The Spirit Thief

The Legend of Eli Monpress, Book 1

By: Rachel Aaron

Narrated by: Luke Daniels

Eli Monpress is talented. He's charming. And he's a thief.

But not just any thief. He’s the greatest thief of the age - and he’s also a wizard. And with the help of his partners - a swordsman with the most powerful magic sword in the world but no magical ability of his own, and a demonseed who can step through shadows and punch through walls - he’s going to put his plan into effect.

The first step is to increase the size of the bounty on his head, so he’ll need to steal some big things. But he’ll start small. He’ll just steal something that no one will miss - at least for a while.

Something like a king.

©2010 Rachel Aaron (P)2010 Brilliance Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

"After a slow start, debut author Aaron pulls the action together and turns in a romp of a lighthearted fantasy starring an absolutely darling rogue." ( Publishers Weekly)

A charming new antihero

Eli Monpress. Monpress is an antihero who is a talented charming thief whose greatest fan is himself. He and his companions, a master swordsman, Josef, a demon plagued girl, Nico, travel the country pulling off flamboyant heists. Eli wants to be recognized as the greatest thief. Josef has an awakened blade and he wants a really good fighting challenge. Nico is demon muscle who is along to support her friends. The magic is spirit magic. All objects and elements have a spirit. Mages perform magic by working with the spirits. The story centers around Monpress and company attempting to abduct a king and everything that can go wrong does. There is a little bit of politics, mystery, and intrigue. Lots of magic, action, and mayhem.

Super unique fantasy, that is serious yet fun.

The first book sets a good foundation for the rest of the series. The author does a good job introducing new concepts and keeping the story going. Highly recommend to anyone looking for a new fantasy series to get into.

Fun, and great narration

I enjoyed this book quite a bit. The Narrator is so fabulous, he makes up for most of the faults. Big problem with this book is how inconsistent the descriptions are. Some moments are so we'll scripted that a very clear image is presented, but just as often are scenes that are very hard to picture. Consisting of mostly dialogue and little description of what is happening. In these scenes I had to re-listen more than once to fully grasp what was happening. greatly interrupts the flow that the book is trying to get at.

All in all I thought it was very unique concept and very light-hearted which is a plus. For anyone looking for a light listen on a good weekend or a rainy weekend I would highly recommend this book.

Good Fantasy, Not Great

The villain was a cardboard character. The hero was sparsely developed. Maybe that unfolds in future books. Not Aaron's beat work.

Marvelous characters

Rachel Aaron creates great characters, memorable, unique, delightful. A very interesting world and magic system. Luke Daniel's narration is very good, but the volume is too variable. I wish the producer would fix this.