Tag Archives: Eli Monpress

Interview, Rachel Aaron

Posted by Pip Hunn on February 25, 2011 None comments

Rachel Aaron is the prolific author behind the Eli Monpress series of fantasy novels. Write-Thing has reviewed the first three books, The Spirit Thief, The Spirit Rebellion and The Spirit Eater. All three are highly recommended! Rachel has graciously spared some of her time to answer a few questions, as well as some exclusive release dates and hints about her upcoming books!

Rachel Aaron hides her magical abilities, swordswomanship, and thievish ways under the appearance of a mild-mannered author.


W-T: Rachel, firstly, thanks for talking to Write-Thing!

Rachel: No worries!

W-T: Now, the Chronicles of Eli Monpress has grabbed our attention as an excellent, break-out fantasy series. Three books in one year! That’s a mean feat by anyone’s standards. How did you manage that?

Rachel: At the risk of ruining your opinion of my mad writing skills, I didn’t actually write all 3 books in one year. Orbit, my wonderful publisher, likes to release books in sets if they can.

It’s a good call, the publisher can use the ad budget for all three books at once (which gets a lot more bang out of each buck), readers get sequels quickly, and the author gets three books out at once! Of course, I went and ruined it by writing a five book series which everyone now thinks is a trilogy, but that’s on my head.

In real time terms, my agent sold The Spirit Thief toward the end of 2008. I wrote the next two books between late 2008 and 2010. This meant I spent nearly two years in the pre-published limbo with three books under contract and nothing on the shelves, but it was actually pretty fun. I got to spend my first two years as a professional writer focused only on the books rather than books and promotion, and since all three came out at once I had a chance to go back to The Spirit Thief and add in stuff to foreshadow events that happened in The Spirit Eater like I’d planned it all along. These were both fantastic luxuries that were well worth the 2 year wait to see my book in the store.

W-T: Two more books, eh? Do you have rough release dates for the remaining two books in the series?

Rachel: The release dates for Books 4 and 5 are being pushed back to 2012 to go along with a re-release of the first 3 books in omnibus format. I’m getting new cover art, new quotes, really a second release. This is awesome for me, but I feel terrible making my fans wait another whole year for the end of the series.

However, books 4 and 5 will come out right on the heels of the omnibus, so when it comes it’ll all come at once and you can wallow in Eli to your heart’s content! Stick with me, I promise it’ll be worth the wait. You’ll get some beautiful books and what I hope will be a very satisfying, climactic ending.

W-T: We’ll have to hang on until then! The series originally seemed to be very much about Eli. The other characters have started to have stronger stories. How’s this shift happened?

Rachel: The Eli novels have always been just that, Eli novels. He’s always been the star of the show, but as much as Eli remains the core that holds everything together, it seemed only natural to me that the focus should move to other people sometimes, if for no other reason than to give the poor reader a break from Eli’s relentless self promotion.

By the time I’d finished The Spirit Thief, I knew that every character needed their own book where their crisis would be the focus of the plot. The Spirit Thief is an introduction to the world, The Spirit Rebellion is Miranda’s book, The Spirit Eater is Nico’s, Book 4, which was The Spirit War but might be retitled, is Josef’s book, and the final book, which I’m writing now, is all about Eli.

Of course, each book features all the characters in almost equal measures, but I really wanted everyone to get their chance to face the knife test. Writing character is the most fun part of writing for me, and so of course I would structure the series around that. Stick with what you’re good at :D . That said, the center of the books is, and always will be, Eli. He’ll get the last word, make no mistake. Probably the last dozen words, knowing Eli…

W-T: What’s influenced you in writing this series?

Rachel: A lot of things, but mostly fighting anime (which I’ve been a huge nerd about since high school), witty BBC comedy, my absolute addiction to trashy 80′s and 90′s fantasy, and the five billion times I watched the movie The Sting, which I consider to be the best movie ever made (followed closely by Ocean’s Eleven).

When I sat down to write this book I’d already tried to write two very serious fantasy novels, one I finished, one I didn’t. I’d also read a lot of very serious, epic, issue-driven fantasy, and I was getting a little bored. What I really wanted was something dramatic that was still light and fun to read. Something that skipped along and built unapologetically to enormously dramatic climaxes.

