Museum of Thieves

By: Lian Tanner

Narrated by: Claudia Black

Length: 6 hrs and 47 mins

Publisher's summary

Welcome to the tyrannical city of Jewel, where impatience is a sin and boldness is a crime. Goldie Roth has lived in Jewel all her life. Like every child in the city, she wears a silver guardchain and is forced to obey the dreaded Blessed Guardians. She has never done anything by herself and won’t be allowed out on the streets unchained until Separation Day. When Separation Day is canceled, Goldie, who has always been both impatient and bold, runs away, risking not only her own life but also the lives of those she has left behind. In the chaos that follows, she is lured to the mysterious Museum of Dunt, where she meets the boy Toadspit and discovers terrible secrets. Only the cunning mind of a thief can understand the museum’s strange, shifting rooms. Fortunately, Goldie has a talent for thieving. Which is just as well, because the leader of the Blessed Guardians has his own plans for the museum - plans that threaten the lives of everyone Goldie loves. And it will take a daring thief to stop him.... Museum of Thieves is a thrilling tale of destiny and danger, and of a courageous girl who has never been allowed to grow up - until now.

©2010 Lian Tanner (P)2010 Listening Library

shared this book with my 8yr old we both loved it

What did you love best about Museum of Thieves?

To be honest claudia blacks performance. The only reason I purchased the book. I was pleasantly surprised that I enjoyed the book for itself too as did my 8 yr old. She has a renewed love for books now :)

What did you like best about this story?

The characters. Always the characters for me. Goldie was well written and the story set up so she is an easy character to relate to and support and want to find out what's happening. I enjoyed the setting in particular the way the towns views on children came about and setting up goldie by her childhood raised in such a different way

Which character – as performed by Claudia Black – was your favorite?

They were all amazing every character it sounded like ten different narrators. The accents and voices were superb.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

No. I enjoyed listening little by little with my 8 yr old and discussing with her the themes and characters.

Any additional comments?

My 8 yr old loved this. I think it's aimed at a bit older kids. I was surprised how much she engaged with the story and the way she pointed things out to me ! She is quite intelligent for her age and some of the things she didn't understand but we talked about and she really enjoyed it. We found it by accident. I bought it as I love claudia black and by accident found a book to share and renew my child's love of reading. Unlike many books I share with the kids this one was engaging and entertaining for me too.

Amazing

No I am not a bot. I love this story. It was thrilling and you always wanted to know what happens next. It made me laugh it made me cry. Its a really great heartwarming story.

Asked too much of me

Originally posted at FanLit.

It’s Separation Day and 12-year old Goldie is finally going to be separated from her parents and guardians. Literally separated. For in the town of Jewel, where the most important value is safety, children are always chained to a parent or guardian during the day and tied to the bedpost at night. And when they do something wrong, as Goldie is prone to do regularly, they’re put in heavy “punishment chains.”

This year the Grand Protector has lowered the separation age from 16 to 12 because she believes that Jewel is much safer than it used to be. But her brother, the Fugleman, and his henchmen, the Blessed Guardians, have conspired to ruin this year’s Separation Day and to keep the kids in chains. But Goldie escapes and that means her parents have to go to the dungeons. Can Goldie stay free and get her parents out of captivity, too?

Goldie ends up at a strange place called the Museum of Dunt where, it turns out, they were expecting her. The basement of the Museum is the last stronghold of some of the things the original Blessed Guardians, 200 years ago, protected the children from — war, famine, plague, and dangerous animals. The Museum is starting to stir because it’s sentient and it senses trouble coming. The job of the Museum keepers — and it’s obvious that Goldie is being groomed as a keeper — is to make sure the museum stays calms so the bad things can’t escape again. When the Fugleman finds out what’s in the museum, he plans to use its horrors for his own advancement. Now Goldie, who has never even been allowed out by herself, must figure out how to stop him.

I listened to the auidobook version of Lian Tanner’s Museum of Thieves with my 10-year old daughter, Tali. Tali enjoyed the story and was entertained by Claudia Black’s animated narration. However, I found it difficult to become absorbed in Tanner’s story because I just couldn’t suspend disbelief. I found myself constantly thinking “that would never happen” or “these adults are too stupid to live.” I read a lot of speculative fiction, so I am used to suspending disbelief, but Museum of Thieves asked too much of me. An entire society of adults putting up with children attached to them all the time? Children punished by their loving parents by being restrained with heavy clanking chains? Parent sent to the dungeon if their kids are bad? And why would people who hate children (all the Guardians are harsh and hateful) sign up for a job as a Blessed Guardian when it involves having children tied to you all day long? And while the Guardians are spouting all sorts of nonsense such as “When we endanger ourselves, we endanger others! It is our duty to be safe! It’s our duty to be afraid!” it’s really hard to believe that all those adults could be so fearful and idiotic.

There were some aspects of Museum of Thieves that I liked such as the shape-shifting dog, the slaughterbird named Morgue, and the museum whose dimensions keep changing. Most of the characters, though, except for Goldie and a boy named Toadspit, were caricatures — the tyrannical villain, the troop of brutish soldiers, the despotic Guardians. None of these were truly convincing.

There’s a message for children in Museum of Thieves: be brave, do the right thing, even if it’s scary. But I’m not sure that message comes across when the context is something so extreme that children in our society can’t even relate to it. It’s not hard to say “be brave” when the things that these kids have been afraid of were little dogs, scissors, and water-filled ditches.

Claudia Black’s narration made the story go even more over the top. She has an awesome voice and performed with much enthusiasm, probably just as the author intended, and I loved her voices for some of the characters, but mostly the narration just emphasized the problems I had with the book — the adults sound really stupid and the bad guys sound really eeeeeevil. There’s some singing required, and that did not go well — it sounded like moaning. During the climactic scenes, Black yelled and screeched so much that my husband came running to see if Tali and I were okay.

I’m not interested in continuing with the KEEPER trilogy, but Lian Tanner did please my daughter. Tali said that she loved the museum “because it’s like a different world” and that she found the story “mysterious” and “adventurous.” She also gave the narration a thumbs up. Since Tali is the target audience, I’m giving Museum of Thieves 3 stars for succeeding there. However, I think the best children’s fantasy appeals to both children and adults.

Along the lines of The Golden Compass

What other book might you compare Museum of Thieves to and why?

The Golden Compass

Have you listened to any of Claudia Black’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

I have seen her in Farscape. She has a wonderful voice, alot of parts and they all come alive

If you were to make a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?

Museum of Thieves

Museum of thieves.

The museum of Dunt does have mysteries hidden inside the museum of thieves. Claudia black does a good job narrating.

WOW

This book sucks. Like seriously. This was the most boring book ever. The most poop book I have ever read.