One of the consequences of working through the Hugo Award nominees is that I’ll be making my way through a lot of YA entries for the Lodestar Award. And while most of the nominated authors have a positive buzz, they are also all new to me. One of the nice things Worldcon did for the voters this year—in addition with the publishers, I assume—is provide not just a copy of Margaret Owen’s Holy Terrors, but the two proceeding books in the series as well. A good thing too, because otherwise I would have been very confused.
Set in a fantasy version of the Holy Roman Empire, the first book in the trilogy is Little Thieves, and it is very roughly based around the Brothers’ Grimm story ‘The Goose Girl.’ Unlike the original story, which was told from the view of a displaced princess, this time we get the view of the maid who hijacked her life. Our maid, Vanja Schmidt, is not much of a Grim’s fairy tales kind of character though—she’s a bit too much of a smart-are for that. With the aid of a string of magical pearls, Vanja has stolen the life of the Princess Gisele, leaving her penniless and alone. And Vanja thinks the theft is totally justified. Abandoned by her mother at a very young age for being the thirteenth child of a thirteenth child, Vanja became the Goddaughter of both Death and Fortune. Which sound like a good deal on the face of it. But, as she explains, there are always strings attached, and Vanja would very much like to wriggle out from under their thumb.
To do this, Vanja is sort of living a tripe life; first she is the Princess Gisele. Then she is Princess Gisele’s own maid, Marthe. And on top of that, she’s a thief—the Pfennigeist—who takes from the rich to give to the more deserving—which is her. She needs save up enough money to run far from the Blessed Empire and escape her godmothers. The Low Gods vary by location based on people’s beliefs, so if she flees far enough, she should be out of the grasp of the Death and Fortune she knows.
But with the trio of personas comes a trio of complications: the first is that Gisele’s betrothed, Markgraf Adalbrecht von Reigenbach of Bóern, is coming back to town. Vanja’s little charade has been a hell of a lot easier without the Markgraf around, who is a hungry, ambitious bastard more than twice the age of the Princess. As someone who knows Gisele well, Adalbrecht is bound to notice something is off. The second complication is that Vanja’s thieving has caught the attention of the Low God Eiswald, who has placed a curse on her for her greedy, self serving ways. Vanja has two weeks to make amends for her actions before the curse hits. And to top it off? The Prefects are catching up to her. The Order of Prefects of the Godly Courts serve as magical detectives for the Empire. And they are very aware now that someone has been having a go of fleecing the nobility.
Now, it’s with the prefects that Vanja makes a particularly stupid mistake (in what is a long list of mistakes); rather than the formidable Prefect Klemens, Junior Prefect Emeric Conrad is the first investigator on the scene. And Vanja takes one good look at the skinny, nervous, nerdy boy and thinks he isn’t going to be a problem. But it turns out Prefect Conrad is a mighty fine little actor and an absolute prodigy to boot. It doesn’t take long for Vanja to realize she’s in a lot more hot water than she could ever imagine — and to top it off, her own personal problems are not the biggest thing she’s going to have to deal with in Bóern.
This was a very fun fairy tale retelling with a lot of character depth. Vanja is a very cautious, wary individual, and of course, the Real Giselle has had a lot of growing up to do. And then there’s Vanja’s friend, Josiah, who acts like an exhausted older sister — she must have a lot of affection for Vanja, because she puts up with quite a lot of the girl’s bullshit.
But how could Vanja be anything but wary after being abandoned at such a young age, only to be raised by two low gods rather than human parents, who, while shaped by human belief, are kind of crappy at dealing with human emotions? This is contrasted by the character of Ragne, who, as a demigod, also has a very blue and orange view of the world — but at least she shows the capacity to learn that the older entities seem to lack.
Ragne is one of my runaway favorites, by the way
That all being said, Little Thieves is firmly in the YA category; while some of the themes are on the heavy side, there’s nothing terribly violent or explicit here. The protagonist is very clearly in her teens and reads as such. This probably works really well for younger audiences, but sometimes I did have to actively remind myself of that; yes, teen angst can be slightly tiresome. But no, I am not the main audience here.
It’s also worth mentioning that while I know that Little Thieves is the first in a series thanks to the Lodestar Award nomination being for a later book, Little Thieves actually makes for a quite a satisfactory stand alone.
For cbr18bingo, this one is One. Why? First in a series!
