Customer Reviews

The Thief's Gamble (Tales of Einarinn, Book 1)

5 star:		(27)
4 star:		(23)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

I read a lot of books and this was one of the best. McKenna's fantasy world is wonderful. It may have things like wizards and the likes but the way she portrays everything is spactacular, very original.

McKenna's leading character, Livak, is a wounderful example of a female "hero" or "heroin" as I should say. A well rounded character is very hard to achive and I feel that McKenna did an extrodinary job at it. The supporting characters were also good but more female ones were needed considering that the main character was female.

The book also has an extremly good storyline and McKenna cleaned up the lose ends that most books leave you to wonder about. I feel this is a good thing because it makes the book a complete book and not one that relies on following books to tell what happened.

McKenna you are a very good writer and keep the books coming.

I will be looking for another book about Einarinn because the book did say it was "The First Tale of Einarinn"

I recomend this book to anyone that like to read well constructed books with a dynamic storyline.

The book was excellent.

As a reader who is generally turned off by a genre that lends itself to dragging epic series and poor writing, I have to confess that this is some of the most interesting fantasy I've read. Ever. The novel is pleasingly free of exotic rings that enable the bearer to fly or swords that allow even the village idiot to decimate an opposing army.

That said, this novel spent far too much time setting up sequels and not nearly enough time supporting itself. The story is often told from the perspective of the main character, a selfish but likeable thief, who finds herself working against her will with a wizard and his accomplices. Interspersed with this are tidbits of the world's history, frequently irrelevant to the tale, and the occasional jarring third-person perspective switch for scenes that don't involve the lead.

The lead "hero" wizard spends much of his time incapacitated, which keeps actual earth-shattering magic to a minimum, while the forces of the enemy in their entirety have an endless supply of forgotten and far more powerful magic on their side. Luckily for our roving band of protagonists, they obey the novel's unspoken rule that magic must never be used to do something practical when it actually *matters*.

When all's said and done, the "good guys" are as morally ambiguous as the average reader, while the "bad guys" are textbook evil. As they're ultimately two sides in a rather reasonable power struggle, I found that a little disappointing and hard to swallow. While I admit that I would recommend this book, I would have enjoyed it far better as a full, standalone novel rather than a watered-down introduction to yet another fantasy series. I certainly won't bother to pick up the next, but will keep an eye out for something more to my liking by McKenna further on down the line.

This is an ok book, but it is nothing out of the ordinary. I found the characters somewhat flat and unappealing, and the concept solid but standard fare.

There is so much repetition in fantasy today, in order to be worth reading a book needs to break some molds. THE THIEF's GAMBLE does not take many risks or do anything original, though it is not bad reading, it just isn't anything special.

I found this book terrific.I can't believe its her first.and I loved the first person approach,and the fact that the heroine is of sterner stuff than the usual helpless,hapless,faint hearted sweet young thing,is a wonderfully refreshing approach.I highly recommend this book and can hardly wait for the sequel.This is an author that is definitely worth waiting for.READ!

The Thief's Gamble is the first novel of the Einarinn series. Hundreds of years ago, the Tormalian Empire ruled much of the land east of the Great Forest. All the lands west of the Great Forest were claimed by the Kingdom of Solura. In the Great Forest itself lived the Forest Folk, whose ministrels often wandered all through the known world. The world was stable, with few wars, until Nemith the Reckless attacked the Mountain Men of Gidestan to obtain the gold and silver believed to be plentiful there. Then the colony in Kel Ar'Ayen, the new land across the sea, was attacked by strangers. Suddenly, the Tormalian Empire collapsed in confusion and chaos.

With the empire went its primary form of magic. Spells that had worked for generations suddenly failed. Priests and wizards were blamed for these failures, persecuted, and killed. Trydek, a tutor of a differing, and minor, form of magic based on the elements and available only to those born with the mage talent, gathered such mageborn as he could and fled to the island of Hadrumal. From these refugees developed the now prevalent, and powerful, elemental magic.

In this novel, Livak is the by-blow of a Forest Folk ministel and her mother, and grandmother, have never let her forget her origins. She ran away from her home in Vanam after one too many rounds of critical words from her mother. Penniless and desperate for food and shelter, she decided to become a prostitute, but her first client was more interested in torture than sex. Fortunately, she won the fight and escaped with only a few cuts and bruises. Immediately thereafter, she mugged her first victim in a career of professional thievery and personal gambling. She has since gained a number of larcenous friends throughout the region.

