Reviews

Rating: 4 stars

Thief! by Malorie Blackman is a novel based around twelve year old Lydia Henson struggling to adjust to her new school and home in Tarwich, Yorkshire in November of 1995. After being wrongly accused of stealing the best all-rounder’s sports cup from her school, Lydia is mocked and teased relentlessly by her peers, causing her to run away to the moors to escape the torment. Whilst wandering the grassy moors, Lydia finds herself in the middle of a bizarre electrical storm, which thrusts her forward in time 37 years to 2032, where she is confronted with her own terrifying future. I found this novel very interesting because it provides a brand new approach to time travel which is not only executed extremely well, but is also intensely captivating from beginning to end.

charlsys8's review

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5.0

Another book I adored as a child alongside the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The book has elements of time travel and a dystopian, authoritative, mystic, futuristic world; it is just a fun read and a great story. It has a fascinating plot with surprising twists. I loved the fast pace of the story and the adrenaline rush. I also enjoyed the characters. I thought this book was excellent. As a child, I certainly had a taste for good books.

hannaheleanor56's review against another edition

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Read at school, remember it but did not finish ! Want to finish it at some point.

jetpackbingo's review

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4.0

Malorie had grabed me from the begain and acturl a great book be warned you will need to read more..

cae's review

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2.0

Spoiler

I didn’t mind Lydia in this book, and the prose wasn’t great, but entirely tolerable, as long as you ignore all the exclamation points.
Personally, I thought the twist was pretty neat; and entirely unexpected, rather novel. And I don’t mind that the time travel isn’t explained. As long as you set yourself some rules and then abide by them then things are fine.
Yeah.
But damn. That time travel wasn’t thought through. Or rather. None of the characters thought it through. At first I thought only Lydia was an idiot. But. Seems like I was wrong.

Issues:

* Why does everyone assume that there is just one set timeline that can be changed? They do actually bring this up at one point; the fact that there might be multiple possible timelines, and this is just one of them; but they seem to forget about this just as quickly. This is important because I don’t buy that all characters would be so on board with Lydia’s return - because if she can alter the timeline, then isn’t she essentially erasing them forever? It’s not even like they are dead; they are gone, never to have existed. Their lives are crap, sure, but many of them - like Fran and Mike - grew up in this world; it’s their home. The fact that no one’s self preservation kicks in is wholly unrealistic. Would’ve made for some interesting conflict too.

* Either way; the people of the town don’t really benefit. If there are multiple timelines, then sending Lydia back to her own time matters not to them; nothing changes; so it doesn’t make sense for them to risk their lives and relationships to get Lydia back (Fran is in tears because she had to betray her life long friends and family; Danny completely abandons his position of power)

* Mike seems to be one of the reasonable people here; but his point of view on the matter is never explained? We never discover why he lies to the resistance about who Lydia is, though he’d have many reasons to, as established.

* Lydia doesn’t seem to ask a single question about why the world went to the dogs in the span of fifty years. The changes are pretty drastic. And Lydia gathers absolutely no information that could lead to its prevention. I’m not suggesting that Lydia has the power to do that, but the fact that she doesn’t even try at all breaks all suspension of disbelief. If at least she’d had a quick, private conversation with Fran, asking, hey, is there any country in this time that isn’t awful so me and my people can move there?

* Because; the thing is, Lydia might now prevent herself and Danny growing into jaded tyrants, but that isn’t stopping literally everyone else from tormenting the town and the whole of England. The resistance says this themselves:

“...and you’re wrong,” one man’s voice argued vehemently. “If we get rid of him, how do you know he won’t be replaced by someone worse?”

The argument is that there is no one worse. But that doesn’t say they will be a whole lot better. According to Fran, the whole of England is cluttered with rulers ranging from poor to downright awful.
I wouldn’t even mind if Lydia came up with some kind of silly plan to combat this “Oh I’ll make lots of money and buy it myself and then everyone will live in sunshine and rainbows”. But the fact that she doesn’t even consider this horrible, looming future is more than strange. As though she cares only about saving her and her brothers immortal souls, everything else doesn’t matter that much.

* Fran knowing all about Lydia’s conflict. Why would Frankie tell her this in such aching detail? One would assume that it’s to make Fran understand the Tyrant’s motivations, but the thing is, Fran doesn’t know about his motivations! Only about the cup-conflict. And not just, oh there was this girl in town who ran away and died because people accused her of theft. But in every single -she-tried-to-speak-to-you-in-the-parking-lot-of-the-supermarket-but-you-wouldn’t-listen-i-wish-you-had-listened-then-she-slipped-and-fell-but-it-wasn’t-your-fault detail. Fran’s general knowledge on the subject broke my suspension of disbelief. Felt a lot like lazy writing.
In the future, Lydia dresses in some fancy, papery clothes, and her wound is mended by plastic staples. When she returns to the past, the staples disappear. But the clothes didn’t? Lying naked or half undressed somewhere in the moors is pretty darn concerning. This needn’t even have been an issue if the staples hadn’t been mentioned at all?

* A six day stay at hospital. What, did she get pneumonia or something? Lydia seems to suffer from the conveniently-passing-out trope.

