The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner

219 pages

"The king's scholar, the magus, believes he knows the site of an ancient treasure. To attain it for his king, he needs a skillful thief, and he selects Gen from the king's prison. The magus is interested only in the thief's abilities. What Gen is interested in is anyone's guess. Their journey toward the treasure is both dangerous and difficult, lightened only imperceptibly by the tales they tell of the old gods and goddesses." -Dust Jacket

I took a little break from reading for a few weeks while I painted some halls and doors in my house. Plus I was a little tired of dystopian and fantasy fiction. Shocking, I know. I'll be good to go again when The Death Cure comes out in less than two weeks though.

The Thief started out a little slow for me. That's probably just because I was burned out on books and had to get back into reading though. (I have this bad habit of trying to beat the last year's page total every year. One of these years I'll have to give that up.) It starts with Gen in prison and he's a tad bit whiney. When the magus gets him out he complains about almost everything. He's weak and tired and spends a lot of his time resting. I guess prison would do that to a guy. But then you realize there's more to Gen. He's actually very smart and he knows people.

One of the things I liked about this story is how the relationships change between Gen, the magus, Pol, and Sophos. They're all really likable characters. By the end there's some genuine affection and mutual respect there.

{MAJOR SPOILER}

The thing that I loved about this story was the twist right at the end. The magus appears to have lost the stone and you know all along that Gen has it. What you, or at least I, don't expect is Gen's true identity. He's cousin to the Queen of Eddis and his father is the minister or war. Gen has just played the central role in his country's carefully devised plan to steal the stone. They needed the magus's knowledge of its whereabouts and so Gen, who's actually a highly-educated, skilled-with-the-sword thief has spent months building a reputation in the magus's country solely to get his attention and then to get his knowledge. In a way, he reminded me of the Scarlet Pimpernel - playing the role of idiot to hide his true identity and genius. That was brilliant. What would have been a good book turned into a great book at that point. We'll see what happens in book 2.