Reviews

The Assassin Thief by Madeline Te Whiu

caylin_4's review

2.0

I only finished it cause i wanted to see whether i was delusional on the fact that the villain WAS in fact the love Interest not the dog shit character Mallux who shitted me from the beginning. Overall I was right :)

minna17's review against another edition

adventurous dark tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

caitsbookrecs's review

1.0

I’ve been trying to decide if I wanted to write a review for over a month and finally decided to bite the bullet.
I did not enjoy this book. I finished it because I had such high hopes and still believe that it could’ve been great.
In saying that, it wasn’t.

I buddy read this with a friend and we both struggled and had very similar complaints.
Everything was very predictable and obvious I felt and some things seemed to be rip offs of other, popular series.

The spelling and grammatical errors were constant and very distracting.
Every time Telium was in danger, something would conveniently save the day (like growing gills when you’re being drowned on land), or the walls giving you the power to understand a language for a limited time only.

The amount of dream/flashback scenes were excessive, especially when it would share something (like Telium being half-fae) but then have her deny it until the very end of the book, despite it being screamed at her by the Queen in the early chapters.

I still think the bones of this book are good and there’s potential for it to be great, but it really missed the mark for me.

mollyraeo's review

dark medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? N/A
• Diverse cast of characters? N/A
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

peachyyyreads4's review

adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

such a good read, i loved sitting down for hours reading this book. 

the MC was so loveable and her character development was really good too. I would definitely recommend this book and would re read this. 

I loved the ending and thought that it was executed really well. 

cass_goodie's review

adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.75

annelouise's review

adventurous challenging mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.5

trashpandairlreads's review

adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

eshalliday's review against another edition

1.0

‘The Assassin Thief’ by Madeline Te Whiu has a promising prologue that hooks you with a strong image and a grounded sense of the felt physicality of a moment.
 
I also, personally, have a real soft spot for Aussie fiction, and – as a librarian – I’d always lean towards supporting emerging publishing houses.
 
But the promising prologue is about where my enjoyment of this novel ended.
 
Overall, I'd describe Whiu's writing as effortful. The authorial voice strains itself in a way that no proofreading or editing is ever going to be able to iron out. And there is a lot to iron out. ‘The Assassin Thief’ is overlong, overearnest, and overwritten.
 
In Madeline Te Whiu’s style, every noun has an adjective or an epithet. This style of adjectival writing becomes wearisome so quickly for the reader.
 
Compounding this, the author makes some very bizarre word choices, such as the total avoidance of the word man (Whiu uses the word male every time?!).

And if I have to hear about Mallux’s amber and citrus fragrance one more time...
 
Slang and anachronisms are jarring; at one point, our protagonist 'falls hard on her arse’. The writing is full of cliché and absolutely dripping with adjectives and adverbs. In places, the text made me cringe so much that I'd consider giving up on listening to the rest. Take this, for instance:

He had been shy, yet he made up for it with plenty of passion, pleasantly shocked by her forwardness. She let him have his way with her for a while, before she flipped him on his back and rode him until she found her completion.

The novel brandishes an inundation of fight scenes. In the audiobook, Tanya Schneider, the narrator, does well to try and inject emotion and pitch into each formulaic, indistinguishable fight scene. But there comes a point where the repetitiveness of the writing just blurs one scene into all the others.
 
Yet Schneider uses her voice with a kind of expressiveness that you don’t always get with audiobook performances: she is slow-paced in parts, quickening as she approaches action; she voices sections loudly when the narrative's intense, quietly when the story turns to descriptiveness. Her velvety Aussie tones are, for the most part, a delight.
 
The only time Schneider disappointed me was when she endeavoured to affect a peasant's country accent, and ended up chewing on a half-baked kind of cockney.
 
But all I can say, in conclusion, is that ‘The Assassin Thief' is an immature debut and I found myself wondering often how the audiobook narrator persevered with it.
 
Thanks to Bolinda audio for an advanced digital review copy through NetGalley. Citations might be subject to change.

zoemmor's review against another edition

Borrow box expired. Might borrow out later. I wasn’t feeling audiobook.