The Blacktongue Thief

This is a strange, strange book, more like a bawdy ballad or a prolonged and updated Canterbury tale. I suspect it's a book where you either go, 'Wow, this is amazing' or you go 'What the hell is this?' I strongly recommend the audiobook version. Christopher Buehlman gives a remarkable performance. He adds the music to the lyrics of the text.

By the time I was twenty per cent into the book, I still wasn't quite sure what I was listening to but I was very eager to hear more of it.

'The Blacktonue Thief' covers all the traditional magical quest territory but it's nothing like any other magical quest story I've read.

The narrator is neither hero nor anti-hero. He's just a guy with debts to pay who is trying to get by without doing anything show more that will make him hate himself or failing to do something that will make the people he's indebted to kill him and his family.

There's a blind cat. That should be cute, right? Except it turns out to be one of the scariest things in a book full of scary things.

It's not unusual to imagine a world where Goblins go to war with humans but it is unusual to have such, ugly, alien, disturbing to think about Goblins and then know that they almost succeeded in exterminating humanity.

It's not unusual to have sword-wielding magic users on a quest. It is unusual to have magic tattoos that allow them to carry creatures within their bodies until they're needed.

The most unusual thing of all is how the tale is told. It's a troubadours ballad. The kind of thing a wandering minstrel might have performed to crowds to garnish pennies. It's an Irishman's tall tale, using exaggeration and humour to tell a sometimes grim truth. On the surface, it's all smiles and flashy action but deeper down there's an acknowledgement that the world is broken and no one, especial the little band on the quest, is going to be able to fix it. There's a lot of humour and a little love and occasional flashes of vivid action. Note to self - NEVER play Pull with a Goblin, you will not end well.

I had a great time with this book. I think it's truly exceptional. It's also extremely hard to explain - to quote an old movie, 'it's like trying to describe dayglo orange to a blind man'. So, if you think you might enjoy this book, click on the SoundCloud link below and see if it whets your appetite. If it does, say hello to the blind cat for me - but keep your distance.

https://soundcloud.com/macaudio-2/the-blacktongue-thief-by-christopher-buehlman-... show less

Series Info/Source: This is the first book in the Blacktongue series. I borrowed this on audiobook from my library.

Thoughts: This was an absolutely blast to read. Lots of action and adventure and laugh-out-loud funny. I loved the quirky characters here, the well thought-out world, and all the adventure and magic. If you love swords and sorcery reads or books that read like an extra sordid Dungeons and Dragons adventure, I would highly recommend checking this out.

Throughout the story we follow Kinch Na Shannack, a crass-mouthed thief who owes a lot of money to the Takers Guild that trained him. When he tries to rob the wrong person he ends up coming face to face with Galva, a handmaiden of the goddess of death. Galva wants to restore her show more queen to the throne, the Takers Guild doesn't want the queen restored. Galva hires Kinch to help her and the Takers Guild tells him to prevent the restoration of the queen. What follows is a crazy adventure across giant and goblin infested lands.

This was one wild ride of a story. I think it's been tagged as horror a lot because the battles and injuries etc are described in incredibly gory and crass detail; which is honestly darkly hilarious. The whole story is highly entertaining and the turns of phrase that Kinch uses will have you wincing and laughing out loud all at once.

The characters are a huge part of the story and all quirky, dangerous, and hilarious in their own right. I loved them all even though they were all incredibly gray in their morals and deeds.

There's a lot of adventuring here and it is loads of fun; you never know what crazy thing are characters are going to happen upon next. The world-building is comprehensive and well done; with a whole history of goblin wars and gods. We also get some fun asides to listen to folktales from various parts of the world.

I listened to this on audiobook and it was excellent. The author is the narrator and he does an amazing job. I could have done without all the parts where he sings songs. He doesn't have a bad singing voice, it was just that the singing really jars you out of the story.

