Thief's Magic

Book Title: Thief's Magic

Author: Trudi Canavan

Series: Millennium's Rule #1

Date Started: March 25th 2020

Date Completed: April 11th 2020

Genres: Fantasy, Adventure, Mystery

Quality Rating: Three Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Three Stars

Final Rating: Three Stars

Review:

◆ Thanks to NetGalley for this eBook copy for review ◆

Well, this definitely wasn't what I was expecting from a Trudi Canavan book. I'm sad to say that Thief's Magic was really quite disappointing for me, though I can't speak for further on in the series, where I suspect things get better. This novel is, essentially, two stories - neither quite interesting enough to be its own book - smooshed together. And, to follow that, it's 99% exposition. Events occur, but the story clearly hasn't started yet. In the epilogue, I was literally wondering why that wasn't the prologue for the first book. 500+ pages is a lot for what was, at best, an entertaining exposition dump.

Now, in all fairness, I've read many books at the beginning of a series that have mostly been setting up things to come. But usually, I'm drawn in by the characters. Quite the opposite here, unfortunately. Tyen, one of our protagonists, is a complete idiot throughout the whole thing. He's naïve, dum, and sometimes straight-up ignorant. Sure, it's part of the world and how he's been brought up in his society, but it's hard to sympathise or root for him when his mistakes are so obviously stupid and his judgements so shallow all of the time. Rielle, our other protagonist, is honestly pretty passive too, though she's given a bit more intelligence and a more fleshed out background and culture to explain her expectations and actions. She's not perfect, but I didn't want to push her off a cliff. This wasn't helped by the fact that the book is filled with internal monologues trying to justify why the characters think and act the way they do. But that doesn't automatically make me empathise with them. Canavan's books have always had a lot of internal monologue, and I have no issue with it, however it was relied on far too much in this book.

But, most of all, I hated the structure of Thief's Magic. Everything else is forgivable or bearable if misjudged, but the structure is badly done and probably would've made the book a lot more enjoyable if it had been done differently. The book is told in parts, switching between Tyen and Rielle's story (which remain completely unrelated for the whole novel - I'm sure they'll meet further into the series but that doesn't help me now). The problem is, these are told in massive chunks that cut away from each story right when something significant happens. First of all, it's just unfair and infuriating to deny your reader the dramatic pay-offs, but second to that is the fact that I don't care about the resolution to the cliffhanger by the time we finally get back round to it. It's like I was being pulled in with one story and then it was abandoned right when I started to engage with it, for reasons I don't understand. Literally, if the chapters were just interchanging throughout the whole book I would have been a lot less frustrated.

Thief's Magic disappointed me mainly because it's not what I expect from a Trudi Canavan book. The Black Magician Trilogy and the Traitor Spy books are some of my favourite stories of all time, and some of the key novels that introduced me to the world of high fantasy. Look, I'm sure things will get more interesting further into the series now that the characters have some spine, a motivation, and there's some sort of goal (literally - LITERALLY - not even mentioned until the last few chapters). But that doesn't make this first instalment any less disappointing.