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The Spirit Thief is the first of the Eli Monpress series. Eli Monpress is a thief whose goal in life is to have a 1 million bounty on his head. He will rob, kidnap and threaten to get that bounty.
And he's utterly hilarious.
The magic of this world works because spiritualists (wizards) have agreements with different spirits where the spirits do spiritualists' bidding in exchange for some of the wizard's power. Eli Monpress gets spirits to do what he wants by flirting with them until they are giggling and do whatever he wants.
The book starts with Eli kidnapping a king, and then follows Miranda, the cop sent to catch the thief and the king's evil exiled brother. All of the main characters and all the supporting characters are really fun. I want to be Miranda with her fierce sense of moral direction and her training and her loyal spirits. At the same time, Eli and his gang of a master swordsman and a demon are really fun to read. We see them care about each other and respect each other. It's very fun to read them.
The only downside was that parts of it read like an anime. Fight scenes especially had Eli's master swordsman moving epically slow only to meet the incredibly fast enemies. That sort of awkward one character is going slow, but is actually faster than the fast characters only works in anime and magna, I think. In writing it doesn't make any sense.
Similarly, Eli's gang and the villain are all larger than life. Eli is the best theif ever. Josef is the best most amazing warrior ever. Nico is so powerful and frightening that literally every soul in the world would die trying to kill her. The villain is manipulative and evil and yet completely beatable when it comes down to the line.
It's a quick read and a ton of fun. I will definitely be reading the sequels, but I kind of hope that the characters become more... human.
And he's utterly hilarious.
The magic of this world works because spiritualists (wizards) have agreements with different spirits where the spirits do spiritualists' bidding in exchange for some of the wizard's power. Eli Monpress gets spirits to do what he wants by flirting with them until they are giggling and do whatever he wants.
The book starts with Eli kidnapping a king, and then follows Miranda, the cop sent to catch the thief and the king's evil exiled brother. All of the main characters and all the supporting characters are really fun. I want to be Miranda with her fierce sense of moral direction and her training and her loyal spirits. At the same time, Eli and his gang of a master swordsman and a demon are really fun to read. We see them care about each other and respect each other. It's very fun to read them.
The only downside was that parts of it read like an anime. Fight scenes especially had Eli's master swordsman moving epically slow only to meet the incredibly fast enemies. That sort of awkward one character is going slow, but is actually faster than the fast characters only works in anime and magna, I think. In writing it doesn't make any sense.
Similarly, Eli's gang and the villain are all larger than life. Eli is the best theif ever. Josef is the best most amazing warrior ever. Nico is so powerful and frightening that literally every soul in the world would die trying to kill her. The villain is manipulative and evil and yet completely beatable when it comes down to the line.
It's a quick read and a ton of fun. I will definitely be reading the sequels, but I kind of hope that the characters become more... human.