This was what I set out to create when I started the novel that became The Spirit Thief. From the very beginning, the Eli novels have been about fun, fast fantasy. Fantasy that makes people stay up all night because the book is simply too much fun to stop reading. Those are my favorite kind of stories to read, and that’s my ultimate ideal with Eli. Pure, unadulterated fun that sucks you in.

W-T: Your fantasy is very ‘clean’ – nobody swears, there’s no graphic torture or violence, despite dealing with some pretty serious topics. How did you balance that out?

Rachel: You are actually the first person to notice this! Yes, I did this very deliberately, and it was a pain. There were several points where I had to get very creative, but I’m glad I did. You see, I keep the novels clean for two reasons.

One, my mom reads these books, and while I will curse in front of my mother and most of the dirty books I’ve read were stolen from her library (she was a big Mercedes Lackey fan), I somehow can’t bring myself to curse in novels I know she will read. Makes no sense, but there it is. I don’t understand it either.

Reason two is more rational. While the Eli series is for adults, I wanted the books to be accessible to anyone who wanted to enjoy them, no matter their age or who was censoring their reading. I would have loved these books as a kid, and while my parents didn’t ban books, other kid’s parents do. Libraries won’t carry them, or won’t let people under a certain age check them out.

Every part of a creative work involves a decision, and keeping my books clean wasn’t one I made lightly. It all comes down to the reader. When you add cursing and serious gore to a novel, you limit the readership. I want everyone to read my books, so I decided that, unless cursing or extreme blood explosions were necessary to the scene I was trying to write, I wouldn’t put them in. So far, I’ve never come across a scene that needed cursing, so it hasn’t gotten in. You can look at this as self censorship, but I prefer to think of it as making my work as accessible as possible. I want to feel at peace telling everyone in the world “you like magic, sword fights, and charming thieves? YOU WILL LOVE MY NOVEL.”

W-T: So, do you swear in real life?

Rachel: Yes. Drop in on me when I’m doing PVP in World of Warcraft and you’ll hear language that would make a sailor clutch his chest in horror.

W-T: Is Eli growing up?

Rachel: I hope so. I’m trying to make him. For all his frivolity, complete irresponsibility, and general disrespect for authority, Eli holds some unshakable moral values. You can’t keep that sort of dichotomy up forever. Sooner or later you’re going to run into a situation where you have to stand up for your morals or betray them, and that’s what adulthood is – not just knowing right from wrong, but taking responsibility to make the right thing happen. With each book, Eli has to do that more and more, and hopefully that’s making him grow up. He’s still a wise ass, though. That will never change.

W-T: He’s an interesting character. Where did he spring from?

Rachel: The idea of a thief named Eli who wanted a bounty of one million gold actually came from my old friend Steven’s high school D&D character. I didn’t even know Steven at the time, and I didn’t know jack about the character Eli other than the basics, but the idea of a thief who dreamed of a million gold bounty, more money than anyone had ever had, grabbed me and ran. After that, my Eli developed almost overnight, emerging with his own voice to talk to a door. Everything else in the series fell into place around that.

W-T: I’ve enjoyed the world you’ve built immensely. The idea of universal spirits is fascinating. How did that come about?

Rachel: I’m a very nerdy person, and one of the nerdy things I do is make up magic systems. I don’t actually remember when or how I got the idea of giving everything a spirit, but I know I’ve had it kicking around for a very long time, and once I had my charming, magical thief, I knew I’d found the perfect home for a magical system built around persuasion. Also, the idea of talking furniture never fails to crack me up. I’m so glad you enjoy it!

A world where everything talks has spawned some truly great sayings around my house, though the best example came from my Devi, my beloved editor at Orbit. It was during edits for The Spirit Rebellion. We were working on how to make the villain more despicable when Devi told me I needed to “Torture more doors.” I did, and it worked perfectly. I now have this quote hanging above my computer.

W-T: What’s your writing routine like?

Rachel: I’ve shifted a lot over the years, but for the last two books I’ve fallen into a pattern that works really well. First, I set aside at least 4 hours for writing as early in the day as I can. The later it gets, the more tired I am, the harder it is to be good. That said, life gets in the way a lot, so I take what I can get (writing is way easier if I stay flexible about it). The only kicker is that the hours have to be uninterrupted. I’m the kind of writer who sinks into her work, and every time life pulls me out, I have to sink back in, which can take forever. So I sink in once and try to stay there as long as I can.

