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A review by merethebear
Among Thieves by M.J. Kuhn
2.0
The book itself is fine, I suppose. It just felt very underwhelming. The premise felt very similar to another book I’ve read, which did sour the experience a little. (The book in question being Foundryside by Robert Jackson Bennett)
My main qualm with the book was the overuse of POV change. It jumps from character to character in a random order, switching through like 5 people without explaining who they are and expecting us to scrape through context clues. Many of the characters all have a ‘big secret’ that we usually figure out halfway through the book, but it’s never announced until the very end.
The world building is cool, but we have to figure out everything through dialogue and these characters do nothing to explain anything as they’ve lived like this their entire lives. While I know everyone hates large paragraphs of world lore, we’ve got to be given more than scraps.
All in all, the writing is fine. It feels like a first book, something that should’ve had more editing than it did. I hate to be mean, and maybe I’m just high maintenance or can’t connect context clues as well as I thought I could, but this book was underwhelming at best and disappointing at most.
My main qualm with the book was the overuse of POV change. It jumps from character to character in a random order, switching through like 5 people without explaining who they are and expecting us to scrape through context clues. Many of the characters all have a ‘big secret’ that we usually figure out halfway through the book, but it’s never announced until the very end.
The world building is cool, but we have to figure out everything through dialogue and these characters do nothing to explain anything as they’ve lived like this their entire lives. While I know everyone hates large paragraphs of world lore, we’ve got to be given more than scraps.
All in all, the writing is fine. It feels like a first book, something that should’ve had more editing than it did. I hate to be mean, and maybe I’m just high maintenance or can’t connect context clues as well as I thought I could, but this book was underwhelming at best and disappointing at most.