The Thief Anniversary Read-along - Chapters 4-6

[silverflight8]

Welcome to the second part of the anniversary read-along of The Thief! This week's read-along is chapters 4-6. It starts with the sentence "WE STOPPED AGAIN EARLY IN the evening." and ends with "Did he sound genuinely flattered?" I'm not going to give page numbers because I have an ebook version, but my discussion's mostly chronological and I'll

Comments

[an_english_girl]

It’s all there if you know what to look for! That really sums up these three chapters! The characters, the plot, the sub-sub-sub-plots, the histories … all of it! Therein lies the joy of re-reading

[sunsethill]

You've hit on some important reasons for why Megan was able to hide what Gen was in this story so well. We see the Magus who is so proud of his intellect that Gen can fool him by just pretending to be a poor, dirty, gutter-snipe thief. Howl a little about taking baths and be lazy and greedy for food, and the Magus will totally overlook any discrepancies in your behavior. And there are actually a lot of discrepancies since Gen can't quite help showing off and bragging. He really doesn't like being considered a low-class gutter-snipe and so he keeps breaking character. But Megan waves her shadow-puppets and gives us Ambiades acting strange and the Magus being condescending and we ignore the hints.

I really have been enjoying this reread. As I said after the first week's comments, I had trouble getting through this book because I don't usually like the type of character Gen is pretending to be, so getting to see how Gen is fooling everyone around him in this reread has been a lot of fun.

[silverflight8]

To be fair, Gen bites his tongue a lot. "It was a professional risk, but there was no point saying so" - we just get to hear his internal, snappy remark, and we see him just back down from arguments (letting the other side win) even though from this distance we know them could have shut them up. Like his mother debasing the stories bit, he just says she never did and doesn't elaborate. I don't think it can all be blamed on the magus' not-noticing - Gen did a pretty fair job of not ever dropping big hints. The adding an Eddisian mother also really, really helped. That pretty much accounts for the big things that could have been revealing - like the stories he knows better.

:D

[silverflight8]

OH yeah, I kind of ignored the magus! I agree with the feeling of authority and how that feeds into his problem with half the cast. And yes, it is rather ironic that Pol is the one who notices. Less talk, more listening, maybe

[checkers65477]

The Magus is such a great character, one of my favorites. He acts so condescending when he feels superior to someone and I wonder if part of the reason he was such a jerk at times is that he was much more nervous than he let on. He's been sent to find a relic that may or may not hold special powers and may not even exist. And he's been sent by an unstable, greedy, desperate king who lifts prisoners up by their hair and threatens them. It must have seemed like an impossible task to the Magus, one that was likely to end badly. He had a lot at stake here, including his cushy job as advisor to the king

[silverflight8]

Yes, he is! I also really like his heart of gold later :) I agree about the nervousness - there's also the part where Sounis has taken away apprentices when he thinks the magus is too powerful. Plus, he knows that no one has come back with the stone before. And he's destroyed the documents...

Ooh yes I missed that!

Yes I love troll Gen! He's so great there.

I think actually the magus addresses this at some point, when he's talking about Sounis needing to get married - he needs an heir. When Sophos politely says he does have an heir, the magus says right, of course, he does have an heir (snerk), but not a son.

"The last thing I wanted was to be caught hiking across Eddis with the king's magus of Sounis." - Yes! Also I think there's a part where he says he knows it's Eddis, but doesn't know where exactly because there aren't any landmarks or whatever - and it's easy to interpret it's cause he just knows Eddis is sorta in this direction :D