Four hours is enough for me to write 3000 – 4000 words depending on how awesome I’m rolling. I used to only manage 2000 words in the same amount of time, but then I stumbled on a trick. Before I write anything, I get a notebook and write a quick, short hand description of what I’m going to write. I write what happens, the order in which it happens, and if there’s dialog I write out the exchanges in the most bare bones way I can. Basically, I’m drawing a sketch of the scenes for the day.

This lets me spot trouble bits early and work them out in short hand on notebook paper when mistakes are easy to fix rather than meandering through it in the actual writing where I end up deleting paragraphs until I find the right way to go. In fact, I’d say the vast majority of my new found speed as a writer comes from the rather bland realization that knowing what you’re going to write before you write it will make you write faster, and the more you know, the faster you will write.

That’s the secret that doubled my word count per day without increasing the time I spend writing. Anyone looking for a way to go faster is welcome to use it. I hope it works the miracles for you it bestowed upon me.

Also, I write in a coffee shop where the wireless is password protected, and then never get the wireless password. This means I can’t get on the internet, and people are watching me, which keeps me honest. Both of these are vital to Rachel productivity. I’m an easily distracted animal.

W-T: What can we expect from the last two Eli Monpress books?

Rachel: Well, I’ve written book four and I’m well into book five, so I can safely say things get a lot more serious. Not the characters, they’re still the same people, but the situations get more serious. Josef especially has to step up to the responsibilities he’s been running away from as a wandering swordsman, and Josef has always been the backbone of the Eli gang. When he gets serious, Nico and Eli have to come along and bear with it.

Book four is also the longest Eli book, and book five’s most likely going to match it. This is only natural since the cast has grown and the situations are much more complicated. That said, book four is as fast paced and action packed as any of the Eli books, more so because I’m done with exposition at this point.

Book five is even crazier since it’s pretty much all climax for every major problem that’s been building in the Eli world since the beginning. So while the books may be longer and more serious, I can safely say that if you liked the first three Eli novels, you are going to LOVE the last two. It’s nothing but shit hitting the fan, questions getting answered, and characters doing awesome things. Book four is my favorite book I’ve ever written, and book five is pretty much just more of that. It’s going to be amazing.

W-T: Do you have any plans after that? Will we remain in the same world, or go elsewhere?

Rachel: The series is pretty much done after book five. There are more stories I can tell about Eli, Josef, Nico, and the rest, but I’ve been in the same world for a long time now and I’m ready to do something new. I’m not going to say that I’ll never write another Eli book, but for now I’m ready to stretch in new directions. I’m a young writer at the very beginning of her career. I have so many books to write, it’s not even funny – fantasy, scifi, YA, urban fantasy, even some main stream stuff. Time to get cracking!

W-T: Fantastic! It sounds like you’ve got a lot of great places to go. Thanks for talking to Write-Thing, it’s been great talking with you!

Rachel: Thank you so much for the thoughtful questions. I had a really great time. Again, thank you for having me. People like you are why I write.

Rachel Aaron’s website can be found at http://www.rachelaaron.net. Her first three books, The Spirit Thief, The Spirit Rebellion and The Spirit Eater have all been reviewed here on this site and are published by Orbit Books. For more on her books, keep an eye on Write-Thing or subscribe to the RSS feed using the butons in the top right corner!

The Spirit Eater, Rachel Aaron

Posted by Pip Hunn on February 25, 2011 None comments

In Short
The Spirit Eater, by Rachel Aaron (Book 3 of the Eli Monpress series)
Orbit Books, Fantasy, 422 pages, paperback edition.
My copy: Purchased.
Pros: Amazing worldbuilding, well-rounded characters, great pace.
Cons: Some repetitive, annoying behaviours from protagonists at times.
In a line: Gentleman Thief’s entourage battling to evade capture… And not blow up the world.
“I am The Lord of Storms. I cannot be killed and I do not give up.”
Score: 8/10

The Spirit Eater is the third book in the Eli Monpress series, and easily the most impressive to date. Aaron shores up the few weaknesses in her earlier books, expands her world, deepends her characters, and comes up with some excellent new challenges for them.

