The Blacktongue Thief
by Christopher Buehlman
Tor
2021
The Blacktongue Thief is an inventive, humorous, and very dark fantasy by Christopher Buehlman. It's the first book in a series (although the next entry is a prequel set a decade earlier), which becomes clear somewhere in the long middle section of cross-continental travel, when you realize that there isn't enough time left for the cast to complete their 'there and back again' in this book, and will probably only make it 'there'. The mission is to go into a land ruled by giants and ... well, there's some disagreement about what to do there.
Thief is set in a fantasy Europe that hues fairly closely to reality (and stereotype). Spain on the Iberian peninsula becomes Ispanthia, home to the Spanth, known for their fiery tempers and love of horses. Gaelic Ireland becomes Galt, a conquered region of English-analog Holt, home to people with literal black tongues who are known for being short, musical, and good at thieving and lying. The biggest difference from reality (aside from Manreach being a mirror image of Europe's geography) is an alt-historical element that's a classic of science fiction: most of the adult men died in a catastrophic war against the goblins, leaving women as the numerical majority and as the elites across the now matriarchal human civilization.
There were three human-goblin wars in the recent past. Humans won the Knight's War with the help of our war horses. Then goblins created a plague called the Stumbles that killed all the stallions and most of the mares and invaded again. Goblins won the Thresher's War, so-called because so many men were conscripted even the farmhands had to go fight. This was the route that wiped out a generation of men. Most recent was the Daughter's War (the subject of the prequel I mentioned) where humans trained and fielded an army of women, supported by magical, horse-sized war corvids, driving the goblins off the mainland and back to their island.
You can see how Buehlman has taken some of the real world consequences of the Black Death, the invasions by Attila the Hun, intra-European fighting like the Thirty Years War, and more recent memories of women adopting new roles during WWII, and transformed them into elements of fantasy. His alt-historical worldbuilding is pretty impressive, and I hope to see more of his medieval women's world later on. As we travel the continent, we encounter everyday words in a half-dozen invented languages, verses of poems and songs, and see a number of ways women have taken charge. I would say Buehlman is relatively pessimistic - we mostly see women stepping into men's old jobs and titles and continuing them, rather than the roles themselves changing much.
Blacktongue Thief is narrated in the first person by Kinch, a low-ranking member of the Thieves' Guild, a continent-spanning mafia that seems stronger than most of the formal governments. He's a Galt, and thus the titular character. Kinch has a good voice; he's funny, profane, and basically good natured, he gives everyone nicknames, and Buehlman gets a lot of use of his many invented swears that all mean variations on "pussy" and "shit", and he mostly manages to make them seem humorous without just sounding silly. Kinch owes crippling student loan debts to the guild for training him (yes really), which is how he gets conscripted to go on a mission to travel to the mountains at the western edge of Manreach, where giants have recently started invading human lands, and to aid the guild in its goals once he gets there.
Kinch is assigned to accompany Galva, a Spanth corvid knight, who has her own reasons for going to the giant lands. She wants to rescue a princess and return her to the throne of Ispantha. Galva is brave, noble, serious, a demon on the battlefield, basically everything Kinch, the lovable loser, is not. The downside of having him as a narrator is that we don't get access to the interiority of any other character. You very quickly begin to suspect that the guild wants Kinch to sabotage Galva. Kinch suspects it too, and that they'll kill him and his family back home if he betrays the guild by not betraying Galva, but he might be willing to take the risk...
The pair get up to a fair number of other adventures along the way to the far west, despite the urgency of their goal. I found the book most engaging as they prepared to leave and once they arrived. The middle half of this 400 pager are taken up by the journey, and I wish that part had been shorter or more engaging, because it seemed to lack the energy and purpose of the first and last hundred pages. There's a hunt for a minotaur, a voyage at sea, a shipwreck, two separate encounters with goblins, a (cringe) comedy of errors when Kinch realizes they're being followed by an assassin from the Guild but can't tell anyone she's there... It's a lot.
An early standout is a visit to the inverted tower of the witch Deadlegs, which also gives us the witch's apprentice Norrigal as a traveling companion. Kinch is instantly smitten with her, and watching their tentative romance shows us one place where women's equality has truly changed things. There's kind of a lot of magic in the book, especially magical tattoos, but some of Buehlman's best writing is when the magic is at its strongest and most mysterious.
This is definitely a fantasy world that's compatible with Dungeons & Dragons. Thieves have named levels within the guild. Adventuring types have clear roles and are basically fantasy superheroes. Magic is abundant, and even though we're told most of it is 'weak', it enables all sorts of cinematic combat and action. There are goblins and giants. Religion is polytheistic and the gods are interventionists, though mostly in minor ways. Kinch is aware of his 'luck' and knows if he's likely to succeed or fail at whatever he does next. This felt like he could see a pre-rolled dice at all times, and was probably the D&D-ism I liked least.
Overall though, there's a lot to like here, and I will probably try to continue the series.
