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The first line of The Blacktongue Thief is: “I had just decided to rob the knight when she said she’d kill the next thief she saw, and I was fairly sure she could do it.” If that sentence makes you want to know what happens next, this book is for you. If it doesn’t, something may be wrong.
Christopher Buehlman has written horror novels under his own name for years — Between Two Fires is genuinely terrifying if you want to investigate — but The Blacktongue Thief is his first fantasy novel and it arrives fully formed, with a voice and a world that feel like they’ve been lived in for decades.
What’s It About?
Kinch Na Shannack is a thief — specifically, a member of the Takers Guild, a thieves’ organisation that’s also a loan shark. Kinch owes the guild a debt. The guild’s preferred method of debt collection is to assign debtors on dangerous jobs. Kinch’s job: accompany a knight named Galva on a quest that involves goblins, giants, a missing prince, and more trouble than he has any interest in being near.
It’s a road fantasy. Two mismatched companions, a dangerous journey, a world picking itself up after a catastrophic goblin war. Structurally, it’s familiar. What makes it extraordinary is the voice.
The Voice
Kinch narrates in first person, retrospectively, and he is one of the great fantasy narrators. He’s funny — actually, properly funny, not the laboured humour that appears in bad fantasy — but the humour is always offset by a world that is genuinely grim. The goblin war has devastated the human population. There are hardly any men left. Entire generations are gone. The world Kinch describes with sardonic wit is, underneath, a tragedy.
Buehlman handles this balance with impressive control. The comedy doesn’t undercut the darkness; it makes the darkness bearable, which is exactly what it should do.
The World
Buehlman’s world is original in the ways that matter. The magic is weird and costly. The goblins — the primary threat throughout the series — are not comic-relief creatures. They’re intelligent, organised, and have been at war with humans long enough to be genuinely terrifying. The various human cultures have specific, convincing flavours rather than being interchangeable medieval dressing.
There’s a magic school called the Grimtongue that teaches magic by tattooing corvid script directly into practitioners’ tongues. There’s a goddess who appears as a cat and is treated by her followers with appropriate suspicion. There are giant spiders used as cavalry mounts.
It’s an imaginative book. Original in the specific ways that remind you fantasy doesn’t have to keep retreading the same territory.
Galva
A word about Kinch’s companion: she’s excellent. Galva is a Spanth knight — warrior culture, honour-driven, devastated by personal loss — and she and Kinch make a genuinely compelling double act. Their relationship develops with care, and Galva is given as much interiority as Kinch despite him narrating the whole thing. She’s funny in her own way, which is mostly by being completely serious in situations that Kinch finds absurd.
The Series
The Blacktongue Thief is the first book in the Moonlit Lands duology. The second book, The Daughter of No One, completes the story. Both books are worth reading. Start here.
Should You Read It?
Yes. Particularly if you’ve been finding recent fantasy a bit samey, or if you want the grimdark aesthetic without the relentless grimness. The Blacktongue Thief is dark fantasy that’s also — unexpectedly, gratefully — a pleasure to spend time in.
Rating: 4.5/5
Rated 4.4 Stars on Amazon. Buy The Blacktongue Thief here.
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- The Edge of Darkness: 9 Grimdark Fantasy Books
- Kings of the Wyld Review
- 31 Best Fantasy Books You Need To Read Today
Check out Sunset In the East — a mind-bending short story collection from Ben Luxon.
