"In contrast to a lot of the fantasy I’ve been reading lately, The Spirit Thief is fun, fluffy, light and a glorious sweet soufflé of a novel. It’s still highly original – any novel that begins with the hero in jail, chatting up the door into letting loose of its frame and thus letting him out is at least somewhat fresh out of the box. And then we discover that getting locked up was all part of his plan to steal a king! Unlike many fantasies, which bog down in details, this one keeps the action going. I was particularly pleased with the handling of the climatic sequence. Now, the climax is generally the best reading in any novel, but in a lot of fantasy novels it can be over all too quickly. But here, the climactic action begins on page 230 and keeps going until 286. Now, that makes over fifty pages of the fun bit. It’s impressively handled, and followed by a tidy resolution. The characters are interesting and well developed, without too many minor non-entities cluttering up the background. The lady writes a fair sentence, plots neatly, has a cheerful sense of humour, and I’m really rather looking forward to seeing what happens in the next book."
I am a squee-filled author. This pretty much sums up EXACTLY what I was going for when I wrote the book. I can not express how lovely it feels when someone really, really gets it.
I love every review, even the bad ones, because I always learn something about my writing. But the best part about keeping an eye on reviews is when you see something like this and know that, at least for this person, you did it right. Thank you, SFFANZ reviewer. You have made my horrible-to-this-point day infinitely better.
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