Customer Reviews

Thieves' World: Turning Points (Thieves' World Anthology)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Many moons ago there was an anthology called Thieves World. It was about a small city called Sanctuary and the goings on within this city. A caste of characters was developed by different authors and as the books progressed, so did the characters. The difference was the authors could use characters from each other. This gave a very rich narrarative to the various tales. Instead of getting one version of events, the reader recieved many versions of the same accounts. This gave the world of Thieves World a depth not very often seen.

Lynn Abbey has returned to the city again and worked his magic. Once again the city of Sanctuary is in full bloom. This is the first of the new set and it is a great beggining. The setting is many years after the end of the last book from the last collection. This gives the city a new feel, but does leave an old reader wondering what happened to the various characters from the last anthology. Some old characters do make appearences as older or dead versions of themselves, but most of them are gone without mention. A new reader can figure out what had happened with the history from the new stories, but there is nothing like living the old books. This is my only complaint about first book. The writing is superb and Abbey gets my compliments with his editing and choice of writers. My personal favorite story is "Doing the Gods' Work" by Jody Van Nye. Even in a city of cutthroats, somebody is trying to build something for the good.

This book is great start to something new and does harken back to the old for those of us who enjoyed the first Anthology. Highly reccommended.

This is the first Thieves' World volume to follow Lynn Abbey's "Sanctuary", the novel that, if it didn't wipe the slate clean for this shared-universe setting, at least erased a whole lot of what had come before. "Sanctuary" was a "and now, many years later" type of reboot to clear the decks of a lot of old characters and punt a whole mess of overly byzantine plotlines to the curb. This collection of short stories therefore deals mostly with brand new characters with a different set of concerns and goals than the "old school" heroes and villains from the original run back in the Eighties. It's a good point to jump aboard because things haven't become too terribly convoluted yet.

I just had the pleasure of meeting Ms. Abbey this past weekend at a convention. In addition to the second new short story collection, "Enemies of Fortune", that has already been released, there is a third volume that is being planned. We are very unlikely to see the return of the big names from the past (such as the loathsome Tempus). In some cases (in particular Marion Zimmer Bradley's Lythande the Blue Adept) this is because the authors in question spun their characters off into stand-alone novels and went beyond the scope of the shared universe and were told that there was no bringing them back into Sanctuary. At any rate, Ms. Abbey will be trying to keep each collection more self-contained, so that plots don't span multiple volumes and the characters won't be pursuing 18 different agendas simultaneously.

In addition to sharing tidbits of how things were done back in the day (the writers from the first run seemed to spend plenty of time plotting against their own editors, when they weren't taking out their frustrations on the characters of fellow authors they were quarreling with), Ms. Abbey and some folks from Green Ronin fielded questions about the new Thieves' World role-playing game. Chaosium had their own version of this 20 years ago, but now the game rights have been transferred and Green Ronin is rolling out four d20-compatible volumes, two of which have already been released. The upcoming guide to the world of Sanctuary (including city maps and details on all of the realms we've heard of, such as the Rankan Empire, Ilsig, and so on) sounds really great. And everything in the RPG material will be considered canonical. Worth a look when it comes out!

Overall the book was a fairly strong return to Thieves' World. With, for the most part, a good stable of returning authors as well as what look to be some very promising new (to Thieves' World) authors.

By and large, the new characters offer a great deal of potential for diverse and interesting stories. In the entire volume, I personally only found the Andrew Offut and Dennis McKiernan stories to not be to my liking. Offut's story simply failed to insire me while McKiernan's was, by and large, little more than an exercise in literary powergaming. At least at this point in the renewed series nothing is lost but wasted time if a reader were to wisely choose to skip that particular story.

If you are looking for an excellent sword/scorcery/adventure read then Sanctuary is the place. Old fans of the original 12 books and new ones will be greatly pleased with this effort. Anyone that says there is nothing exciting in the heroic fantasy genre needs to look no further.

Disclaimer: If you have not read the original Thieves' World books, this book will not be of much interest to you. You really do need the back story from the other books for this collection of short stories to be of much interest to you.

Review:
The Anthology is fairly well written with a clear story line developing in the background of the short stories. The feel is very much in line with the original Thieves' World books. However, the grittiness and nastiness of Sanctuary is not quite right. It seems a bit on the sanitized side vs. the original books.

It makes sense to try to get a new group of readers interested in the Thieves' World milieu. However, I think you lose a key part of what made Thieves' World so inventive and alive -- not sure of what will happen to any character. The characters are never really in any danger which is my only large knock on the new Thieves' World books. In the old books (aside from Shadowspawn), you never knew what was going to happen to a character from one book to the next book.

After reading this book, it has made me want to go back and reread all of the original Thieves' World books. So, it must be doing something right if it has relite my interest in the milieu.

The lack of magic in Sanctuary limits what the various authors can do which is unfortunate but a natural side-effect of the massive magic escalation in the original books. The hints of Magic returning does bode well for the direction of the new Thieves' World books.

I liked this book enough to read the next book in the series.

I loved the Thieves' World books as a teenager. Unfortunately, the same can not be said now. Shadowspawn was always my favorite character, but Andrew Offutt's new story featuring his character was overwritten to the point of being unreadable and soured the rest of the book for me. There may be better stories by other authors later in the book, but I couldn't force myself to stay interested enough in the goings on of Sanctuary to read them all.

In Sanctuary, Cauvin the Stonemason is the misfortunate owner of deceased Molin Torchholder's wealth of sorcery and money. Though he prefers none of this as he is just a working stiff, Cauvin has no way of ridding himself of Molin's deathbed "gift". If he did he would bring back the shade of that dead scheming witch to take it all away. However, as guardian of the city, Cauvin informs His Tyrant Arizak perMizhur to be wary of everyone, especially visitors, as the time of the Double Eclipse will being every Tom, Dick, and Halott to the center of magic, Sanctuary.

With this background, ten highly regarded authors jump off of editor Lynn Abbey's recent updating of Thieves World universe (see Sanctuary) to provide fresh tales with fresh persona that cross all the known kinds of magic including of course the shadowy thieves. Each tale is well written adding to the mythos of this long running series. The contributors are great genre guns who do not hide in the shadows or need necromancy to relate a powerful anecdote that will elate fans of the series. This work will surely introduce this wild realm to a host of newcomers and please existing fans with this entertaining swords and sorcery extravaganza. A warning label should state that used bookstores should be aware of a run on the Thieves World volumes once TURNING POINTS hits the streets.

Harriet Klausner

When the Hell-Hounds patrolled the Maze, when Unicorns were Vulgar and when Sanctuary was just a play-thing for the Gods?
Well, the Gods have left and the city has new rulers, but most of the rules are the same - there are none. Keep a sharp eye on your friends, a closer one on your enemies and grow a third eye to watch your back.
Welcome to Thieves' World! Enter one of the darkest cities EVER to be created by ANYBODY. Ten stories by such authors as Raymons E. Feist, Lynn Abbey (of course) and Diana L. Paxson.
Old fans will wish to get this book and new fans will wish to collect the old series (if they can). Meet the most dangerous, most tight-fisted, most foul-mouthed, Heros you may EVER come to love.
Just keep a fourth eye on your purse.