all year. Very, very well written. Very well developed story. Very well developed characters. ( )

Quick to read, and enjoyable. Relatively typical fantasy -- nothing particularly new, in my experience -- and kind of fails to get me totally absorbed. The background world of the story is interesting and I was glad to learn about that, but I didn't feel an urgent need to keep reading it for the sake of the characters. I did like Pol and Sophos, but wasn't overly concerned about them, either.

I shouldn't have been surprised that a thief would be an unreliable narrator. It's interesting to think back and see the clues embedded in the narrative.

I wished there'd been more of the part in Eddis, really. That all felt like winding-down-the-story, not an interesting part in its own right, which was disappointing.

Will probably read the other books: they're nice relaxing brain candy, if they're like this one. ( )

I am not so sure I'm going to listen to your recommendations so plainly anymore, my friends. Yes, yes, Turner is a clever clogs and it's good read but 7/8ths of a book with one set of characters and 1/8 with the real characters and I feel flippantly treated. I worked hard to like Gen and the mage and I did like Pol. So you can imagine how I felt about his sudden death, a death that only seemed necessary in order to keep the unreliable narrator trick going till the last possible minute.

Reading The Kind of Attolia next because I'm about 45th in line for book 2 at the library. ( )