The Palace Job

Is there anything more depressing than strong promise squandered? When a a book has no redeeming features you can toss it and forget it, but when it looks like it's got it and just doesn't hit the mark I end up spending a lot of time thinking about it even after I've put it down.

The Palace Job was this sort of book for me. It feels like a great story hidden under massive pacing issues, a somewhat bloated cast, and uninspired prose.

The setup is this. Your dashing protagonist is a noble who's been screwed over by the leader of an oppressive floating city. The bad guy, a perfect civil servant on the outside and a powerhungry cynic in truth, has not only taken some stuff that rightfully belongs to the hero but has also adopted the hero's show more sister for some difficult to understand reason. The hero decides that stealing her stuff back is the best plan, and to do this she gathers a collection of complete misfits, including an innocent young virgin, a cantankerous scholar, a death priestess with a talking hammer, a monk, a horny unicorn, and possibly one or two other characters that I have forgotten about.

There are some well-intentioned attempts at fighting standard fantasy tropes and bringing something fresh to the genre, particularly in the way race is approached directly, and some characters are fantasy South Asian, a demographic that is usually completely ignored. There's also a healthy helping of humor, and if it weren't for some of the issues with execution there really is an entertaining heist fic in here, and I have no doubt that some people who read it will end up enjoying it for that.

Unfortunately the book has some serious issues with pacing. Because the cast is so large, and the book is constantly bouncing from one point of view to the next, no scene lasts longer than three pages, and many barely are as long as one. Sentences likewise are cut into cheap spaghetti sized bits, and the tone of the book is basically a single note throughout. The plot itself is convoluted, with about 2 more layers than required, without those layers contributing to any interesting twists or turns that weren't signaled from a mile away. For a caper fic I expect an element of suspense. Even in a book where I'm almost certain that the gang will steal the thing in the end, I want to be anticipating the difficulties they face in the process, or to be seriously concerned for the survival of a side character or two. I didn't really feel that in this book, although there were certainly moments where it was clear it wanted me to feel that. I just didn't care enough about the characters, who were colorful but shallow, and wasn't compelled in any way by the writing, which is as plebeian as you can get. So even though there is kind of a story in there and you would think an adventure full of daring escapes and interesting characters would keep me riveted, I ended up exhausted about half way in and ended up putting the book on a shelf for a whole year before picking it up to finish it. If you can read fiction as a sort of screenplay and the idea of a script about Ocean's 11 only with lots of magic is up your alley, this may suit. But personally, if I wanted that sort of thing I'd just watch a movie. show less

This was fun! Very Ocean's Eleven-esque (if the movie had had magic, floating cities, ancient gods, and [literally] horny unicorns), lots of mom jokes, and double crossing of double-crossers. Immediately picked up the sequel.

In my estimation, Heist novels never get old. I love the feel of outsmarting wicked, pompous, and the ideologically Wrong. The constant jabs and Republicans were very funny. I never once forgot that this was a fantasy novel, but I was constantly reminded of how idiotic certain IDEAS are. I giggled, chortled, and even guffawed a few times. Heist novels area always about upsetting the status-quo. That means we need an extremely clear world to be built in order to break it. The Palace Job delivers on all counts.

It gets even better when the novel studded with shiningly clear characters borrowing from and defined perfectly by a long list of fantasy tropes. They don't sit still, either, developing nicely by non-standard trope reactions show more between each other and all the oddball situations they get themselves in, making a solid team to take on such a huge job. Remember, it's a Heist novel. Teamwork and conflicts within the team are bread and butter, as are reversals, reversals, reversals, and we get all of that here. Very fun stuff.

Fantasy, like SF, need a lot more novels taking on the Heist. Sure, there are already a lot out there, but it speaks to something within us all. Something fundamental and gleeful always seems to alight within us. Maybe it's just the boredom of our stolid lives that need a good shaking up, and maybe it's pointing a searchlight in the eyes of all the people who annoy the shit out of us. Fortunately for us, both the Fantasy and SF fields excel in showing us ourselves in their own right, and so this turns into a seriously relaxing and fun romp.

Did I say there were reversals? Oh yes.

The plan is solid. What in the world could go wrong?

It's just a magical incantation written into a song. It's the original! It's my birthright!

We're just hiring a death priestess for a bit of muscle. Her sentient Maul can only help us.

He's just a kid! Do NOT leave him alone with that pervy unicorn!

It was a funny novel. I'm putting this mostly in the category of mind-candy and light reading, but serious events do happen in the world and in my growing concern for it. Everyone might begin as a cardboard cut-out, including the land, but it doesn't stay that way. I like that a lot. It reminds me that this is also a solid fantasy. I'm really looking forward to the next in the series. :) show less

A great book -- though, a couple heads-ups beforehand:

1) If you are planning to read this on the Kindle, be forewarned that there are quite a few formatting errors and typos, which the author explained to me over Twitter were introduced by the publisher's scanning software. Ultimately these errors weren't too bad, just mildly distracting, and I certainly can't fault Weekes for those.

2) However, I also found the writing to be a bit rough, though this might be attributed to the author's own unique style. The best way I can think of to describe it is it almost feels like Weekes wrote this book like he was describing a movie, one that only he can see in his head. There were parts where I found descriptions to be sorely lacking. Scenes with show more lots of conversation bouncing between multiple characters were especially tough on me, since these work well on a big screen when the audience can follow the speakers visually, but it doesn't fly so well on the written page. And in a book like this, there certainly were a crapload of characters to keep track of.

