Wren
No crown sits so sure that a knife in the dark may not topple it.
This is a difficult novel for me to rate, tbh. I can say I've been entertained consistently throughout the fairly lengthy audiobook. But I don't know if I can say I've enjoyed it.
There are, as a lot of us nerds know, books that do a good job at capturing the unhinged vibes of a typical D&D/other such TTRPG campaign. I've always felt that a good job here should mean "captures the vibes, but also puts them into something that's actually book-shaped." As a weightier example of that job getting done successfully, I could name Kings of the Wyld by Nicholas Eames (third book when? š„ŗ); for a far sillier one, there's Red King by Lisa Henry and Sarah Honey. Those books are full of moments that send your mind right back to your favorite gaming table, but they're also stories that fit their medium. The plot and character arc beats happen roughly when you expect them to hit. There's structure and purpose to everything that's happening.
The Blacktongue Thief, by contrast, is much closer in structure to a TTRPG campaign, and not even a particularly story-heavy one. It's a journey narrative, not a destination narrative. The main character, for a huge part of the story, barely knows anything about the destination or purpose of the long, dangerous journey he's on. Sure, there's the general vibe of a grand quest, but we take it one session at the time, you know? Today, we're sailing on a ship and fighting a kraken. Next week, we'll be exploring a wizard's library. It's all part of the fun. We all hope to eventually resolve the grand quest, but we've also got busy lives and we're aware that real world can interfere at any time, so really, we just focus on what's in front of us and hope the dice don't fail us too badly.
Kinch's tone as a narrator definitely adds to that feel for me. He's witty, rambly, and has about as much common sense as my youngest cat, which is to say, he definitely has a little bit of it on his brightest days. His tale sounds/reads like a bunch of in-character session notes written by someone who's got a good grasp on language and a tendency to go on tangents. Which is where a lot of the entertainment came from, but also, now and then I kept thinking that maybe I should just listen to one of the many actual play podcasts in my bookmarks instead. Just to get more perspectives on each adventure at the time, you know? Including ones less steeped in dudebro humor and with a smaller propensity for focusing on gore, just for some variety.
What I really, unequivocally enjoyed here was the worldbuilding. It's incredibly inventive and immersive, and once again made it feel like a TTRPGāone that I wouldn't at all mind playing, actually, because there's so much cool stuff here that's just begging to be interacted with. It's got goblins, giants, giant corvids, living books that want to murder you, badass tattoo magic, other types of magic that are also badass, fucked-up social conventions, quantifiable luck, and so much more. Genuinely, when it comes to worldbuilding, this author's imagination is hard to beat. It's probably what kept me going with the book in the early chapters when I was still deciding whether the tone is something I'm going to enjoy for 12+ hours of listening, and also what kept me engaged whenever the structure and/or the character voice threatened to lose me.
No crown sits so sure that a knife in the dark may not topple it.
This is a difficult novel for me to rate, tbh. I can say I've been entertained consistently throughout the fairly lengthy audiobook. But I don't know if I can say I've enjoyed it.
There are, as a lot of us nerds know, books that do a good job at capturing the unhinged vibes of a typical D&D/other such TTRPG campaign. I've always felt that a good job here should mean "captures the vibes, but also puts them into something that's actually book-shaped." As a weightier example of that job getting done successfully, I could name Kings of the Wyld by Nicholas Eames (third book when? š„ŗ); for a far sillier one, there's Red King by Lisa Henry and Sarah Honey. Those books are full of moments that send your mind right back to your favorite gaming table, but they're also stories that fit their medium. The plot and character arc beats happen roughly when you expect them to hit. There's structure and purpose to everything that's happening.
The Blacktongue Thief, by contrast, is much closer in structure to a TTRPG campaign, and not even a particularly story-heavy one. It's a journey narrative, not a destination narrative. The main character, for a huge part of the story, barely knows anything about the destination or purpose of the long, dangerous journey he's on. Sure, there's the general vibe of a grand quest, but we take it one session at the time, you know? Today, we're sailing on a ship and fighting a kraken. Next week, we'll be exploring a wizard's library. It's all part of the fun. We all hope to eventually resolve the grand quest, but we've also got busy lives and we're aware that real world can interfere at any time, so really, we just focus on what's in front of us and hope the dice don't fail us too badly.
Kinch's tone as a narrator definitely adds to that feel for me. He's witty, rambly, and has about as much common sense as my youngest cat, which is to say, he definitely has a little bit of it on his brightest days. His tale sounds/reads like a bunch of in-character session notes written by someone who's got a good grasp on language and a tendency to go on tangents. Which is where a lot of the entertainment came from, but also, now and then I kept thinking that maybe I should just listen to one of the many actual play podcasts in my bookmarks instead. Just to get more perspectives on each adventure at the time, you know? Including ones less steeped in dudebro humor and with a smaller propensity for focusing on gore, just for some variety.
What I really, unequivocally enjoyed here was the worldbuilding. It's incredibly inventive and immersive, and once again made it feel like a TTRPGāone that I wouldn't at all mind playing, actually, because there's so much cool stuff here that's just begging to be interacted with. It's got goblins, giants, giant corvids, living books that want to murder you, badass tattoo magic, other types of magic that are also badass, fucked-up social conventions, quantifiable luck, and so much more. Genuinely, when it comes to worldbuilding, this author's imagination is hard to beat. It's probably what kept me going with the book in the early chapters when I was still deciding whether the tone is something I'm going to enjoy for 12+ hours of listening, and also what kept me engaged whenever the structure and/or the character voice threatened to lose me.