“The Thief” by Megan Whalen Turner

My partner really likes reading middle grade fiction out loud to me, so we started this new series. It had a book come out recently so I am looking forward to going through a series that has recent installments and isn’t just from our childhoods!

This book follows Gen, a thief who was recently imprisoned for bragging about being able to steal anything from the King. Turns out that the King needs a thief though, so he sends his magus (like a high level advisor) out with Gen to steal a relic that is supposed to have magical powers and grant leadership over a nearby country to him. So Gen heads out with the magus, a soldier Pol, and the magus’s two apprentices Sophos and A. They cross over into another country and Gen has to infiltrate an underwater cavern to find the relic. He makes it through and finds the gods guarding the relic. The god of thieves gives his approval, and Gen makes it back out. Unfortunately the part is beset by soldiers on the way back, Pol and A both die while Gen is severely wounded. Gen, the magus, and Sophos are all captured. Gen breaks them out and they end up captured by another nation. Gen then reveals that he’s the Queen’s Thief for this country, and he stole the relic for her. And that he was originally a trained soldier and is very smart, and all that stuff.

Now the world building in this book is extremely good, which makes the reveal at the end all the better. As they travel, you get snippets of the current geopolitical situation, which I got most of but not everything to be fair (or maybe I would have predicted the twist haha). What I liked even better was that while they travel Gen starts to tell stories of the gods and you learn about the god of thieves and his exploits as you go. The gods are similar to the Greek ones of this universe, but not exactly which makes it fun.

Gen is also a fun narrator. He’s a little sassy and sarcastic, but only reveals the what he wants the magus to know. So the ending stays a surprise while being plausible. It is a great case of how you can use an unreliable narrator without either making the ending obvious or leaving the reader feeling unsure what is going on. I know from my partner that there are different narrators for the others books in the series, which is too bad because this story does endear you to Gen quite a lot.

Anyways I am excited to get to the rest of this! Will be interesting to see how the series develops.