Synopsis
The impossible becomes inevitable with the fate of her loved ones hanging in the balance…
A cunning thief of unrivaled ingenuity, Ilanna is determined to secure her freedom at any cost. No price is too high to break the shackles of the Night Guild’s callous cruelty.
With her future on the line, nothing will stand in her way, not even the most powerful man in Praamis, Duke Phonnis.
Commanding a crew of pickpockets, bounty hunters, poisoners, and assassins, Ilanna schemes to disgrace the Duke and empty his coffers. She must survive blackmail, a bloodthirsty rival syndicate, and enemies within her own House to claim vengeance for the deaths of her friends and gold to buy independence.
But all Ilanna’s skill may not suffice to protect the one person who matters most: her son.
Thief of the Night Guild continues the gripping story of Ilanna, the Queen of Thieves. If you like grimdark worlds, death-defying adventures, and gritty heroines, then you’ll love Andy Peloquin’s thrilling fantasy heist tale.
Buy Thief of the Night Guild for a robbery caper of epic proportions today!
Review
I grabbed the trilogy omnibus, so I figured I’d roll right along after finishing the first book.
Ilanna is back and her world is darker than ever. Still, there is a bright spot. Her torment at the hands of Twelve has given her a child. No matter how dark and traumatic her past has been she’s determined to raise her son with love and light, away from the eyes of the Night Guild. While she squirrels away little visits with him, the city’s defender from all things thievery, Duke Phonnis, continues on his tirade of death and destruction. These deaths, earning cheers from the city’s populace, does nothing but stir the fire within Ilanna as the Duke executes more of her friends. And as she is the one that enraged him by successfully infiltrating his “impenetrable” Black Spire in book one, these deaths feel personal. As she struggles with each new loss, as well as the anxiety of the guild finding out about her son, she looks for a way to buy her freedom. And while the guild accepts and offers terms, the price is exorbitant, leading to yet another unbelievable feat.
As the second book in a trilogy, I think this did well to break from the norm. As the tried and true format is typically a book 2 being all about growth and training (ie., the Empire format) this book actually does away with almost all of the training exercises…at least on the page for the most part. Ilanna has already spent an entire book, and over a decade, doing nothing but pushing herself to peak personal form, therefore, she has the ability and time to focus on her actual goals now. Her targets are rich, even famous, and she is known for being like that of a ghost—entering, stealing, and even leaving without anyone knowing she was ever there to begin with. I loved how the author went into this as it really reminded me of Assassin’s Creed and Ghost of Tsushima, both games I particularly loved for their stealth dynamics.
However if Ilanna wants to pull off this job correctly and live to reap the benefits, she’s going to need help. And a lot of it. While it pains her to let people in, even if she keeps a multitude of secrets from each, she needs a team. This layered in a new dynamic for her character and the story, not only allowing for new faces, but also building in character development that would perhaps have been absent otherwise. She recruits some of the best and brightest from each Guild house, ensuring the odds are at least as tilted in her favor as possible. And with each additional person helping, the chances of Ilanna losing someone else goes up…and House Hawk is dangerously empty already. I particularly liked her relationship with Two/Errik of house Serpent as it allowed the author to show off how she behaved around someone she might actually consider an equal, if not a friend. While she tries to keep him at arms length too, it’s still pretty obvious that she trusts him…and that’s super unique for her. In a way she depends on him, and he her, as he often does what she needs of him without any convincing. Perhaps coming up as tyros together will bond you that way.
The only complaint I have with this book is more of a me thing than anything against the writing. I tend to take quite lengthy breaks from Grimdark in general. The bleakness, the losses, it all begins to add up for me and can become a tad samey. Ilanna has become incredibly jaded in this one (understandably so) so a lot of that lightness and hope from the first that I loved is missing. And while her strength, courage, determination, and perseverance has not diminished for her son’s sake, the losses just stack. And don’t get me wrong—at all—it is not a fault of the author. He has not lost his delivery of these deaths whatsoever, I felt each and every one, it’s just not my typical subgenre. The book’s ending, while most definitely still presenting the most recent loss, is nothing short of heartbreaking—and one that is surely to send you right into book 3 looking for vengeance.
Book Two offers readers a fantasy world heist the likes of Six of Crows meshed with the death-heavy likes of Game of Thrones. This second entry is building up to what I’m sure will end up being an absolutely stellar trilogy.
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