Aaron’s last book, The Spirit Rebellion, ended with a near-criminal level of cliffhanging. Awkwardly, The Spirit Eater doesn’t actually address how Eli manages to escape from the predicament he was in immediately. In fact, it’s actually not gone into in any detail through the third book at all. considering the suspense that Aaron built in the second book, this is a letdown.

The story starts with our heroic group – Eli Monpress, the thief, Josef the swordsman, and Nico the demonseed – tracking away victorious from their conquest over the Duke of Gaol. Miranda Lypress, the spiritualist, is given recognition of her work in Gaol by promotion to an unlikely area – a department within the governing Council that tracks down enemies of the state with signfiicant bounties on their head. Eli hasn’t made the top of their list yet, but the few in front of him are committers of atrocities and murders, as opposed to increasingly-popular thefts.

Eli heads Home to rest and recuperate before plotting his next move. Home is, in true Monpress style, a city that’s had its trade routes bypassed by the construction of the kingdom’s highway some leagues away. When the township fell on hard times, Eli sinmply bought the entire town – homes, people, livelihoods and all – and, in exchange for funding the inhbitants, has a town where he can let his guard down and relax for a while. Fanatically loyal and grateful, the people of Home welcome Eli and his crew back amongst them.

Their peace is hard to come by. The demonseed inside Nico is awakened and working vigorously against her. Her restraints, crafted by Master Shaper Slorn, were damaged in her previous adventures and need work. And the trio is still unable to find a permanent answer to the demon growing inside her.

The demonseed is not just a concern for Nico. Demons feature heavily in this book. We re-visit Slorn’s imprisoned wife, who’d been battling the demon inside her whilst trapped in a valley by her husband. Sted, the vicious warrior from The Spirit Rebellion who’d nearly killed Josef and Nico, seeks her out to try and gain the power of a demonseed for himself. The League of Storms takes an active role in this story, unleashing their fantastical powers. Things are certainly building to a pretty fantastic finale.

The scope of each of Aaron’s stories expands outwards with each novel. We’ve grown from a self-centered thief and his rompish adventures to something much grimmer and more gritty. Aaron’s lush and populous world is threatened, and the Gods of the realm seem incapable of taking decisive action, trapped into observation and inaction by their own peculiar natures. The enemies of spirits and free folk are amassing and multipyling, and even the Leage of Storms has limits on what it can hold back.

Coupled with the machinations of mortals, and dangerous cracks are springing up in the world. Miranda is sent with a team of unreliable, mysterious companions to negotiate with the most highly wanted bandit in the kingdom, and instead of capturing him, finds that she’s been sent to negotiate the terms of his acceptance into the nobility. His thirst for power has led him to surround himself with dark figures, including one familiar, but more deadly than before…

Josef, Nico, Eli and Miranda are all feeling familiar and well-rounded by this point. Miranda is a curiously unsympathetic figure of morals and authority in the story. Unfortunately, she seems to swing erratically between powerful authority and shrill helplessness. Despite her much-vaunted Spiritualist training, Miranda is perhaps the least capable of the figures in the story, and I found her to be annoying at times. Josef, too, has moments where his stoicism prevent him from being a truly fleshed-out swordsman, but he gets enough ass-kicking in in The Spirit Eater that I think I’m just being picky.

The Spirit Eater has everything we’ve loved from the earlier books and more. Heroic swordfights. A titanic battle between a strong-willed woman and an implacably corrupting demon. Gladiatorial combat. Magic being unleashed with pyrotechnics that would make Michael Bay blush and go back to baking-soda volcano models.

Some might raise an eyebrow at the darker tone. There’s certainly more pain, betrayals, hopelessness and abandonment in this one than the previous books. I think it’s likely to get darker before things clear up, though. Aaron’s said that this series is going to be five books, and there’s a long way to go. Eli is still much the incorrigible thief as before – avoiding and twisting out of situations of responsibility and selflessness, holding his life together only through of his unshakeable feelings of loyalty. I imagine the challenges awaiting them all in the future will end up either making or breaking him as a classic anti-hero.

