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A review by eshalliday
The Assassin Thief by Madeline Te Whiu
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:
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.
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.