The Blacktongue Thief by Christopher Buehlman

I’ve fought with how to begin this review of The Blacktongue Thief by Christopher Buehlman because I want to give it the credit it merits. I’ll just say it how it is: it makes for damn good reading. I loved it.

Kinch Na Shannack is a budding burglar with a few tricks under his sleeve, but given how far behind he is on his tuition loans, it might not matter too much. The world’s most potent and influential organisation just so happens to be the debtors. However, Kinch has a chance to find a way out and finds himself in the middle of a mission that spans several continents. During this mission, he encounters witches, warriors, sky beasts, polymorphing assassins, giant monsters of land, sea, and air, and, well… saying too much more will give away the surprises, of which there are many. I mean numerous. I didn’t want this book to finish since it was such a page-turning feast of turmoil and adventure.

From the outset to the last page, what kept my interest was how effortless the reading process felt while incorporating features of quick pacing, tonnes of snark, pithy language, stylised characters, and nonstop scenes of crazy mayhem.

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What a fabulous kingdom the mind is, and you the emperor of all of it. You can bed the duke’s wife and have the duke strangled in your mind. A crippled man can think himself a dancer, and an idiot can fool himself wise.

Some of the highlighted passages made me chuckle, advanced the plot, and contained one or two sentences of quotable advice or some sort of innovation. Kinch’s narrative voice strikes a balance between snark and wisdom, delivering his themes with snappy speech. Large twists come to an abrupt end with stomach punches. Nevertheless, Kinch’s gallows humour, which appears as inside jokes between the narrator and reader, usually tempers the bleak severity of events.

The smell of old whale fat hung about the ship like perfume in a whore’s drapes.

But not everything is suspense, intrigue, humour, or sad news. Poems and melodies are also liberally sprinkled throughout the narrative, adding melody, legend, humour, and other intangibles to the atmosphere as it develops. Since the majority of the narrative takes place on a road journey, each destination feels new and full of potential. With comparable languages and cultural flair, the continent itself seems to be roughly patterned on Western Europe.

I must draw your attention to a two-page chapter that describes a destroyed city. It strangely increased my sense of awe before instantly sending all of my feelings spiralling down the drain. It was just two pages long. It can be read as a stand-alone story, and I’m highlighting it because I believe it serves as an excellent microcosm of what the reader may expect from this book. This chapter, while lacking some of the wit seen in the remainder of the book, demonstrates to me how Buehlman can draw you in when he wants to and steer your empathy in the direction he desires.

Only the strong, the rich, and the dying think truth is a necessity; the rest of us know it for a luxury.

This narrative didn’t really bother me in many ways. A character has a natural talent that could be considered a plot device, but because of its creativity and the proportion of its effects, it comes out on top. Despite any flaws, Kinch rapidly rose to the top of my list of favourite first-person protagonists I’ve encountered in a while, and this thrilling book came to life thanks to its supporting cast of complex, interesting characters as well as Buehlman’s imagination and wit. The Blacktongue Thief has my highest endorsement.