Regardless of the darker tone, I’ve enjoyed The Spirit Eater more than either of the first two books, and I’m eager for the others. Rachel Aaron has also kindly given an interview, here, which I encourage you to check out for some hints about what’s coming in the next two books! The Spirit Eater rates eight golden coins.

Reviews of the earlier books in the Eli Monpress series, The Spirit Thief and The Spirit Rebellion, can be found on Write-Thing as well as the interview with Rachel Aaron.

The Spirit Rebellion, Rachel Aaron

Posted by Pip Hunn on February 11, 2011 None comments

In Short
The Spirit Rebellion by Rachel Aaron (Book 2 of The Legend of Eli Monpress)
Orbit Books, Fantasy, 426 pages, paperback edition.
My copy: Purchased.
Pros: Fun, great worldbuilding, fantastic protagonists
Cons: Heavily troped.
In a line: World’s greatest thief finds it hard to resist enticing trap.
Score: 7.5/10

The Spirit Rebellion is a fantastic sequel to Aaron’s first novel in the series, The Spirit Thief. With a more complex and intriguing plot, an increasingly fleshed-out set of characters, and a host of mysterious and engrossing villains on the horizon, The Spirit Rebellion is an excellent sequel to a promising debut.

From the blurb:

Eli Monpress is brilliant. He’s incorrigible. And he’s a thief.

He’s also still at learge, which drives Miranda Lyonette crazy. Since she’s been kicked out of the Spirit Court, Eli’s had plenty of time to plan his next adventure. But now the tables have been turned,because Miranda has a new job – and an opportunity to capture a certain thief.

Things are about to get exciting for Eli.He’s picked a winner for his newest heist. His target: the Duke of Gaol’s famous ‘thief-proof’ citadel. Eli knows Gaol is a trap, but what’s life without challenges? Except the Duke is one of the wealthiest men in the world, a wizard who rules hus duchy with an iron first and an obsessive perfectionist with only one hobby: Eli.

It seems that everyone wants to get their hands on Eli Monpress…

Increasing excellence
Eli Monpress is fast growing in my regard as an excellent Gentleman Thief. Throughout The Spirit Rebellion, we start to see more than the simple, shallow dimensions we were given in his previous adventures. He occasionally lets altruism and nobler motives other than his massive egotism guide his actions, which is nearly as endearing as watching him get petulant when someone challenges his overinflated ego.

Of more interest is the excellent development in Eli’s companions, Josef the swordsman and Nico the demonseed. Josef engages in more dialogue with his spiritually ‘awakened’ blade, the Heart of War. Awesome title notwithstanding, Aaron has made the Heart of War into its own, quite reasonable persona and not a cliche’d blood-thirsting demonic fiend, which I can only assume took a great deal of willpower on her end. The Heart is rightly annoyed with Josef’s stubborn resistance to using it. After all, if you’re the greatest awakened blade in existence, what point are you if you don’t get to cleave some opponents from time to time?

Luckily for us, Josef is forced into a deadly confrontation with an impressive opponent. We get a nice action scene with plenty of smitings – Nico gets to let rip as well, which is very satisfying – and a little exposition, which helps the world-building efforts no end.

Nico’s history and the problem of the demonseed growing inside her gets nicely fleshed out in this story as well. The heroes early on meet up with a master craftsman, Heinricht Slorn, who is very acquainted with the control and power necessary to keep a growing demonseed imprisoned. We are given glimpses of the shadowy League of Storms who watch over the realms unseen, hunting down escaped demonseeds and killing them before they can damage the world. Nico is indirectly threatened, the League held at bay by mysterious Puppet Masters. We can only assume that her story will reach a peak in the third book, The Spirit Eater, to be reviewed shortly.

Our other main storyline, that of Miranda Lyonette, is also a satisfying one. Moving at a slower pace than Eli’s adventures, Miranda finds herself unjustly reprimanded for her heroic actions at the end of the first book. Outmanoeuvred by political opponents, Miranda is stripped of her authority by the Spirit Court and barely escapes imprisonment.

Stung by the betrayal of her peers, Miranda is picked up by another powerful figure in the world, and re-assigned to the purpose that caused her banishment: the capture of Eli Monpress. With a powerful ally in the Great Spirit Mellinor in her service, and with vengeance in mind, Miranda starts to track Eli down.

