Thieftaker

Thieftaker Chronicles, Book 1

By: D. B. Jackson

Narrated by: Jonathan Davis

Length: 13 hrs and 34 mins

Publisher's summary

Boston, 1765: In D.B. Jackson's Thieftaker, revolution is brewing as the British Crown imposes increasingly onerous taxes on the colonies, and intrigue swirls around firebrands like Samuel Adams and the Sons of Liberty. But for Ethan Kaille, a thieftaker who makes his living by conjuring spells that help him solve crimes, politics is for others…until he is asked to recover a necklace worn by the murdered daughter of a prominent family.

Suddenly, he faces another conjurer of enormous power, someone unknown, who is part of a conspiracy that reaches to the highest levels of power in the turbulent colony. His adversary has already killed - and not for his own gain, but in the service of his powerful masters, people for whom others are mere pawns in a game of politics and power. Ethan is in way over his head, and he knows it. Already a man with a dark past, he can ill afford to fail, lest his livelihood be forfeit. But he can't stop now, for his magic has marked him, so he must fight the odds, even though he seems hopelessly overmatched, his doom seeming certain at the spectral hands of one he cannot even see.

©2012 D. B. Jackson (P)2012 Audible, Inc.

Bland in Boston

Would you try another book from D. B. Jackson and/or Jonathan Davis?

Nope.

What was most disappointing about D. B. Jackson’s story?

Nothing happened.

What didn’t you like about Jonathan Davis’s performance?

Very flat. Granted, the material wasn't much to work with.

You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?

Couldn't find any.

Any additional comments?

Let's just say I'll lose no time reading the rest of the series.

Middling plot, bizarre narration

While Jonathan Davis is quite good with voices and accents (though there is occasional bleed-through), his pauses in narration are, often, ... , inexplicable. Way too often, I found myself thinking "Why is there a pause there?", or thinking a sentence was over, only to have it keep going. I will avoid his works in future (though I discovered I already have one more; it's nonfiction, so maybe he'll be better there). As for the story, meh. Delete or minimize Sephira Price, do at least one more consistency edit (also looking for redundant redundancies) and it could be good. As is, it's promising but rough,. Between the narration and the weak writing, it took me 3 weeks to finish, because I was never very motivated to continue listening to it.

Then it changed...

Any additional comments?

I was enjoying the book, though I was getting tired of supposedly-intelligent hero being so dense about so many things. Still, I was having fun until the logical consistency of the magic in the world was tossed out the door when Ethan had to "do something terrible." Up to that point using magic had a cost which had to be paid, but at that moment all he had to do was look at something living and get the power from it.

It was also around that time which the rest of the book felt like padding to get too the end while having to fill in a certain number of words, then we get to the bad spy movie cliché where the hero gets captured and the villain spills out the entire plan to him before failing because he underestimated the hero. But then who could blame him for underestimating Kaille?