The Thief Lord

Very, very good. Sparkling and witty and funny and relatable: I want to live in this Venice. I want to visit that island; I want to have lunch with Victor & feed lettuce to his turtles; I want to rumple Bo's hair and make Prosper feel safe. I want to live in a world where magic is as easy as finding a wing and as difficult as growing up.
Funke makes me believe we're already there. Brilliant.

Prosper and Bo, two orphaned brothers, flee insensitive relatives and end up in Venice as part of a group of child thieves. The tiny network revolves around charismatic Scipio, the prepubescent Thief Lord, but their happy den is threatened by converging outside forces: a private investigator searching for Bo, a commission for an inexplicable theft, and heartbreaking discoveries about Scipio himself.

Funke has a really fine eye for details, and I liked her brutally realistic approach to the life Prosper and Bo lead in Venice. Too many YA fantasy books would treat this scenario as a time for unrestrained hijinks and hilarity. In contrast, the child thieves of The Thief Lord live a cold, hungry life of nervous anxiety surrounded by tattered show more possessions rescued from the streets. Glamor is in short supply. Which is not to say the book is exactly hard-hearted realism -- a magic carousel features heavily in the plot, and everybody's loose ends are neatly resolved in a happy ending -- but Funke takes a clear-eyed view of the conditions of her characters and the consequences of their actions. Even the book's "happy ending" has bittersweet results for Thief Lord Scipio show less

I read this book after my 9-year-old little friend that sometimes sits and reads with me and brings all her books for me to look over got this from her school library. I love hearing her tell me all about what she's read when she finishes. This time she wasn't her usual enthusiastic self about sharing this story so I asked her if I could read it. I found the book problematic on several levels. One...it's a book marketed for 10–12-year-old children and it seemed that the entire theme of the book is based on the boy known as The Thief Lord and his habits of stealing and how enthralled with him the two boys were that was with him. The second thing that bothered me was that none of the adults in the book seemed to want to confront him on show more it or question him in any way. The boys thought he was some kind of hero because he did whatever he wanted and also was capable of magic that was seldom used for anything good. The story is very slow to get started, and the promised fantasy element doesn't appear until the last 75 pages. There's little emotional involvement, and the rest of the story just meanders. There are adults in the book but none of them ring true or behave like any adult you've ever met would when met with two young runaways and a kid that is a thief even if he does know magic. The amorality of the children, and the author, was a concern. I asked my little friend what she liked about the story if anything, and she, in honest 9-year-old fashion, admitted she was quiet taken with the adults letting the children do whatever they wanted with complete freedom and no punishment. Noone dared to bother them, and they weren't told to clean their room or to go to school. That also worried me slightly until she admitted that she didn't think the way they behaved was right and they should have been in trouble and been sent to their room. show less

This book was good, a literary gem, but it was also a whole lot of "what?"
To even attempt to explain the plot progression would give me a headache. How? It went from a realistic and fun adventure of two kids in the streets of Venice to "what?"This whole book just feels like a fever dream that may or may not have been drug induced.

Cornelia Funke, una delle autrici che stimo di più, è riuscita a mio parere a ricreare la fiaba di Peter Pan in chiave moderna: infatti il fulcro di tutto il libro è, da un lato, rimanere bambini per non doversi addossare le responsabilità degli adulti, dall’altro il volere diventare adulti per non dover dipendere da qualcun altro. I protagonisti della banda mi fanno molta tenerezza, perché un momento prima sono lì ad atteggiarsi “da grandi” sfidando il detective Victor, e l’attimo dopo litigano tra loro facendo i capricci. Gli adulti, nella maggioranza dei casi, sono visti come inaffidabili, avari, fedifraghi (Barbarossa) e disinteressati (il padre di Scipio). Insomma, tutte le possibili caratteristiche negative che gli show more si possono assegnare! Insomma, un libro dal punto di vista dei bambini, se così lo possiamo definire. Una lettura leggera e piacevole, ma densa di significati, che ho compreso solo dopo una seconda rilettura a un’”età un po’ più avanzata”, se possiamo definirla così ahah! Le descrizioni di Venezia sono sempre precise e vivide, la scrittura non diventa mai noiosa, ma tiene sempre il lettore sul chi va là. Insomma, se cercate un libro di avventura non troppo impegnativo ma con quel pizzico di fantasia che non guasta mai, allora “Il re dei ladri” è fatto apposta per voi!

Personaggio preferito: Prosper (sono presenti anticipazioni)

E’ il caratteristico bravo fratello maggiore che vuole un bene dell’anima al fratellino e farebbe di tutto per proteggere il fratello, come dimostra più volte durante il romanzo. Quello che forse mi ha colpito maggiormente di questo personaggio è stato il suo conflitto interiore avvenuto quando si trovava davanti al Carosello: diventare un adulto per poter badare a suo fratello come tutore o restare un bambino? Non ha un’esistenza facile, in quanto le decisioni che prende lui si ripercuoteranno inevitabilmente sul fratellino, e per questo dev’essere anche molto riflessivo e prudente. Un’altra sua qualità è l’astuzia, ma dimostra un’estrema fragilità quando Bo viene ritrovato dalla zia Esther, equilibrato dal coraggio mostrato recandosi sull’isola Segreta insieme a Scipio per scoprire il mistero del Carosello (la mia parte in assoluto preferita del libro). show less

I was not expecting the mature themes I found in the Thief Lord. I had thought to find more derring-do and adventure, and while there is some of that, the focus of this story is the not so easy life of a collection of orphans, how they carve a place in the world for themselves and how that world eventually changes. In short, this is a story about growing up and what that really means to both children and adults.

There is a lot of excitement and mystery in this novel and the story picks up and never really stops moving. Each chapter entices you to read more by showing you in detail the ophan's lives and the charming Thief Lord. Every time one riddle is solved, a new one takes its place, always backed by the one big question, "Just who is show more the Thief Lord?". I kept promising myself one more chapter and ended up finishing it one sitting. In all the adventure, romantic history and whimsy are some very real moments where the kids worry about starving, being slaves and getting captured. I was impressed with how the 'villains' were portrayed - as simply very flawed people and not 'bad' people. Many children have different reasons to want to "run away from home" at some time or another. Funke makes Thief Lord a kind of cautionary tale, not by being preachy, but by showing the realities of what happens when children are on their own in the world with no one to look after them. I do wish that some of the characters full histories were revealed; they weren't necessary to enjoy the story but there were quite a few teasing hints that are never followed up on. I also believe that Prosper is a saint. The amount of patience that boy has is astounding.

I know that I would have bawled my eyes out if I had read this as a kid. As it was (in my twenties) I was rather misty eyed from time to time but I also smiled often too.

Context Free Quote:
Riccio self-consciously hid his face between his soft toys. "From the Salute Church," he mumbled. "There are hundreds, probably thousands lying around there. So it doesn't really matter if I take a few every now and then. Why should we spend our precious money on candles? I swear," he grinned at Hornet, "I always blow a kiss for each one." show less

Verdict: I haven't changed my mind about wanting a black cat named Scipio someday. The Thief Lord was just as charming as when I read in it middle school. Just like in Inkheart, I appreciated that Funke wrote some interesting and engaging adult characters as well as the kids. They help Venice seem really magical, to me: that there are adults who can take kids seriously but still have a bit of a child in themselves as well, enough to get along with children. Funke really excels at characters, the caricatures and the complex ones. I'll enjoy sharing this book with the kids in my life!