*NEW RELEASE SPECIAL* Review of NETGALLEY arc The Best Thing You Can Steal by Simon R. Green #BrainfluffNETGALLEYbookreview #TheBestThingYouCanStealbookreview

Anyone who has spent much time visiting this blog will know that I enjoy Green’s writing – see my reviews of The Dark Side of the Road, Very Important Corpses, Death Shall Come, Into the Thinnest of Air, Murder in the Dark, Till Sudden Death Do Us Part, Night Train to Murder, The House on Widow’s Hill and The Man With the Golden Torc. So when I saw there was a new series by Green, I immediately jumped at the chance to snaffle a copy of this one.

BLURB: Gideon Sable is a thief and a con man. He specializes in stealing the kind of things that can’t normally be stolen. Like a ghost’s clothes, or a photo from a country that never existed. He even stole his current identity. Who was he originally? Now, that would be telling. One thing’s for sure though, he’s not the bad guy. The people he steals from always have it coming. Gideon’s planning a heist, to steal the only thing that matters from the worst man in the world. To get past his security, he’s going to need a crew who can do the impossible . . . but luckily, he has the right people in mind. The Damned, the Ghost, the Wild Card . . . and his ex-girlfriend, Annie Anybody. A woman who can be anyone, with the power to make technology fall in love with her. If things go well, they’ll all get what they want. And if they’re lucky, they might not even die trying . . .

REVIEW: I’m not generally a huge fan of fantasy heist adventures. It takes serious writing chops to successfully build up the tension within an ensemble crew and make me go on caring, given that I don’t innately sympathise with anti-heroes. But if anyone was going to be able to pull me into such a story, then I knew it would be Green, which his pacey writing, strong characters and tongue-in-cheek humour that doesn’t take itself too seriously.

My instincts were right. This was just what I needed. Gideon is a likeable rogue who is trying to pull down a satisfyingly nasty antagonist by hitting him where it hurts most – by raiding his vault and snatching his most valued possession. In amongst the planning and scheming, there are some lovely touches of gothic horror that had me teetering between shock and laughter. Though there are also some scenes which are more about the seedy side of London and the sheer nastiness of our enemy.

Green has the pacing absolutely nailed. Once we got to a certain stage of the story, there was no way I was putting this one down until I discovered what happens next. And so I very much appreciated the plot twists that Green threw in near the end that suddenly changed the whole dynamic of what is going on. It was very well done – a sudden shift in the narrative like this could have felt like a cheat in less accomplished hands. The story was wrapped up entirely satisfactorily and I’m hoping that this is the first in a new series. Recommended for fans of fantasy heist adventures. While I obtained an arc of The Best Thing You Can Steal from the publishers via Netgalley, the opinions I have expressed are unbiased and my own.
9/10