Rollicking adventures
Aaron has done a fine job with The Spirit Rebellion. Her characters are fleshed out and more three-dimensional. The villains are less transparent, and there’s a nice balance of explanations and further mysteries as her plots progress. Miranda has grown from being almost dim in the first book to a more adult, quick-thinking character. This is particularly handy because Eli, lovable rogue that he is, is in fine form, trading pithy insults with everyone around him and generally being a rapscallion.

Everything that was good about the first book is here, polished and smoother. Aaron’s occasionally unconvincing dialogue has been tightened dramatically. Her story flows smoothly, and she handles transitions between plot points without needing to re-visit old ground, something which irked me occasionally in The Spirit Thief.

We’re still focussed heavily on Eli’s exploits, but we get a glimpse of where Josef, Nico and Miranda will be heading with their character arcs. I expect excellent things from The Spirit Eater, the third book in the series of five books. Impressively, Aaron has a very tight publishing schedule, each book coming out from Orbit within a few months of each other. This means that rather than the interminable waits forced on us by other fantasy authors, the entire series of novels is available within a very short window.

The Spirit Rebellion is a worth successor to The Spirit Thief. Tighter, smoother, grittier and more fun, Aaron’s hit her stride with this one. I happily give The Spirit Rebellion seven and a half enchanted rings.

The first and third books, The Spirit Thief and The Spirit Eater respectively, have also been reviewed. Rachel Aaron has also interviewed Write-Thing, and that excellent interview can be found here.

The Spirit Thief, Rachel Aaron

Posted by Pip Hunn on February 2, 2011 1 comments

In Short

The Spirit Thief, by Rachel Aaron (Book 1 of The Legend of Eli Monpress)
Orbit Books, Fantasy, 310 pages, paperback edition.
My copy: Purchased.
Pros: Fast, elegant, Gentleman Thievery.
Cons: Some well-worn tropes and occasional exposition.
In a line: Master magician sets out to capture legendary rapscallion, hjinks ensue.
The Master of Security sighed. “He’s stolen the King.”
Score: 7/10

Gentleman Thief
I’m a big fan of the gentleman thief. Always have been. Always will be. Two years ago, I bought 25 copies of Scott Lynch’s The Lies of Locke Lamora and gave them away to bewildered friends and family. As a child, I used to dress up in a purple cape and mask and dash about my neighbourhood, terrifying small birds and mammals with dried-Hydrangea-stalk-swords. Emboldened by the inability of overfed, lazy mastiffs to do anything but blink bewilderedly at my passing, I would sneak into my grandparent’s house and try to sneak my way into their tin of delicious biscuits.

Unfortunately for me, my grandparents were cunning fiends, and so I learnt the most important lesson of gentleman-thievery early. Regardless of how clever one’s plan is, there will always be hiccups. So it has been, through every heist book, with every suave, intelligent thief, from Catwoman to Lamora, Irene Adler to Thomas Crown. I can’t resist any of them, and so when I saw a devilishly handsome, be-stubbled man smirking at me from the cover of Rachel Aaron’s The Spirit Thief, I was powerless to resist.

From the blurb:

Eli Monpress is talented. He’s charming. And he’s a thief.

But not just any thief. He’s the greatest thief of the age – and he’s a wizard. And with the help of his partners – a swordsman wit the most powerful magic sword in the world but no magical ability of his own, and a demonseed who can step through shadows and punch through walls – he’s going to put his plan into effect.

The first step is to increase the size of the bounty on his head, so he’ll need to steal some big things. But he’ll start small for now. He’ll just steal something that no one will miss – at least for a little while.

Something like a king.

What A Guy!
Eli Monpress certainly fills all our criteria for an excellent gentleman thief. He’s charming, and not just to the ladies. Actually, his capacity to charm seemingly inanimate objects – doors, trees, rocks, rivers – is what makes his thievery possible. In the world Aaron’s created, everything is possessed with spirit. Certain humans can interact with those spirits. Wizards don’t wield magic themselves, but cooperate with bound spirits for magical effects.

