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DANCE OF THIEVES
Mary E. Pearson
Series: Dance of Thieves #1
Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
Pages: 508
Release date: August 7th 2018
When the patriarch of the Ballenger empire dies, his son, Jase, becomes its new leader. Even nearby kingdoms bow to the strength of this outlaw family, who have always governed by their own rules. But a new era looms on the horizon, set in motion by a young queen, which makes her the target of the dynasty’s resentment and anger.
At the same time, Kazi, a legendary former street thief, is sent by the queen to investigate transgressions against the new settlements. When Kazi arrives in the forbidding land of the Ballengers, she learns that there is more to Jase than she thought. As unexpected events spiral out of their control, bringing them intimately together, they continue to play a cat and mouse game of false moves and motives in order to fulfill their own secret missions.
“I can’t promise you any tomorrows.”
Dance of Thieves is a drag. The pace is so incredibly slow through the first 350 pages out of 508 and, out of that, only about 30 pages or so are really intriguing and have actual important plot development. The world-building is really well done and complex, and so are the characters, but the story is such a bore that even the shining character moments get obscured by the absolute lack of plot progression throughout 98% of the book.
Mary E. Pearson’s writing is good and very easy to follow. The story is told in two perspectives which are both very distinct and well written and the narrative isn’t prone to infodumps. But when the focus of the novel shifts from political intrigue and adventure to instalove right around page 75, what is already not that great becomes worse. Really disappointing read.
So it seems like I do not have the best of luck with Pearson novels? I had a really hard time liking the first two Remnant Chronicles novels, but I loved loved loved the third one. So my expectations coming into this were filled with that love and pretty high. I thought this was going to be an amazing novel. And… it was not. At least not for me.
The world-building is the most solid thing in this, as it has the advantage of drawing from the Remnant Chronicles. The characters are also well developed and complex, although Kazi and Jase become annoying super fast due to the instalove, especially when Pearson adds the hypocrisy and lying on top of it. It’s really difficult to like them when they’re either confessing their love for each other or fighting and accusing each other of doing bad things like the other hasn’t done those things themselves.
And it bears repeating: this is slow as all heck. There’s a lot of going from one place to another, having meetings, romance scenes, more meetings, more romance scenes. It takes until around page 350 for something important to finally happen and, when it does, it’s actually so great! There’s a plot reveal a few pages later that is so well done and so well executed and it really sets things up for what could be an incredible ending. Only that lasts for around 2-3 chapters before it’s back to Kazi and Jase fighting and confessing their love for each other and then fighting again.
The ending is… pretty uneventful? It does set up quite a few plot threads for the next installment that could be interesting, but the book ends in such a weird high note after everything that it feels out of place? It’s like all the build up for the final chapters gets pushed aside in favor of Kazi and Jase ending this part of the story together and in love, like nothing happened. And I can’t believe I’m here complaining about characters being too happy.
In the end, Dance of Thieves doesn’t work for me at all. It’s slow, boring, and too romance focused. There is very little plot development throughout 508 pages, which makes it seem like half the book could’ve been left on the cutting room floor. I’m sure lots of YA Fantasy fans will love this, but I’m not one of them.
owls reads 
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