Genres: Fantasy, Secondary World Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Queernorm world, achillean MC, achillean amputee love interest, M/M
PoV: Third-person, past-tense
Published on: 13th September 2022
ISBN: 9781739685126
Goodreads
Tet is no longer a priest-mage; thrown out from his temple and cursed by his gods to return a stolen relic. With every passing year, the curse works deeper into his flesh, breaking and twisting him until finally, driven by pain, Tet makes a drastic play to escape the gods.
His luck turns sour, and the escape costs him his soul, drawing his death even closer when he is captured by the despotic White Prince. In order to escape the prince, retrieve his soul and break the curse, Tet must form a fragile alliance with a man he cannot trust. An alliance made brittle by lies and deception; one that may take his heart as well as his soul.
Thief Mage, Beggar Mage is a lush, queer reimagining of Andersen’s The Tinderbox, embroidered with dreams, secret identities, stolen magic, giant spectral dogs, clockwork monsters, prophetic dragons, and the grand games of gods and humans.
I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
Highlights
~keep your eye on casual gifts
~clockwork horses
~machinating (not mechanical) dragons
~bugs made of jewels
~an extremely pretty prince of thieves
I knew better than to expect anything specific from Thief Mage Beggar Mage, because if there’s one thing a Hellisen book guarantees (besides fabulous writing), it’s that you are never going to be able to predict what shape the story will take.
You just know it’s going to be amazing.
Thief Mage Beggar Mage kept that promise: nothing went the way I thought it would, and every bit of it was brilliant. Not always comfortable and very often not very happy! But brilliant.
I’ve been a fan of Hellisen for years, but I genuinely think Thief Mage Beggar Mage ratchets it up a notch in terms of prose; lush is not an adequate descriptor for this book, okay? To describe the writing as lush undersells it. This book is sumptuous, and sensual, and simply sublime. And it doesn’t hurt at all that this is a book with a lot of beauty in it; canine gods, silken clothes, clockwork beasties made of gems. I am a shallow creature, all right, I like my fantasy pretty, and Hellisen absolutely delivers with rich, descriptive prose blooming into stunning imagery. This is a book you could get drunk on, a book that so seduces your senses that you can smell the incense clinging to the pages after you’ve closed them. It’s gorgeous.
The story Hellisen spins for us manages to feel both languid and urgent, and no, I can’t tell you exactly how that effect was created, because I don’t understand it myself. Thief Mage Beggar Mage walks the knife-thin, knife-sharp line between beautiful dream and terrible nightmare, weaving sweet lassitude and jewelled wonder with sick dread and terror – because the world Hellisen has created here is as beautiful as it is awful, and poor Tet is caught between too many opposing powers, too many horrible deaths, too many bad options. The story turns like a spiral, first lifting Tet up, then bringing him crashing down, and the tension twists tighter and tighter as the loops of the spiral coil in towards the center – the end of it all.
It’s complicated, and vivid, and twists and turns like a dragon.
Tet himself is immensely sympathetic: trapped in curse-caused chronic pain, all he wants is a way out of that agony, and as someone with chronic pain myself, I couldn’t blame him one bit. He’s bitter and cynical and eminently practical, and so damn tired I could feel it in my bones. He’s also more than a little arrogant – I’d argue it’s the real reason he ends up losing his soul – but he has that knocked out of him by the end of the book. I feel like we don’t often see characters who acknowledge they were wrong about something and adjust, but Tet is forced to admit that other magical disciplines than his own are very potent indeed, and change his thinking and his plans accordingly. I really appreciated that, even if I wish it had come about under less painful circumstances for him!
I guess one thing you really need to know is that Thief Mage Beggar Mage is not what I would call a hopeful book. It may actually edge close to grim, depending on your mileage. The majority of Tet’s story in this book is one of fighting desperately for freedom, and being defeated at every turn – a boa constrictor wrapped around you, and drawing tighter with every chapter. Some readers are going to eat up that kind of nail-biting tension with a spoon, and some will want to avoid it like the plague. Speaking as someone who has really struggled with dark, misery-laden stories for a while now… I’m still glad I read this book. It’s not all misery, and the writing really is beautiful enough that I would have stuck with it even if it had been outright grimdark thematically. (Which, again, it is not.)
If anything, thematically this is a book about hope, and freedom, and turning the tables on those in power. It’s just that it’s not a happy book, and I want potential readers to know that going in.
I can assure everyone, though, that the not-happy parts do not involve any kind of queerphobia, or bury your gays, or anything like that. The romance is not a tragedy – although I challenge anyone to predict how it ends in this book!
My one legit critique is to do with truenames. Tet doesn’t know his, and it’s driven home over and over how much that hampers him, limits him. What’s also made very clear is that there’s one way Tet could, theoretically, learn his truename – but it’s probably impossible, and definitely massively dangerous. But what it actually ended up being was massively underwhelming – when it came to it, there was no sense of struggle or difficulty, no impact. It was accomplished so quickly, and seemingly easily, that it didn’t feel like a big deal at all. Which was hugely disappointing.
Did this turn me off the book? No, no it did not. Because there was so much else going on, so many other threads to watch play out, that it was easy to dismiss the disappointment and focus on the rest of the story. I loved how many levels of intrigue were going on simultaneously; I loved the subtle (and then maybe not-so-subtle) struggle between the priesthoods; I loved the take on divinity and the nature of gods; I loved the dragons; I loved every member of the cast. Even the characters with the least amount of page-time feel fully rounded, like complete human beings with their own agency and motivations and desires; and I may not have liked the White Prince (arguably the main villain) as a person, but as a character? *chef’s kiss* And while you don’t need to know Hans Christian Andersen’s Tinderbox fairytale to enjoy Thief Mage Beggar Mage, there are some delightful Easter eggs for those familiar with the story; more than once I was positively gleeful at how close Hellisen’s retelling came to it!
So yes, I was delighted with this book, and I’m incredibly excited that we’re (I think?) getting a sequel, because I want to read a lot more about this world and these characters!
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