Sneaky Witch Thieves

Review of MJ Kuhn's Among Thieves

I started reading again at the start of the pandemic. I think the last time I read a book that wasn’t intended to be true before that must have been 2010 or 2011. Seriously. It’s not that I didn’t read during that time. I read thousands of pages. It just usually involved supply, demand, and statistics.

Without the commute, I remembered that I liked reading before all that, and that the marginal benefit from reading yet another paper was low. It also just wasn’t sparking joy anymore. I ended up in industry so I didn’t really need to read as much of it for work. It was just habit. Academia can convince you it is important if you’re not careful. So I Marie Kondo’d endless paper reading and started reading fiction again.

It was a good call. Good fiction can make you care about things that never happened. It’s practice for caring about things that do. It doesn’t really do too much for advancing arguments about economic policy, but it can make you care a little more about the people those policies affect.

In any case, I decided last week to actually write down thoughts on the books I read, starting with my most recent read: MJ Kuhn’s Among Thieves. I first heard about the book on the podcast she is on [SFF Addicts]. I really enjoyed the podcast so thought I’d check out the book. So mark at least one cross-sell in the podcast’s win column.

The book stars a “sneaky witch thief”, ala Imoen in Baldur’s Gate (no, you are old). Sneaky witch thiefs (SWT’s?), as a rule, must have a smart mouth and Ryia here is no exception. She’s hilarious. What is kind of unusual, is that she gets leading lady honors. Usually, smart-mouthed thieves are the comic relief or the squeeze. She’s definitely more of a “rogue” than a thief at least during the events of the story — by which I mean, she’s likeable, stealing from corrupt nobles and the like — not shaking down her local convenience store or putting random innocents at axe-point demanding their last coins.

It has a large cast of viewpoint characters. Each member of the theiving team Ryia is a part of gets their own story told. And since they are all hiding something from the others, this storytelling decision puts the reader in the position of being more informed about motives than the viewpoint character. It gives the book a cinematic feel.

My favorite side character was Ivan, brother of a political rebel in a far-away kingdom and master of disguise. It’s through him that you learn about the politics of the world from a participant which I thought was interesting. It’s a world without war because there is an unquestioned hegemon so the politics are a lot more like the politics of vassals in a feudal kingdom despite the people involved nominally being kings. Ivan’s disguise work also borders on a second kind of magic system in the book. He was also the character I identified the most with: he too is handsome and charming.

The primary magic system forms the central conflict of the book. The magic users are mostly enslaved and trade in these magicians is monopolized by a Guildmaster who is himself a magic user but very much not enslaved. Having magic in Thamorr is a high variance proposition: either you become effectively ruler of all or you become a mindless drone. Like any good monopolist, the Guildmaster uses his market power to extract rents from the kingdoms. He keeps the best magic users for himself and sells the rest to raise capital to keep the whole enterprise going.

Naturally, Ryia and the gang need to steal something from him.

It’s a fun, exciting, well-plotted book. Everyone plans on betraying everyone else for compelling reasons. The viewpoint characters are likeable. The book is, despite the slavery, thievery, and cage matches, not dark tonally. The thieves joke and have witty banter no matter the situation.

I really enjoyed it.