The Silver Thief

The Cycle of Galand #2

by Edward W. Robertson

Dante Galand has cured the sickness that trapped him on the Plagued Islands. Now, it's time to leave. And kill a priest.The target is Gladdic of Bressel. Gladdic, who executed Dante's friend, the pirate Captain Twill. Who all but enslaved the Plagued Islands. And whose visions of empire are far from over.But Gladdic is trained in both ether and nether—and a darker magic than Dante has ever known. He's the most dangerous foe Dante has faced. And if Dante falls, so will an entire kingdom.Set in a USA TODAY bestselling world, THE SILVER THIEF is the second book in the Cycle of Galand.

Genres: Fantasy, Audiobook, Fiction, Epic Fantasy, Science Fiction Fantasy, High Fantasy, Adventure

481 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 31, 2015

About the author

Ed is the author of the post-apocalyptic Breakers series and the epic fantasy series The Cycle of Arawn. A former New Yorker and Idaho-guy, he currently lives in the LA area. His short fiction has appeared in a whole bunch of magazines and anthologies.

Reviews

[Scott Stewart · Rating 4 out of 5]

Could have done without the Raxa story line.

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good second book of a trilogy. Enough was covered that I don't feel the need to dive straight away into the last book, but enough was left unanswered so I know what to look forward to in the last book.

Personally I feel bad for Min, she's been without her wayward husband for months and months. Does she know what trouble he is in? I also feel bad for Dante who doesn't know what muck has been transpiring in his absence. His precious bone sword has been stolen, and is being used by some ruffian. I want him to come back and teach her a wicked lesson.

[Paige Bookdragon]

I WANT THIS!! I'LL SELL MY CAT TO HAVE THIS BOOK!

[Nicole · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first have to add, that I had been so impatient to read this book. I pre-ordered it on Amazon, and counted down the days until I had a break from work to read it. I was not disappointed!
Edward W. Robertson blew me away with this book. It was exactly what I was hoping for, and more.
I still love the fact that the imagery isn't overly described, as to leave the story visually unfold in my imagination. Do not mistake this as me saying that the descriptions are lacking; that is not the case! This is the fifth book in which Dante and Blays have won my heart, so I have a great image of what they and their world should look like. I would expect anyone following the series to have been able to do the same.
I believe that I had to look up quite a few words, as compared to the other Cycle books. It did not make the book unenjoyable, and it wasn't hard to understand what the author meant through context. I personally enjoy enriching my vocabulary through my Kindle dictionary, so it was fine with me.
I love how, knowing the style of the whole story, I can somewhat predict what's going to happen, but then I am totally blindsided by something I just wasn't expecting. Sometimes I find myself reading with such excitement, that I have to go back and re-read! I am completely engrossed with the characters, the world, the people, the plot, the magic. Everything in this series seems like it was written just for my entertainment.
I gave this book five stars. I would give it one hundred more if I could. I am so in love with this series, and I hope that it continues past The Cycle of Galand. I seriously cannot express how much I hope that it continues on past the third book that I anxiously await. Edward W. Robertson does such an awesome job at writing in this particular genre, and it will truly be a sad day when I no longer have the opportunity to look forward to more shenanigans from Dante and Blays. When that day does come, I will be re-reading the series all over again!

[Nicholas · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm still getting my head around the author's writing style. It's essentially a comedy, with magic, and mass genocide. I've been listening to the Audio Book, and the narrator is pretty good.
The "science" of the magic/story isn't tight and adhered to - which I find a bit annoying.
BUT.... it is a fun and smile-worthy book, enjoyable to read (listen to), and you want the heroes to win! Dante (the main hero) is almost an anti-hero, which adds to the grittiness of the story. FYI - there's no sex in the stories (at least, so far).

Bottom line - it's not a Wheel of Time/Painted Man/Pattern of Shadow and Light, but it's fun, easy, and a good read.

[Bennett]

DNF at 50%

Couldn’t get into it

[Rory Hector · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought that the book was good, but I liked it less than the previous book. I do still want to continue the series to the third book. This review contains many spoilers so do not read if you want to avoid any or only see minor spoilers.