While waiting for her partner, Halice, Livak runs short of funds, so she burgles a house which she soon recognizes as the location of her close brush with torture and death ten years before. After fantasies of stealing all its valuable contents, she limits herself to an antique tankard. She tries to sell it to Darni, a supposed merchant buying antiquities, but he recognizes the item and accuses her of stealing it. Luckily, he wants to use her to steal other articles, so she joins Darni, Geris, a scholar, and Shivvalan, a wizard, in their pursuit of antiquites. After an unsuccessful attempt to escape is thwarted by Shiv's magic, she pledges not to try again and she is told that the group are buying, or stealing, these items for the Archmage, Planir, to re-discover the lost magics of the defunct Tormalian Empire.

Apparently some objects retain information about their former owners which manifest as dreams to the current possessors. The mages have developed ways to bring out such information and are learning much more about the Empire. However, they are concentrating primarily on ancient items which may have been owned by Imperial wizards. They have discovered enough to classify the lost form of magic as aetheric -- which one scholar explains means "thin air" -- rather than elemental.

As Livak and the Archmage's agents progress in their search, they are attacked by short, blonde men using some kind of unknown magic. Between Darni's vicious swordwork and Shiv's magic, with some help from Geris and Livak, they fight off the attackers, but find little of interest on the bodies. Although Darni supposes that they are just bandits, Livak is unconvinced, for blondes are rare in these regions; only among the Mountain Men of Gidestan would they be likely to see so many blondes in the same group. Also, the attackers used a form of magic that Shiv could not even detect. Moreover, they seem to have arrived on foot and Shiv had just scanned the whole area prior to the attack, finding no one.

In Inglis, Livak meets Ryshad over a casual game of White Raven and guesses that he too is looking for these blondes. When she runs afoul of another group of hostile blondes with strange magic and then Geris is kidnapped by several blondes, Livak brings Ryshad into their band. Since Ryshad, and his partner, Aiten, are agents of Messire D'Olbriot, they have additional resources to contribute to the hunt for Geris and the homebase of the blondes.

This novel is a mystery quest in a fantasy setting. Who are the blonde men? What caused the Empire to fall? How does the "aetheric" magic work? There is a certain amount of violence here and there, but the plot concentrates primarily on these questions. There are also other agents working on the mystery, including Planir and other high-ranking wizards as well as Casuel, a minor mage, and his discovery, Allin, a mageborn whom he is taking to Hadrumal for training ... as soon as they can take care of all these irritating distractions.

This novel is compelling even on re-reading and seems to have an internal logic that is different yet believable. Livak has a character consistent with her history, yet much more empathic than most street people. Ryshad is somewhat of a mystery in this novel, but is further developed in later volumes. Planir is totally inscrutable, except through his deeds; he seems to be working for the long-term best interests of society as a whole, sometimes to the short-term detriment of Hadrumal itself.

Highly recommended for anyone who enjoys tales of wizards and mages, thieves, warriors, and great adventure with some romance.

-Arthur W. Jordin

Strangely, I don't read much heroic fantasy, since I have never been able to identify with the many trolls, elves gnomes and the like that populate the genre. But, I love a human story. So it was with great pleasure that I sat down to read this book. It's great! The characters, especially, Livak seem to be real people in a fantastic situation. There's maturity in the storytelling. These are all grown up people and they act that way. There's a mad villian, but, he's not cackling like a maniac, which only makes him all the more frightening. There's enough action, romance and suspense to satisfy any reader. I can't wait for the sequel!

I have never written a review before but I like this book so much that I just had to take a chance on it. I always like books with strong women protaganists but that isn't enough to keep me reading through a book. Many of the components of standard fantasy are here without being a cliche, for instance read the explanation Ms. McKenna gives in the book for why wizards don't rule the world. The characters are vivid, quirky and human. The author handles sexual encounters that turn into, if not love, certainly into affection without gush or reticence. The enemy is unfortunately one dimensional and that isn't resolved in the next book. I would like to know more about what it is in their society that makes them so brutal. The society envisioned in these books is complex enough to lend itself to several books. Let's just hope the author and publishers will recognize when it's time to quit -- But not yet, OK?