A review by bluexy
The Blacktongue Thief by Christopher Buehlman

3.5

I absolutely loved the start of Blacktongue Thief. I thought the introduction to Kinch and the world around him was incredibly rich and compelling. I couldn't wait for that kind of detail to be put into the rest of the book. But after the first 100 pages or so, I felt like the book changed. It never grew wearisome, by any means. But it definitely felt like it grew into an otherwise average fantasy story with average fantasy writing. I described it to a friend as a video game that spent all of its time on a vertical slice of a game to win over a publisher, and then having much more limited budget to finish the rest of the game. Strangely different experiences.