Tor
2021
The Blacktongue Thief is an inventive, humorous, and very dark fantasy by Christopher Buehlman. It's the first book in a series (although the next entry is a prequel set a decade earlier), which becomes clear somewhere in the long middle section of cross-continental travel, when you realize that there isn't enough time left for the cast to complete their 'there and back again' in this book, and will probably only make it 'there'. The mission is to go into a land ruled by giants and ... well, there's some disagreement about what to do there.
Thief is set in a fantasy Europe that hues fairly closely to reality (and stereotype). Spain on the Iberian peninsula becomes Ispanthia, home to the Spanth, known for their fiery tempers and love of horses. Gaelic Ireland becomes Galt, a conquered region of English-analog Holt, home to people with literal black tongues who are known for being short, musical, and good at thieving and lying. The biggest difference from reality (aside from Manreach being a mirror image of Europe's geography) is an alt-historical element that's a classic of science fiction: most of the adult men died in a catastrophic war against the goblins, leaving women as the numerical majority and as the elites across the now matriarchal human civilization.
There were three human-goblin wars in the recent past. Humans won the Knight's War with the help of our war horses. Then goblins created a plague called the Stumbles that killed all the stallions and most of the mares and invaded again. Goblins won the Thresher's War, so-called because so many men were conscripted even the farmhands had to go fight. This was the route that wiped out a generation of men. Most recent was the Daughter's War (the subject of the prequel I mentioned) where humans trained and fielded an army of women, supported by magical, horse-sized war corvids, driving the goblins off the mainland and back to their island.
You can see how Buehlman has taken some of the real world consequences of the Black Death, the invasions by Attila the Hun, intra-European fighting like the Thirty Years War, and more recent memories of women adopting new roles during WWII, and transformed them into elements of fantasy. His alt-historical worldbuilding is pretty impressive, and I hope to see more of his medieval women's world later on. As we travel the continent, we encounter everyday words in a half-dozen invented languages, verses of poems and songs, and see a number of ways women have taken charge. I would say Buehlman is relatively pessimistic - we mostly see women stepping into men's old jobs and titles and continuing them, rather than the roles themselves changing much.
Blacktongue Thief is narrated in the first person by Kinch, a low-ranking member of the Thieves' Guild, a continent-spanning mafia that seems stronger than most of the formal governments. He's a Galt, and thus the titular character. Kinch has a good voice; he's funny, profane, and basically good natured, he gives everyone nicknames, and Buehlman gets a lot of use of his many invented swears that all mean variations on "pussy" and "shit", and he mostly manages to make them seem humorous without just sounding silly. Kinch owes crippling student loan debts to the guild for training him (yes really), which is how he gets conscripted to go on a mission to travel to the mountains at the western edge of Manreach, where giants have recently started invading human lands, and to aid the guild in its goals once he gets there.
Kinch is assigned to accompany Galva, a Spanth corvid knight, who has her own reasons for going to the giant lands. She wants to rescue a princess and return her to the throne of Ispantha. Galva is brave, noble, serious, a demon on the battlefield, basically everything Kinch, the lovable loser, is not. The downside of having him as a narrator is that we don't get access to the interiority of any other character. You very quickly begin to suspect that the guild wants Kinch to sabotage Galva. Kinch suspects it too, and that they'll kill him and his family back home if he betrays the guild by not betraying Galva, but he might be willing to take the risk...
The pair get up to a fair number of other adventures along the way to the far west, despite the urgency of their goal. I found the book most engaging as they prepared to leave and once they arrived. The middle half of this 400 pager are taken up by the journey, and I wish that part had been shorter or more engaging, because it seemed to lack the energy and purpose of the first and last hundred pages. There's a hunt for a minotaur, a voyage at sea, a shipwreck, two separate encounters with goblins, a (cringe) comedy of errors when Kinch realizes they're being followed by an assassin from the Guild but can't tell anyone she's there... It's a lot.
An early standout is a visit to the inverted tower of the witch Deadlegs, which also gives us the witch's apprentice Norrigal as a traveling companion. Kinch is instantly smitten with her, and watching their tentative romance shows us one place where women's equality has truly changed things. There's kind of a lot of magic in the book, especially magical tattoos, but some of Buehlman's best writing is when the magic is at its strongest and most mysterious.
This is definitely a fantasy world that's compatible with Dungeons & Dragons. Thieves have named levels within the guild. Adventuring types have clear roles and are basically fantasy superheroes. Magic is abundant, and even though we're told most of it is 'weak', it enables all sorts of cinematic combat and action. There are goblins and giants. Religion is polytheistic and the gods are interventionists, though mostly in minor ways. Kinch is aware of his 'luck' and knows if he's likely to succeed or fail at whatever he does next. This felt like he could see a pre-rolled dice at all times, and was probably the D&D-ism I liked least.
Overall though, there's a lot to like here, and I will probably try to continue the series.
No comments:
Post a Comment