Rezension zu "The Palace Job (Rogues of the Republic) by Patrick Weekes (2013-10-08)" von Patrick Weekes
Loch as quite a big grudge against Archvoyant Silestin, who killed her family, branded her a deserter and left her for dead, and then adopter her younger, blind sister as a political ploy.
To get back at him she plans to steal back a priceless elven manuscript that he took from her family and which currently resides in his super-secure valult in his palace on a floating city. Not an easy job, so she assembles a crack-team of magical thiefs and rogues: a shape-shifting unicorn, a death priestess with a talking hammer, an illusionist mage, an acrobatic contortionist, who doesn't condone violence, a tinkering safe-cracker and a boy who has back luck at the most opportune times.
This is not a bad book, but very plot-fixated. Like an action movie.
I liked the beginning, there's a big cast of fun and a bit weird characters, a complex heist plan, all that's cool.
But it gets quite apparent very soon the author did not spend any time on anything that is not the big heist action.
Worldbuilding is pretty basic, and it's essentially a modern feeling world where you exchange technology for magic or crystals. Characters stay one-dimensional all book and aren't explored outside that one simple mould they got cast into. Relationships are explored as far as they are needed for plot elements but are kept really short even then.
The plans for the heist get escalated to a quite simply silly complexity, and whenever the book was making you think some part went wrong it was either planed in from the start or immediately integrated.
I felt I was watching some strange Rube Goldberg machine of fantasy machination. Whenever I thought "Did it stop?", it immediately went on running. It was kinda fascination in the beginning, but it started to feel annoying and insignificant after a while. It was clear there was not going to be a wrench to the insides, it was just going to do it's silly little tricks till it was done. That took all excitement out of it for me.
So in the end, the book was pretty entertaining to read, but it did not get me to want to keep reading. I had to push myself to finish the book even though, whenever I did read, I did have fun. I just was not invested in any of it. Not the characters, not the heist, not the world.