I thoroughly enjoyed reading The Thief and the Wild by Seann Barbour. This is a self-described “independent author” whom I had never encountered before he reached out to Skiffy and Fanty. I will not be surprised at all if he gets picked up by an agent and/or publishing house before very long, though, because this Southern-flavored steampunk fantasy is as easy to sink into as a hammock, with a nice breezy tone most of the time, narrated by a sympathetic protagonist with a wry point of view, relating an exciting plot that moves around a bayou town, up and down, and eventually strikes out into the wilderness, with a cataclysmic confrontation at the climax.
“New Alms is a city of sin and vice, populated by all manner of criminals. The ruling Cerenite priests can barely keep order; not that they—or anyone else for that matter—ever try too hard. It’s a den of cutthroats and thieves, and there ain’t many thieves out there as talented or as skilled as Jackson Balor.”
— from Seann Barbour’s official blurb for The Thief and the Wild
The story starts when the titular thief, Jackson Balor, takes on a job that seems simple enough but rapidly gets him into muddy waters that threaten to rise over his head. He accepts a commission to steal a mask from a mansion, but it turns out that mask is at the center of a cultist shrine to the god of the Wild, who’d been bound to that mask by the god of Civilization long ago. Jackson starts noticing bugs and birds watching him, and a three-eyed cat follows him around, and he realizes that merely by touching that mask, he’d offered himself up as a sort of host.
Jackson’s unhappy about his impending fate, but he’s also upset by how his risky choices may end up affecting those he values: his sister and niblings, his landlady and housemates, and a mighty fine baker. Jackson seeks new alliances, caroms from plan to plan, and learns that he’s far from the only double-dealer with hidden agendas. Worse yet, there are dire events afoot that threaten not only the Muck Quarter where he dwells, but his entire city of New Alms, and maybe humanity itself.
I don’t want to give away too much of the plot, but I really enjoyed how Jackson’s character and viewpoint developed as he was caught in the conflict between the Wild and Civilization, and reevaluated all his relationships in the light of the revelations about the nature of the tension between those two poles. I also loved what he ended up doing by the end of the book – it’s not a spoiler to say he survived, since the book is all told from his first-person perspective, but I’ll add that he’s finally making some positive choices.
This is a secondary world fantasy, but given the bayou setting, the narration is casually Southern – not written in such strong dialect that anyone should have trouble reading it, mostly just appropriate word choices, but the rhythms made it a pleasure for me, a Southerner myself, to read various passages aloud to a friend.
If you’re looking for a fun steampunk adventure with a somewhat flawed protagonist who’s good at heart, who has to think about some moral dilemmas and come to grips with both Nature and the nature of reality, who makes some bad mistakes but could do a lot worse, well, you yourself could do a lot worse than giving The Thief and the Wild a try.
Content warnings: Crime, prostitution, violence, death, involuntary mental connection, etc.
Comps: Fallon by Louis L’Amour; Ganymede by Cherie Priest.
Disclaimers: I received a free eARC of this book for review. The Thief and the Wild by Seann Barbour is set to release on July 19.
Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CY9QZH5H
Books2Read:
https://books2read.com/u/b5JRVR
Goodreads:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/212164120-the-thief-and-the-wild
