The Blacktongue Thief

Sigh. This book has everything I would think I would want. And I did not enjoy it whatsoever. I am the one in the wrong here, lads, I will admit this. I wanted to like this book. But at about the 60% mark, I was just hoping to be done as soon as possible and I honestly don't think any of it was giving me any pleasure.

Firstly, I have to mention the audiobook narration. The author is American and he puts a thick Irish accent on and it makes it so hard to pick up on everything happening and I just think this was fully a mistake. I hated it. Understand, I got a free review copy from Netgalley (thanks, Netgalley + publisher!) and I disliked the narration so much that I procrastinated the book until it actually came out, got myself a physical copy, and finished it that way. That's how much the audio wasn't working for me. Maybe some people liked the Irish, but I did not. It is one thing if the author is actually Irish, but he is not, and I think its a mistake for authors to narrate their own fiction books. Also, Kinch is supposed to be funny and Buehlman delivered everything incredibly flat. I didn't find ONE thing funny until I switched to physical and could read it in my head instead. Terrible.

Now onto the actual book. The entire book is in Kinch's POV. He's a thief that is coerced into going on a quest. Twists and mayhem ensue. Here's the thing. I love a good quest. But I hated Kinch. I hated his humour. I hated his speech style. I didn't like a single thing about him. This may be partly the audiobook, again- everything he said and did was so flat for the first half that it made have affected how I viewed the character for the second half. I don't know. All I know was...he seemed annoying. And he seemed incompetent. He mostly just succeeded at not dying throughout this book, which is fine if you're trying to be funny, but I didn't find him funny. I think if you like Kinch, this book will land much better for you.

Onto the worldbuilding. This is the best interpretations of goblins I've ever seen. Truly great and fresh and horrifying. But everything else about the worldbuilding seemed pretty underwhelming. There were a lot of places and languages and types of people and I struggled to keep them straight, and I'm an epic fantasy fan. I think partially I couldn't be bothered to give a damn about any of them, and partially another audiobook problem (see the issue?). They would mention a type of person and I'd go, “yep, that's a word they've said before” and move on. I just finished the book now and you could not pay me to remember who the main conflicted nations/cities/groups were, besides The Guild, which Kinch is a part of. The previous Goblin Wars all seemed pretty brutal and harrowing, so that was well done. The magic was fun, but also seemed pretty unexplained and just formed a large part of all the resolutions so it landed a bit hollow. I think my disconnect is that everything is filter through Kinch's POV, and he knows all these places/things/types/magics already, and he just is like, “ah yes, Narnia” and continues on his day. Maybe Buehlman should have kept some of his world building for further novels. Or maybe I'm just an ass. I don't know.

I also hate that he called humans “kynds”. This flies in the face of all logic. There are like 6 languages in this book, and Kinch presumably doesn't speak English. So he's speaking something that we, English speakers, don't speak. So everything is “translated” for us. So if Kinch's language says “kynd” for “human”, it should be on the page as “human”, the same as everything else. If he says “table”, we understand he's probably saying “blah blah” instead. But if every word is rendered in another language, we just aren't reading a book in English anymore. So it's HUMAN! I admit, I'm being pedantic, and this bothered me more than it should. But it just seemed like an overt attempt to be different instead of being authentic.

Notice I didn't really talk about the characters. Galva is a genuinely good and interesting character and probably should have been the protagonist, but I'm in the minority here. She was just more captivating and the person who the quest actually mattered for. There is also a semi-boring love interest, a blind cat, and some red shirts. The characters were the least satisfying part of this. Tomorrow I probably won't remember anybody besides Galva.

So...this was a disappointment. And I'm truly sorry to be so hard on it, because I heard such good things and I was so excited to read it. Alas, not everything good works for everyone. I've seen many people say this is the best fantasy book of the year, and gush about it. I'm happy they enjoyed it. I didn't.



PREVIOUS AUDIOBOOK RANT:
Here's me, trying to slog my way through the audiobook of this book I'm really excited to read. Why am I slogging? Because the author's Irish accent is thick, and I was given an ARC of the audiobook, not the physical book. Alright, can't help that, I'll do my best.

Now I just saw an interview with Christopher Buehlman. He is American and has an American accent.

This was infuriating. Who let him narrate his own book (a rarity for fiction), and beyond that, who decided to let him do an imposter, thick, Irish accent for it?! WHO THOUGHT THIS WAS A GOOD IDEA!?

At the very least, if he was determined to have an Irish narrator, they should have had an actual Irish narrator do it. I don't care how good his impression it, it makes me so much more annoyed to listen to it than I would be if it was a natural accent because it is so jarringly difficult to keep myself vested in the story. I sincerely hope they get a lot of feedback about this and re-record it.

The audiobook gets 1 star from me. But I'm not actually going to rate the book like that, because that's ridiculous, and I am still excited to read this book that is getting heaps of praise. Just keep this in mind if you're debating getting the audiobook.