My Summary (5/5): Overall this book was an absolute blast to read and I definitely plan on continuing the series. I loved the world, characters, adventure, and humor throughout. Just be aware that descriptions can get pretty gory and no stone is left unturned when it comes to bad sexual jokes (or just bad jokes in general). This was a riot and I can't wait to read the next book. Highly recommended to those who enjoy swords and sorcery fantasy with a lot of action, adventure, and humor. show less

A fantasy of a darker shade: full of adventure, interesting and disturbing magic, intrigue, thieves and Thieves' Guild, badass female characters, irreverent humour and people that eat sarcasm for breakfast. World building is very skilfully done - there are no info dumps, the universe simply reveals itself gradually. Oh, and did I mention that I gulped the book down and I am now waiting for the next instalment in the series? I'm glad I've discovered another author I'll be reading more of :-)

The Blacktongue Thief is a lot of fun. The summary lays out the plot pretty well. Cynical and very in-debt junior thief Kinch is given a Quest to join up with the knight Galva, journey with her, and foil her quest at the orders of her guild. It's a standard long journey across dangerous lands, with a prize at the end.

But two things elevate this book. The first is Kinch's first-person narration, which is funny, opinionated, perceptive and partially blind. He's a bad person but a good friend. The second is the world-building as revealed over the course of the book. There are many human nations, but all of them have been devastated by the Goblin Wars, a series of conflicts on the scale of a demographic collapse that saw humans drafting show more women and a plague which rendered horses extinct. The grasping ambitions of the Taker's Guild and the weird workings of the various mages Kinch encounters on his journey shin like poison gems against this falling world.

Read this, you won't be disappointed. show less

Hadn't picked this up before because in all I had seen about it I thought it was just or mostly comedy--couldn't have been more wrong. Absolutely fantastic; there is humor here but it's full of substance, heart, and stakes too. Really the perfect dnd style fantasy. Humor, sarcasm, action, emotional stakes, kick ass worldbuilding and magic. The work of an absolutely immense talent and wordsmith; plenty of phrases that are just honey sweet to read. So good.

In some ways, this book is less of an adventure tale than a slow unfolding disaster. It's full of extremely good characters, some of them likeable. It features an original and deeply interesting world, one that struggles with the aftermath of a series of cataclysmic goblin wars. For me, Kinch joins the pantheon of impossibly charismatic narrators -- Locke Lamora, Orhan the engineer, Kvothe the wizard -- and I love that kind of storytelling, so I loved this book.

Advanced Reader's Copy provided by Edelweiss.

Locke Lamora from The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch
Orhan from Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City by KJ Parker
Kvothe from The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss

In my experience, people LOVE when the protagonist is a loveable rogue, and The Blacktongue Thief absolutely delivers that in spades. Kinch is a thief who’s fallen a bit afoul of his guild, and if there’s one thing the Takers Guild takes seriously, it’s a debt owed. He’s doing what he can to fix this when he crosses paths with Galva, a knight who is searching for her missing queen, a devotee of the goddess of death, and someone who ALSO takes her mission quite seriously. Galva provides Kinch with an opportunity to pay off his debt once and for all, even if she doesn’t realize it, and he grabs it with both hands. And as always, things don’t quite go according to plan.

FANTASTIC world building, with the guilds, the magic, the show more history woven into the story. Kinch is sarcastic and mouthy, and it’s a lot of fun to follow his perspective and I laughed quite a bit. I’ll warn you that the comedy is sometimes raunchy so if you’re overly turned off by that and prefer clean humor, it might bother you, but I never personally found it to cross any lines.

The best part of this book? Bully Boy the cat. I love the cat. If anything happened to this cat, I was prepared to burn everything down.

As for the romance, it felt a little lackluster to me, a bit like an afterthought. It wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t the strongest side-plot in this book. Luckily there’s plenty else to recommend it, like the humor, the characters, and the sheer cheek Kinch delivers with a straight face. (Also, the cat.)

When I initially finished this I gave it 3.75 but I think, after letting it settle, this is really a 4 star book for me. Have you read it? What did you think? Have you read the prequel The Daughter’s War? show less