* The whole initial conflict. Look, I get Lydia feeling distraught. She’s a bit pathetic, but everything was describing pretty well; probably the best bit of description in the book - how she feels that everyone hates her, what it’s like to be outside when everyone thinks you’re a thief. But it gets pulled to such ridiculous proportions. I’d buy it if this were just Lydia’s perception; she is convinced every single soul in the town hates her because she is so anxious, when in truth it isn’t such a big deal - but considering that this conflict triggers the whole plot, it doesn’t come across that way. And also the fact that Frankie remembered all this in painstaking detail and even passed it down to her daughter. ~ This is further reinforced by the Henson’s believing they were ‘forced’ out of the town which is ‘directly linked’ to their crash.

* Lydia doesn’t really ‘steal’ the cup, no matter what you believe. Mr. Simmers himself admits that it was likely some kind of prank, because it was just in her locker.

“If this was some foolish kind of prank, Lydia, then I have to tell you I’m not amused- Now I don’t believe you meant to really steal it, otherwise you would have taken it home with you. Certainly you’d have taken it off the school premises(...)”

* Why does Lydia not explain that this was part of a hazing ritual? She need not even imply the others. “Hey, I was told to steal the cup as a hazing ritual; to be accepted by my peers. That is why I was in the assembly hall that night. I ultimately chickened out; and someone from my group probably put it in my locker and tipped you off to punish me.” She might still not be believed, but at least it sheds some light onto her situation, and puts the underlying issue not on Lydias dishonesty, but on the customs of the school. And especially after Lydia discovers this was all Anne’s work; why is she shy to explain?

* The fact that Mr. Simmers isn’t at all suspicious about these circumstances after being so specifically tipped off about the cup. Someone else clearly knew about the operation, was trying to get Lydia into trouble. And Lydia is the vulnerable party here, as a new girl. And she claims not to know how the cup got into the locker.

* The staffs assuming that there is absolutely-no-way anyone could’ve gotten into Lydia’s locker. I’ll tell you a secret. 99% of locker locks are garbage. It usually isn’t heart surgery to get those things open. Also, how did Mr. Balding not know about those screws? In any case, he must have a system for opening all those lockers - in fact, he’s the one who has opened Lydia’s locker to check it - either with a special code, a key, or whatever - something that might well be accessible to a deviant student.

* Why does Lydia not realize this was all Anne’s plan from the very beginning? Anne told Lydia that everyone in the group had done this - including Frankie and Bharti. Frankie gives Lydia the cold shoulder (And Lydia does not assume this is because Lydia failed her task, but because Frankie thinks Lydia is a thief) and Bharti only believes Lydia because he likes to be contrary like that. Anne’s lie is obvious, no?

* Why does Danny pretend he is the main Tyrant? What reasons does Old Lydia have for staying put? To elicit more guilt from the townspeople?? I’m not sure if I like the revelation of Old Lydia in any case....it completely changes Danny position from, madly grief stricken, angry, in a quest for a love he once had; to, Danny is being forced into this and wickedly manipulated by his sister. Might be worth mentioning that Danny actually was getting on quite well in Tarwich; so I’m assuming he must’ve had friends himself; which he is tormenting now? I mean, it’s not a bad revelation, but the implications aren’t much explored.

* The whole sort of moral message here seems to be ‘don’t be mad at all these people’, or something to that tune. But there isn’t really any conflict here. The moment Lydia is propelled into the future, and realizes what is up, she wants to stop it. She doesn’t miss a beat when she comes home. The conflict here is not internal; Lydia realizing hate is not a good thing, but entirely external. She finds out the truth about Danny and Old Lyddy, and then it’s off to the past, be all sunshine and smiles. I don’t really feel like any lesson has been taught. I don’t know. The delivery of any kind of message here is sloppy at best.

* A lot of characters will suddenly just know what’s going on; how exactly the time travel worked (particularly when Lydia meets Old Lydia). It wasn’t detrimental to the plot, or anything; it seems to have been done for convenience sake, to save lots of explaining. But feels rather lazy on the authors side.

And finally, I just want to whinge about Lydia’s character...nothing wrong here, I just didn’t grow to like her much. Her reason for declaring Frankie her ‘best friend’ after three weeks is because:

“...Lydia had found someone like her: someone who loved comics and carrots, someone who hated everything with cabbage in it, and who thought that circus clowns were downright boring.”

I mean, sure, 12 year olds are shallow. But. Well.
None of this comes up again, by the way. It’s not important, or anything.
Lydia is understandably stressed out by the accusations; starts feeling persecuted and the like. But she is so ridiculously snappy with Frankie - not just once, but twice, when Frankie tries to talk to her. It’s not entirely unrealistic, as with everything concerning Lydia’s character, but it doesn’t make her likeable or interesting.
She and Fran overhear a basement conversation regarding the revolt against the Tyrant.
“If only he [Daniel Henson] had some family,” said a second man’s voice. “Then we could kidnap his wife or children and have something to bargain with.”
On the very next page:
“My brothers name is Daniel Henson,” Lydia said weakly.
This doesn’t even come back to bite her. But no one even seems to consider taking her as a hostage.

Overall, it’s not a terrible book. It has a halfway-interesting plot, as long as you ignore the inconsistencies and suspend your disbelief. Definitely would’ve enjoyed this more when I was younger.

astrickson's review

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I’m about 10 years too old for this book so feel it’s unfair to give it a rating seeing as I’m not the target audience

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Reviews

Thief! by Malorie Blackman

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cae's review

astrickson's review