Review - The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner

Published by Greenwillow Books
Published 1 January 2006

Summary from Goodreads - I can steal anything."

After Gen's bragging lands him in the king's prison, the chances of escape look slim. Then the king's scholar, the magus, needs the thief's skill for a seemingly impossible task -- to steal a hidden treasure from another land.To the magus, Gen is just a tool. But Gen is a trickster and a survivor with a plan of his own.

After many a conversation with numerous bloggers, namely Angie from Angieville and the girls over at Book Smugglers I decided it was about time that I took this book down from my shelves and give it a shot. Now, I've had the first three books from this series on my shelf for longer than I would like to admit and the fact that I never read them makes me mad at myself. The fact that I let Gen languish unloved on my bookshelf brings a tear to my eye, and i'm going to explain why.

Gen is a thief.  Not just an ordinary thief, no, he's the best thief there ever was.  Except the fact that he can't keep his mouth shut about the things that he steals.  Being boastful is one of his downfalls, so naturally, after stealing the Kings seal he goes into the local watering hole and bragges about it to everyone that would listen.  Unluckily for Gen, he bragged to the wrong crowd, and ended up being thrown into prison.  Yet, he claims that he can infact steal anything.  So when the King sends his magus to visit Gen in prison with a proposition to steal a religious mysterious object, belonging to a rival country, Gen has no other choice but to say yes, and join the magus and his apprentices on the journey.

Okay, so thats the story.  But really for me, it wasn't so much the story that grabbed my attention, it was the characters and they way they interacted, it was the lush descriptions of this strange world Gen travels through.  The world that we get to see is so complex and dense and resembles ancient Greece in its own little way, and its described to you like the author has actually been there, like she's actually been in the field of olive trees and know every single detail about it.  The story is really easy to follow and at first it can seem that your reading a nice intersting descriptive story about a boy who can steal things, but then everything you have read is tipped up on its head and you can only stare in awe at how this story has so methodically and beautifully been crafted.  I had the weirdest experience reading this book because everything I believed I had saw and read was actually true, i'd just interpreted it differently and by the time you get to the end, you kind of hold your breath and wonder how this all just happened.  Magical.

The Thief is a fantasy novel and a quest novel all rolled into one.  The story is full of twists, every character has their own motive, their cards are never quite laid out for us, which makes for a lot of intrigue and speculation.  Gen is one of the most clever characters I've ever read, he's evocotive and you can't help but like him even if you don't quite understand him for the most part, but most of all he is original.  He's sneaky and brilliant and cunning and just wow.  There is not another character quite like him.  Amazing start to a series.  I will say this, if you have this book and haven't read it yet, then go get it and read it right now, you will not be sorry.