Eli is a wizard seemingly beyond compare. He can whisper dormant spirits out of deep sleeps, and his pleasant and convivial attitudes influence the world around him into cooperating with his schemes. Eli is also secretive, loyal to his companions, and never at his wit’s end. Entirely likeable, Eli is an excellent anti-hero who’s sure to prove popular with Fantasy readers.

Moustache Twirling
The villains in this book make no effort to hide themselves, announcing boldly to the world their intentions. This is a little crude, but also fits into Aaron’s boldly-let-us-adventure-forth motif which is so strong through the book. We know that there’s going to be fiery and bloody battles, and Aaron does a great job of letting us know in advance just how awesome they’re going to be.

There are a few backstabs and twisty-turns, but nothing that readers familiar with this sort of genre are going to be too surprised by. What plot twists exist are well executed, if a little by-the-numbers. There’s also a tad too much straight-out infodumping and expository dialogue. As a first novel, this is understandable, because Aaron has to build her world quickly and get us hooked in.

There is an element of moustache twirling to some of the opening scenes in The Spirit Thief. Some of the short chapters only serve to let us know how villainous people are. Happily, they fit in well with the overall tone of the book.

Kidnappings and mischief
The book opens with an amusing ruse, worth of the entertaining-crime genre. Monpress has set out to give himself a legendary cumulative bounty of a million gold pieces. In order to reach this heighty figure, he’s racked up an impressive record of thievery and other naughtiness.

In an audacious move, Monpress lets himself get caught and imprisoned, escapes, and takes a King with him. His intention is to hold the King to ransom. Unfortunately, his plan starts to unravel when the King’s brother returns from exile, and isn’t so keen to lose his newly-gained throne…

Into this volatile mixture strides one of our heroines, Miranda. Miranda is an emissary from the ruling body of magicians in Aaron’s world. Accompanied by a specifically-designed-to-be-disgustingly-endearing ghosthound (a horse-sized magical dog with attitude), Miranda is tasked with capturing Monpress. As the story unfolds, she is repeatedly forced to let Monpress slip through her fingers in order to combat actual evil, instead of mere rascalliness.

Spirits Within
Aaron has woven a world thick with spirits. To go into too much detail here will spoil revelations spilled early in the book, but let me clearly say that Aaron has done some masterful worldbuilding. I love the system she has in place. Everything makes sense once explained, her rules of reality lead to some entertaining situations, and she’s got a clever twist on the decades-old ‘possessed sword’ trope that will be familiar to experienced readers.

Aaron’s secondary protagonists – a master swordsman and an erratically powerful demonseed, a woman with a demon’s spirit trapped inside her – serve to further colour the story and provide depth to the narrative. Aaron lays heavy hints about Eli’s companions’ backstories, and I’d be surprised if the rest of the books in the series didn’t resolve many of the mysteries Aaron lays before us.

Light and easy
The Spirit Thief is a light, fun and easy to read book. This is not a criticism I’m levelling, but it may divide readers who are used to darker, more dense fantasy. Fanatical lovers of Richard Morgan and Joe Abercrombie may find Aaron’s characters too purely heroic and the adventuring a little PG-rated for their tastes.

I kept wishing I had someone to read The Spirit Thief aloud to. Not that this is a children’s book – far from it. Aaron has a witty, lyrical prose that is worthwhile narrating. Reading the book is easy and a visceral pleasure, and at barely 300 pages, can be easily done on a few train trips or a lazy afternoon.

Good times.
The Spirit Thief is a great first book. It’s not going to shatter the boundaries of any writing conventions, but that’s not a problem. The characters are fun and well-rounded, with enough backstory and intrigue in them to keep me keen on the next two books. Aaron has crafted an excellent world, of which we’ve only seen the smallest corner. Her magic system is well thought out and cohesive.

I enjoyed The Spirit Thief in a light, summery afternoon’s read, and if that’s what you’re in the mood for, you’re not going to be disappointed. Perfectly suited for younger readers, young adults, and those getting into Fantasy. Grizzled veterans may find the going a bit light, but there’s enough substance to satisfy.

I give The Spirit Thief 7 possessed swords.

Rachel Aaron’s other books in the Eli Monpress series, The Spirit Rebellion and The Spirit Eater, have also been reviewed. Rachel has also had an interview with Write-Thing, which you can read here.