Thief's Gamble (Einarinn 1) [Paperback]

Juliet E McKenna (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 7, 1999 | Series: Einarinn 1

In Einarinn, the secret of magic is known only by an elite few. They live in deliberate isolation, under the watchful eye of the Archmage. But nothing last for ever. Livak is a part-time thief and a full-time gambler, long accustomed to living by her wits and narrowly avoiding serious trouble. When she attempts to sell a stolen antique to a passing merchant, she finds herself pulled into a new and dangerous world of political intrigue in which the stakes are higher than anyone involved can imagine. For the antique she has acquired dates from a particular period in the history of Einarrin about which little is known, but much has been speculated. And when the truth begins to emerge, Livak decides to take the greatest gamble of her life.

Editorial Reviews

Review

'A wonderful debut' J.V. Jones

About the Author

Juliet E McKenna has worked as a bookseller, but is now a full-time mother and writer. THE THIEF'S GAMBLE is her first novel, and she is currently working on her second, set in the same world.

Product Details

• Paperback: 448 pages
• Publisher: Orbit (January 7, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1857236882
• ISBN-13: 978-1857236880
• Product Dimensions: 4.3 x 7 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (71 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,821,641 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Refreshingly excellent fantasy book, June 2, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Thief's Gamble (Tales of Einarinn, Book 1) (Mass Market Paperback)

I used to really enjoy fantasy books, but increasingly I found that the vast majority were very poorly written, very predictable and very shallow, both in terms of the characters and the storylines. For quite a long time I didn't read them at all, moving on to better-written genres.

Then recently, having run out of books to read, I noticed the Thief's Gamble, which I had bought a few months previously and never read. Once I started it, I was immediately hooked. It is SO well written. Both the first- and third-person sections work really well, and the characters have true human depth. You really feel that you know them after a while. In addition, you find yourself understanding all the details of the world - the gods, the seasons, the countries, the political situations - without any cumbersome appendices or boring sections of unnecessarily deep explanations, like you get in many fantasy books.

Anyway, the extremely high quality and enjoyability of this book has set me back onto fantasy, and I can't wait for a sequel.

Highly recommended. Go buy it now.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Okay so I go to the bookstore needing a book fix...., July 29, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Thief's Gamble (Tales of Einarinn, Book 1) (Mass Market Paperback)

And I pick up a book by an author I haven't heard of....And I LOVE it! So often you can pick up a book and find the promises made by the marketing people on the back cover are full of 'it'. This books stays true to the back cover's promises.

Finding female characters that are worthwhile in Fantasy are hard to find at the best of times. They are usually dumb but pretty - fine. People buy this stuff and lap it up. The Thief's Gamble however has a gutsy female lead character supported by some rather interesting male characters (okay so some more lead female characters would have been a little better).

The story is good and original - no dragons thanks! The plot is fluid and compact - and best of all the auther has a true stamp of personality coming through - this is her work - not a publisher.

I loved every part of this - I want to see more - I hope she continues.

Being someone who has read Janny Wurts and become disappointed with the trivial rubbish that seems to fill some of her later books, and the never ending epics of other like authors, I think this author has the promise of breaking the epic multi-volume plauge ridden book series style of writing - I hope so.

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Unpolished potential, December 29, 2001

By 

the_smoking_quill (South Carolina) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Thief's Gamble (Tales of Einarinn, Book 1) (Mass Market Paperback)

This is a difficult book to review. The difficulty arises primarily from the same thing that my lukewarm 3-star rating does: the uneven, jam-packed narrative and the periodic confusion that it caused.

The narrative is really three-fold: (1) the main story, as seen through the eyes of Livak, a tough, lucky female thief who stumbles into a quest for artifacts that may somehow be linked to a lost race and new kind of magic; (2) near-simultaneous events occuring elsewhere, told from a third-person viewpoint but focusing on an irritating, pompous minor wizard, Casuel; and (3) excerpts from treatises in the fantasy world that are supposed to provide key information to understanding things that will soon happen. The problem, in a nutshell, was that there were just too many things--a pantheon/religious system that is only explained piecemeal; systems of magic explained sometimes in too much or too little detail for comprehension; scenes where you can't tell how many wizards are talking in a room or exactly which villain is which in a combat; etc.

To the author's credit, Livak is an engaging protagonist, and her narrative (often filled with clever details of thieving) is usually fun to read. Just when things tend to get moving, though, the next chapter begins with a dense passage from a treatise or, worse, whatever Casuel is doing--and the frustrating thing (having read it through now) is that he really is only a bit player in the story! Why so much of the story focuses on him (an unlikable character) is a mystery to me, as is using "stuff the chicken" repeatedly as a synonym for sex and having the wizard Livak accompanies declare his homosexuality (apparently for no other reason than to make it a "modern" fantasy) when to keep him straight might have actually done more for inter-character tensions and connections. (And the name for the main villain is "The Iceman" . . .)

One bright note is that the author's writing does seem to improve in both substance and style as the book progresses (although the final battle scene is still a mess). I don't know whether the next books in the series benefit from tighter, cleaner plotting and description, but on the strength of this one, I'd recommend Robin Hobb's _Liveship Traders_ series if you're looking for a strong, vibrant female protagonist (and fascinating story). A library loan or used book buy at best.