Thief With No Shadow by Emily Gee

Rating: 7 out of 10
Summary: Melke is a wraith, able to walk unseen. Feared by all, hunted and hated, she has lost everything–except her younger brother. Now she is forced to do the unthinkable: in exchange for her brother’s freedom, she must use her magical gift to steal.

Melke’s thieving has devastating consequences. The stolen necklace was strung with tears, and without it Bastian sal Vere can’t break the curse that is destroying his family–a curse that will reach its brutal climax at the next full moon. He strikes a desperate bargain with Melke: a healer to save her brother’s life, in return for the necklace.

But undoing her crime may cost Melke her own life. The necklace is deep within a salamander’s den, a place of flame and pain that no thief has ever returned from. And time is running short. The moon grows full, and someone must face the creature that laid the curse and suffer its terrible vengeance.

My Thoughts: I picked this up after reading Emily Gee’s other novel The Laurentine Spy, which I read and enjoyed previously.

Thief was much in the same vein–adventure and new worlds and fast pacing, with a little bit of romance and desperation thrown in. It was a great story and good way to escape normal life for a little while.

One problem I had is something I tend to pick on with some books… the “perfect” character. I thought Liana, the sister of our main male protagonist, was incredibly perfect, unbelievably so, a little one-dimensional. She’s beautiful, kind, nice, understanding, un-prejudiced, and she has an amazing healing ability! She was also very damsel-in-distress. I much preferred the main character, Melke, who had to overcome lots of obstacles in the novel and made mistakes, like any real person does.

There is mature content (sexual violence) in this novel, however, which I actually wasn’t expecting at first. And I don’t agree 100% with how Gee dealt with it, her characters’ reactions to it… but anyway.

The actual cover looks a little better than the one I have in this post, the image quality and the colors are kind of off and slightly demented here, not sure why.