Those were the two main obstacles I had to overcome, but apart from them I have to say this was very enjoyable. I was sucked in completely somewhere between the first couple of chapters -- after prisoners Loch and Kail escape their sentences and start planning their heist by recruiting other thieves and other talented individuals to their cause. No shocker that this book has been described as Ocean's Eleven meets fantasy, as that's pretty much the whole story, with a magical twist.

The first quarter of the novel was probably my favorite part, as it comprised all the character introductions. We have two ex-soldiers-turned-thieves, a tinkerer/lock picker extraordinaire, one talented acrobat, a shape-shifting unicorn, a death priestess and her magical talking hammer, a wizard, and his young friend with a big secret. Like I said before, lots of characters to keep track of. With such a huge cast, I wasn't expecting much terms of character development which under these circumstances would be understandable, but I was nonetheless impressed given the restraints the author had to work with. Each character was unique, given an interesting background and an important role to play. Surprisingly though? My favorite character was the justicar Pyvic, the "inspector" in this story, and not one of the thieves.

One other thing about the characters: I find "group" heist stories are often sausage fests (I mean, look at Ocean's Eleven, Reservoir Dogs, etc.) so I have to say I feel like giving Patrick Weekes a big kudos for writing a book featuring an ensemble which includes quite a few females -- females who aren't there solely there for token purposes or to be romantic interests, I might add! In fact, not counting the talking warhammer, half the team are women. Anyway, this observation did strike me as I was reading, so I just thought I'd add the thought as an aside.

As I was saying, I realize a big cast necessitates taking away from character development somewhat, but I also want to note that it might have taken away from the world-building as well. Though don't get me wrong, what we are given about the setting and its background is adequate and more than enough to follow the book, but I wouldn't have minded a little more description. I gathered that we have a world here which is populated by humans, dwarves and elves. The humans are comprised of different races, defined by geography and history. There's an established political system in place. Multiple tongues are spoken by the people, but at some point one of the characters also spoke French, which was referred as an ancient language. I'm pretty much intrigued with all of it. Weekes obviously put a lot of thought into this world, and it's just a shame he didn't get a chance to fully flesh it out, but then again, I totally get that there's a story to be told and that takes priority.

And that is what drives everything in the end, after all. The story. Full of political intrigue, twists and turns, double crosses and hidden agendas, it's actually quite amazing to me how the author managed to cram all that goodness into this average-length book. It definitely makes up for everything else.

Bottom line: this book is clever, humorous and a lot of fun. If you're looking for a light read with a good action-filled and fast-paced story, you won't be disappointed. show less

So I've seen this alternately likened to Ocean's Eleven (George Clooney version), and the Eli Monpress novels. Either way I took much longer to get around to reading the book then I meant to. There's a lot to enjoy about the book - each character is unique and interesting, vying for attention even as they try to scheme and plot around new difficulties in an already impossible plan.

Interestingly while the book has its moments of action, the bulk of it is reserved for the last 25% wherein its literally one thing after another hounding, harassing and hunting our heroes. Loch is not a Robin Hood type - while she didn't deserve to be locked away for doing her job, she also wasn't reclaiming her birthright for altruistic reasons. Revenge and show more a healthy profit are the sole reasons she's gunning for that manuscript.

This is a book of set-up. We begin by watching as Loch builds her plan to escape from jail (entirely silently I might add), then as she builds her insertion team and finally, in the grand finale how she built her revenge. She's a quick thinker, master manipulator of the truth and above all she understands what drives people. While on the outside some of the recruits (like the safe-cracker team and the illusionist) appear to be in it purely for the money, Loch gives them all something they probably would have had trouble finding on their own: a purpose.

There's plenty of humor (Kail knowing the old "yo mama" joke in every language possible for example...hey it DOES get the job done), a bit of romance, intriguing world development (the Glimmering Man, Death Priestess, Dairy in general...) and heck ninjas!

I do think the book hinges on a reader's ability to just go with it. A lot of what makes the plan successful are variables that when taken together could not have been as accurately predicted as they were. Loch makes some leaps in logic that almost smacked of Mary Sue Intelligence. Granted she does prove herself clever in even small ways (her banter with Pyvic in the pub house is a mastery of double faced truth-lies), but I don't know if she really could have predicted the outcome of the last bout. show less

3.5/5 stars. I had such a good time reading this book. From the beginning this book speeds up and it never, ever slows down. There are hidden allies, betrayals, reversals, and everything I could want in a caper. But behind the caper was, first, a bigger caper, and, second, a battle for the entire world.

The characters were diverse to say the least. Take a few ex-military personnel, an illusionist, his completely mundane and extremely naive friend, a death priestess, her talking warhammer, a shapeshifting unicorn, and some thieves and pit them against a very honorable law enforcement justiciar, an evil prison warden, and a very wealthy politician and his top man, and then see what happens. As they say "hijinks ensue!"

I also particularly show more enjoyed the tongue in cheek news reporting that is delivered by puppets and presented based on the mood of its viewing audience.

(Provided by publisher)

Eligible for Campbell Award 2014 show less

If the late Terry Pratchett wrote an Ocean-11's type caper in high fantasy, you'd have The Palace Job. Loch, a rogue captain, puts together a crew to recover a stolen elvish book. The group embarks on one of the wildest D&D-type adventures with lots of fights, witty banter, and constant twists. There are double-crosses and intriguing creatures that show up just in the nick of time. It's a rollicking good time and fun read. Definitely moving on to the next in the series.