By Christopher Buehlman ★★★★☆
A thief with a wry sense of humor and a debt to the “Takers Guild”, who gave him his thieving education, is reluctantly paired up with a badass female knight, fresh off multiple tours in the goblin wars. The quest: travel to the other side of the land to save the knight’s queen from an invasion of giants. It sounds fairly similar to thousands of other Tolkein-derivative fantasy novels, right? Wrong.
For starters, Buehlman swiftly (at least by fantasy standards) creates a fully realized world -- with different cultures, languages, history, and even cross-cultural prejudices -- all in under 400 pages. It’s pretty fascinating and brilliantly done. In addition, the book is laugh-out-loud funny in several moments. It turns out Buehlman is actually a comedian in his spare time, as noted by this ridiculous sentence from his bio: “Many know him as comedian Christophe the Insultor, something of a cult figure on the renaissance festival circuit”.
The action sequences are well-rendered, the characters are interesting and layered, and the overall storyline takes things you think you know (thieves, knights, goblins, giants) and presents them in a convincing new way. While the giants are intense and the goblins are fairly terrifying, the true villain may be the Takers Guild -- a heartless organization that essentially enslaves its graduates and pulls societal strings from the shadows. Enjoyable for fantasy fans and non-fantasy fans alike, and one I'd rate closer to 4.5 stars.
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Next Best of 2021: #9 - A Distant Grave