July 2026: Fantasy

A bit about the book:

"This analogy might feel like a stretch, but bear with me: Christopher Buehlman’s The Blacktongue Thief is the printed version of a song a bard would perform in a rustic tavern long ago. Yes, it has the rhythm of music deep in its bones because Buehl­man’s prose skips richly through the English lan­guage. But what really makes it feel like bard song is its way of continuously drawing you back in by continually upping the peril the hero finds himself in, so that you buy the singer another beer in order to find out what happens next. When it looks like the audience might wander off, the bard tosses in a kraken, giant, or brawl to pull the crowd back in.

That spirit makes a certain amount of sense. Buehlman is a reasonably well-known renaissance fair performer, and in that space, a performer who can’t keep an audience engaged will soon starve. While The Blacktongue Thief is his first fantasy work, his novel-length horror (The Suicide Mo­tor Club, The Lesser Dead) proves he knows his way around a plot.

And what a plot it is. Kinch Na Shannack, a black-tongued Galt, teams with Galva, a woman on a quest. Kinch belongs to the Takers’ Guild, which is a school of sorts for those who have a tal­ent for thievery. Problem is, Kinch owes the guild some money and they’ve marked him with a face tattoo. In any bar across the land, those who see it can give him a free punch and earn a free beer. Kinch, as you’d expect, would like to retire this particular debt. The Guild makes him an offer and, well, events gallop rapidly out of his control (not that they ever were in his control the first place).

The Blacktongue Thief is as much fun as watching a talented performer who has built his skills to a profitable level work a room. Given that this title is setting up a series, it’ll be interesting to see if there’s more in Buehlman’s brain still to come. My bet is on yes."

--Adrienne Martini's Review in Locus