Reviews - City of Thieves | The StoryGraph

2.95k reviews for:

City of Thieves

David Benioff

4.23 AVERAGE

frambys's review against another edition

4.0

adventurous challenging dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

jz9395's review against another edition

4.75

adventurous emotional funny tense medium-paced

theanswerisbooks's review against another edition

5.0

I wasn't expecting to like this book as much as I did, but I couldn't put it down. City of Thieves follows two young men for the period of one week in the winter of 1941, during the siege of Leningrad and their strange and unlikely mission of retrieving one dozen eggs for a Colonel in the Red Army. The book was smart, funny, sad, disgusting, and frankly, riveting. The narrator, Lev Beniov (who is largely based on Benioff's grandfather) is a seventeen year old Russian Jew, a virgin, who finds himself shoved together with Kolya, an irrepressible army deserter, who is one of the most original and hilarious fictional characters I've encountered this year. I also might be a little in love with the author. Holy shit is that man good looking, but he's married to Amanda Peet, so there's that. Highly recommended.

I also suggest picking up the audio book, narrated by Ron Perlman (aka Hellboy). He does a fabulous job.