Among Thieves

• Author: M.J. Kuhn
• Genre: Fantasy
• Publication Date: September 7, 2021
• Publisher: Gallery/Saga Press
• Series: Thieves #1

Thank you to Gallery/Saga Press and Julia McGarry for sending me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

CONTENT WARNING: enslavement, child abuse, amputation, branding, violence

Within only a year’s time, Ryia Cautella has earned herself the title of the Butcher of Callowwick. She is the quickest, deadliest blade in the dockside city’s criminal circles, not to mention the sharpest tongue. But Ryia Cautella is not her real name.

In her trade as a hired assassin, Ryia often contends with powerful Adepts—either Sensers, who detect even the smallest physical aberrations and threats, or Kinetics, who can manipulate matter. Without exception, young Adepts are brought to the formidable Guildmaster, the ruler of the five kingdoms of Thamorr, and eventually sold off to new owners at an annual auction.

A deadly secret has kept Ryia on the run for the past six years, but she now has the opportunity to venture right into the Guildmaster’s stronghold and win back her freedom. Though it goes against every instinct she has, she knows this is not a path she can walk alone. Forced to team up with a crew of miscreants, smugglers, and thieves, her plan must go flawlessly. Unfortunately for Ryia, her new allies are as selfish as she is, and they all have plans of their own.

I’m super late to the party on this book, but thanks to the people at Gallery/Saga Press, I didn’t miss out on this awesome series starter. I was excited to read this, although it took me a while to get to it.

To start with, we have a pretty diverse group of morally gray characters, coming from all different backgrounds with varied skills and goals and secrets, that are forced to work together to achieve a practically impossible heist. We get POV chapters from all of the main characters, which was a nice way to get good insight into what everyone was thinking and hiding, and what their motivation was. Each of them were basically forced into working for Cal for some reason, which is slowly revealed over the course of the story. I really did enjoy getting to know most of the main characters, although I do have to say that Evelyn rubbed me the wrong way for so much of the story, and I really struggled to get invested in her storyline. 

The magic system is explained pretty well, or at least I thought it was. It isn’t until a reveal towards the end of the story that we realize that there’s more depth to the magic system than previously realized. Rather than developing a found family dynamic, each of the characters is out for themselves, often looking to throw their teammates to the wolves, making it significantly different from other heist novels I’ve read in the past. And there’s some queer representation in the story, with one character being bisexual and a sapphic attraction developing, although nothing quite happened in this story beyond a serious crush.

There were a lot of reveals and plot twists throughout the story, and it kept me glued to the pages. I couldn’t wait to find out more—I didn’t care what I found out next, as long as I found out an answer to at least one more of my questions—and the reveals came fast and furious as I kept going, especially towards the end of the story. The writing was fantastic, and while it felt like the author was a little short on descriptions at times, making it difficult to picture things in my head, I still loved the way she built connections between the characters and made these relationships undergo changes over the course of the story. Overall, this was an exciting and twisty story that left off on a cliffhanger ending that has me even more excited to read the sequel.