The Good Thief by Hannah Tinti

[katekintailbc]

The Good Thief: A Novel
by Hannah Tinti
(Audio)
http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/8546315

I grabbed this off the shelf because my current audio book wasn't keeping my attention and I had a lot of driving to do over the weekend. Thus, I finished it in just a few days, despite it being 9 discs long.

I liked this book a lot. I'm totally on a YA kick and this was just what I was in the mood for. However, I didn't rate it as high as I wish I could because of the pacing. The story seemed to be going nowhere for quite some time and it was slow to develop. Don't get me wrong, it had a ton of strange characters and, thrown together, it makes for some interesting developments. You have an orphan with only one hand, a priest who sells of-age boys in his charge into the army, two con artists-turned grave robber, a crazy dentist with no teeth, an even crazier doctor obsessed with acquiring dead people to study, twin orphan boys who are possibly unlucky and definitely clueless, a giant who is an assassin and was buried alive, a girl with a hairlip, an elderly woman who yells when she speaks, a dwarf who lives on the roof and carves toys out of wood, and a tyrannical man who runs the town mousetrap factory.

You'd think that with a cast like that, the story would be amazing! But it really puts along from situation to situation, building so slowly that when the climax finally arrived, I missed it and had to go back 2 tracks to re-listen. There are certainly dozens of scenes that stand out in my head and that packed an emotional punch. And I was incredibly invested in Ren's struggle and fate. I loved that in finding out about his present we also found out about his past (and vice-versa). It was a great discovery... it was just slow getting there.