Thieves' World®

Thieves' World®, Book 1

By: Robert Lynn Asprin - editor, Lynn Abbey - editor

Narrated by: Jonathan Johns

Length: 7 hrs and 9 mins

Publisher's summary

Missing Game of Thrones? Dare to "be pulled into political intrigues, watch new gods replace old, and witness fortunes rise and fall and rise again" (Book Riot).

A classic series for a new generation of fantasy adventure fans, Thieves' World® paved the way for the shared-world anthology tradition with epic worldbuilding, unforgettable characters, and nonstop action thanks to the legendary authors who contribute to it.

The series' groundbreaking debut features stories by John Brunner, Lynn Abbey, Poul Anderson, Andrew J. Offutt, Robert Lynn Asprin, Joe Haldeman, Christine DeWees, and Marion Zimmer Bradley, who populate the lawless city of Sanctuary with orphans and wizards, fortune tellers and emperors, merchants and madams, spies, assassins, and, of course, thieves.

©1979 Robert Lynn Asprin (P)2023 Tantor

One of the truly great classics-bad narrator

Like apparently many others, I have been looking forward to the Audiobook version of this series seemingly forever and, despite what I am about mention about the narration, if you have never read these and are thinking about getting them, do so. They are a great classic series and outstanding stories - The narration however.........
I will skip repeating the criticisms in the other reviews I just read - all true, unfortunately. What I will mention (in the hope the publisher and narrator read this and make some positive change) is that, what will bother you the most, is how often he mispronounces words. I am not talking just about proper nouns, which he does constantly get very obviously wrong (Ilsigi and wriggly rhyme - that's the joke - get it?) but can just as obviously be argued on forever but, basic English (and no it is not just a difference between "The King's English" and American). He gets common words wrong constantly. The problem is so pervasive you have to just ignore it but, if you can, you will enjoy the book.
If the narrator would just get someone to properly edit his performance and practice his pronunciation (a lot), perhaps the future releases, which he is apparently contracted to do, will be truly enjoyable.

sanctuary

I love this story...stories, group of stories. the overall performance was good..at times his voices weren't clear, but I loved the book anyway

Great start to a great series

Finally! Thieves World has long deserved audiobook versions. I have just finished the first of the new Tantor audiobooks of the series, and I am extremely happy. They are very well done. Some differences in pronunciation from what i would have expected, but what i expected may not be "correct" and fantasy fans have to expect names and fantasy words to sound different from what they hear in their mind on occasion. 🙂 Most of us probably hear "Caronne", "Ranke", "Ilsig", or "S'Danzo" differently!
I am happy to say all 9 of the original tales appeared - I was a touch nervous that "The Secret of the Blue Star" ight have been left out. They did leave out the final essay, "The Making of Thieves' World" by Robert Lynn Asprin. That is too bad. But it is a minor issue.
_Tales from the Vulgar Unicorn_ has also been released, 2 weeks after the first volume, I hope they keep that schedule and release each volume 2 weeks apart, but the rest of the volumes are not yet available for preorder.
It's a good time to be a Thieves' World fan. Between this and the upcoming RPG it is nice to see the setting still getting interest. We saw some great stuff last time this happened, from 2002-2007 with the Irrune era and the Green Ronin RPG, I really hope things go at least that well this time. 🙂

Terrible narrator but one of the best series in Fantasy.

I been watching for this too come to audiobook forever. It really is ahead of it's time and highly recommended for any fantasy affectionato. unfortunately totally ruined by the worst narrator

Great stories, terrible voice acting.

This is one of the best series of the genre. But this guy reading sounds like A.I.
He does not seem to understand punctuation and how it relates to reading out loud. He pauses when he shouldn't and then runs on the sentence like it's the beginning of a new one, or just the opposite. He will not pause when he should and starts a whole new sentence without any change in voice inflection.
Other than that, great fun!

Amazing

I was a little put off at first by the narrator, but after a few stories I was hooked. This series is amazing, highly recommended.

I have been waiting 20 years for this

The Thieves World series is the first modern fantasy shared author collab universe, by some of fantasy's best writers. This series will sweep you into the dark and gritty fantasy world that spawned them all! It is a great world by some amazing authors and it is well acted . Give it a try and be swept away!

Thieves' World is a must for fans of fantasy

The first time I read this book was by candlelight, back in 89, because Hurricane Hugo had knocked out power. This book was perfect to read by candlelight, and it always stuck with me. I'd been meaning to re-read the series for last couple years now, so I was very excited to see it on Audible.

If you're a hard-core fantasy fan, you owe it to yourself to give this a listen. It's like the perfect fantasy series. Most all the top fantasy authors of the 80’s have a story in this series.

I’ve waited so long.

I read Robert Asprin’s Myth series and the Thieves World books in high school. I was so excited to see both here on Audible that I scooped them up as fast as I was able to.

The city of Sanctuary lives so vividly in my mind that I use it as a constant to judge all other fantasy land world building by. The use of anthology to tell stories in this city, each new author painting rich characters and showing us the city from their perspective is so important to making Sanctuary feel like a real place.

I know audible is not likely to re-record this. The same as how they won’t re-record the awful Dragonlance and Deathgate Cycle narrations. But I wish that would. This narrator reads whole pages of text as if it has no punctuation and wasn’t separated into paragraphs. It requires your full attention to follow along.

I know these older fantasy series don’t sell as well as the newer titles so they’re likely not spending as much on production and that’s not likely to change. I am profoundly disappointed with this reading.

I’m not going to refund this title, but I am probably not going to buy the sequels unless the narrator is changed.

Perfect stories and incredible world building

It’s always great to the see the first book in a series start so strong. The world building is some of the best I’ve experienced and the characters are all wonderful to listen to. Would highly recommend to anyone who likes fantasy novels with dark elements to them.