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A review by laelyn
Among Thieves by M.J. Kuhn
2.0
I was really excited for this book because, well, I do love fantasy heist books with found family tropes and I was told there's a sapphic romance as an extra treat. Sadly, "Among Thieves" turned out to just not be for me.
The writing is well done and fits the dark, gritty world the story is set in. To me, the grittiness and edginess of this world, especially concerning the characters, felt a little forced at times, though. It read less like an actual dark gritty story than a story that just really wanted to be dark and gritty. The magic system is interesting though very simple (which isn't a bad thing!), and I like the heist story in itself.
The twists and reveals of the story are mostly very predictable (Tristan's identity and the Quill secret especially) so I wasn't surprised by anything, but it's still well-written and structured.
The ending was a little disappointing because there are so many things that simply didn't get resolved in a satisfying way, or at all really, which would be fine if "Among Thieves" were the first book in at least a duology, but apparently it's a standalone so it really left me hanging.
The character concepts are interesting but the characters never managed to make me feel anything for them. They don't feel as fleshed out as they should be to make the reader care about them. What I really missed was the real honest found family feel of it all. They never really seemed to develop actual bonds, and the relationships that do develop are still pretty superficial by the end of the book. I did like that they were all planning on backstabbing each other because that's actually fun! But because I didn't feel connected to any of the characters and their motives were mostly entirely tell-don't-show so I didn't care about those either, I was just... meh. The villains aren't really fleshed out either so I never felt threatened by them.
Oh, and the romance? Basically nonexistent. Riya's way of flirting made me a little uncomfortable at times, too. I think she was supposed to come off as one of those flirty, promiscuous charmer kind of characters but she made me cringe more than once instead. But I personally don't like the "turn absolutely everything into a sexual thing even if it doesn't fit the situation at all" type of flirting in any character, so there's that. It has to be written really really well to be sexy and not just kinda creepy. Also, personally just not a fan of this new character trend that is "stone-cold killer but has to end every sentence with some quip because they're so snarky and witty" because the snark is rarely done well.
A very subjective and super personal minor issue I had was with Ivan's language, because Kuhn uses quite a few German words (like "verdammte") and mixes them with non-German words. Also, there are some words like "stehlen" that have a meaning in German (in this case, "to steal") but are given just an entirely new meaning in Ivan's language. Basing a fantasy language on an existing language is all perfectly fine, but this kind of thing just completely breaks immersion for me.
In the end, this just wasn't the book for me but I can still appreciate M.J. Kuhn's writing and the exciting storytelling. I'm absolutely in the minority here so I still recommend fans of fantasy heist stories give this one a try.
many thanks to Gallery Books for the arc!
The writing is well done and fits the dark, gritty world the story is set in. To me, the grittiness and edginess of this world, especially concerning the characters, felt a little forced at times, though. It read less like an actual dark gritty story than a story that just really wanted to be dark and gritty. The magic system is interesting though very simple (which isn't a bad thing!), and I like the heist story in itself.
The twists and reveals of the story are mostly very predictable (Tristan's identity and the Quill secret especially) so I wasn't surprised by anything, but it's still well-written and structured.
The ending was a little disappointing because there are so many things that simply didn't get resolved in a satisfying way, or at all really, which would be fine if "Among Thieves" were the first book in at least a duology, but apparently it's a standalone so it really left me hanging.
The character concepts are interesting but the characters never managed to make me feel anything for them. They don't feel as fleshed out as they should be to make the reader care about them. What I really missed was the real honest found family feel of it all. They never really seemed to develop actual bonds, and the relationships that do develop are still pretty superficial by the end of the book. I did like that they were all planning on backstabbing each other because that's actually fun! But because I didn't feel connected to any of the characters and their motives were mostly entirely tell-don't-show so I didn't care about those either, I was just... meh. The villains aren't really fleshed out either so I never felt threatened by them.
Oh, and the romance? Basically nonexistent. Riya's way of flirting made me a little uncomfortable at times, too. I think she was supposed to come off as one of those flirty, promiscuous charmer kind of characters but she made me cringe more than once instead. But I personally don't like the "turn absolutely everything into a sexual thing even if it doesn't fit the situation at all" type of flirting in any character, so there's that. It has to be written really really well to be sexy and not just kinda creepy. Also, personally just not a fan of this new character trend that is "stone-cold killer but has to end every sentence with some quip because they're so snarky and witty" because the snark is rarely done well.
A very subjective and super personal minor issue I had was with Ivan's language, because Kuhn uses quite a few German words (like "verdammte") and mixes them with non-German words. Also, there are some words like "stehlen" that have a meaning in German (in this case, "to steal") but are given just an entirely new meaning in Ivan's language. Basing a fantasy language on an existing language is all perfectly fine, but this kind of thing just completely breaks immersion for me.
In the end, this just wasn't the book for me but I can still appreciate M.J. Kuhn's writing and the exciting storytelling. I'm absolutely in the minority here so I still recommend fans of fantasy heist stories give this one a try.
many thanks to Gallery Books for the arc!