Book Summary: Dante and Blays return from the plagued islands to kill Gladdic, and by extension fight the Mallish. They end up helping the town of Collen, who are also fighting the Mallish. Collen has a bunch of quirky people who mostly just want to die fighting the Mallish. They meet the Keeper, and old lady with knowledge of ether and of the history of Collen, and she travels with them. They also meet Cord, a female warrior from Collen who wields a wheel. They do several battles with the Mallish, atrocities are committed on both sides, which cause Dante and Blays to just want to kill Gladdic and leave Mallon and Collen to fight amongst themselves. Gladdic is using nether it terrible ways that he things are justified by the end result, specifically he is making Andrac, shadow creatures, to kill people from Collen. The main crew learn how to fight these guys and eventually fight Gladdic and his people, during the battle Gladdic makes a 50 ft tall Andrac and that causes the Colleners to suffer massive casualties. During the fight, Dante and Blays figure out how to defeat it, but Gladdic escapes. At the end, Collen now looks to Dante as a prophesized avatar of Arawn meant to lead their people against the Mallish. There is also the storyline of Raxa, who is part of a guild of thieves. She steals from the sealed citadel and makes a ton of money and Dante’s bone sword which can cut through seemingly anything. She buys a house with the money which she hopes to use to take care of her orphans, who she previously found other people to look after them. However her guild is under attack, presumably by other thieves guilds, but it seems it is a more clever group. The clever group she suspects seems to kill her guild’s leader, and she is elected the new leader. She discovers that some of the treachery is within her own guild though, including an attempt on her life and her orphan children. She kills the man who betrayed her, and breaks into the sealed citadel again to save her children. It doesn’t say what happens after with her and her family.

Dependence: This book is pretty episodic. You’ll have missed out on a lot of character development, background of the magic system, and things like that, but theoretically this book would make sense if you read it alone. You might not care about them trying to kill Gladdic but it’ll make sense well enough.

Characters: The characters have had most of their background and everything gone through in prior books, so we don’t talk get much more about who the main characters are. I think the side characters like Cord and Raxa are interesting though, and all of the characters are pretty consistent. Cord did go from being very unreasonable to being perhaps open to suggestion, but that could arguably be due to Dante learning how to convince her.

Plot: The plot was mostly about killing Gladdic, helping Collen fight the Mallish, learning how to kill the shadow creatures. It was alright. I enjoyed the concept of the previous book better, and I liked the people and their culture much more. It seemed authentic enough though, nothing seemed too far-fetched that I was just supposed to say “Okay let’s pretend that works”. However a lot of it was fairly predictable. The thing with Gaits was so predictable I thought it had to be a red-herring, but nope. I mean he was like “Oh only two people know about this, I’ll go see if someone else could’ve found out!” And she just doesn’t question that? No one addresses “but hey it can’t be you because ___”, so of course I was immediately suspecting Gaits, Gaits continues to be kinda sketchy, then it was indeed Gaits. I will say for the book that the plot and the world are well tied together. Like the structure of the conflicts are influenced heavily by the magic system and all of that. I didn’t feel like the world and plot were designed independently then slapped together.

Magic System: The magic system was fairly clear. It has all been laid out in previous books, and wasn’t really amended much in this book. Dante gets a better understanding of ether, but he doesn’t really do anything new, so my remarks on the magic system follow those from my review of the first book. I’ll just say again that I found it interesting enough, its not super novel but there are unique aspects to this version of light/dark magic.

World: The world here seemed somewhat generic to me. I mean its pretty much just an old-timey world in this book, not sure of the specific time period, but no real special creatures, landscapes, etc. It’s pretty much just earth sometime in history with magic people in it.

Pacing: The pacing is pretty consistent, lots of small battles leading up to a larger battle, it never really got slow but not a whole lot changed throughout the course of the book in my opinion.

Writing: The book is written it a way I like well-enough. It’s not flowery at all, and it’s not advanced. At the same time doesn’t seem like it was written by a teenager with a thesaurus handy. It’s basically written to convey the information in as straightforward a manner as possible.

Right now I want to continue reading the series, but if the next book is not that great I may choose not to continue. I enjoyed the previous book much more, and want more fantasy elements in the book personally. All-in-all, the book was good.

[Melissa Drespling · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh, Dante...

And Blays may be my favorite badass ever. He's at least tied with Kylar Stern.

[Shannon I · Rating 4 out of 5]

Listened to on audiobook. Enjoyed it, but not as much as Book 1.

[Emily at Reaching While Rooted · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hilarious! This book was just as wonderful as the previous four. Dark comedy and sorcery make for the perfect combination

[Arnór Hauksson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kept losing focus...

[Lora Shouse · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great book. The story of Dante and Blays just keeps getting better and better.

In this second book of the Cycle of Galand, they are trying to destroy the evil priest Gladdic as revenge for what he did to Captain Twill. It seems Gladdic, in spite of his reputation as an oh-so-holy priest of Taim, can command demons. So Dante and his friends have to learn how to destroy said demons. It isn’t easy.

As a side plot, but apparently not unrelated, a band of thieves in Narashtovik is mounting an unprecedented number of jobs, getting themselves into a war with several other groups of thieves.
One of their targets is the Sealed Citadel itself, and they take Dante’s bone sword, which he feels he really could have used in his fight with Gladdic.

In each of these situations, just when it looks as if everything will be resolved, somehow it isn’t quite. Obviously, the story isn’t over yet.

Tim Gerard Reynolds did a good job with the narration, although I was surprised at the beginning to hear Dante and Blays speaking with sort of British accents. Having read the previous books of their adventures on my Kindle, I had sort of pictured them as sort of American sounding.

[Eugene Carroll · Rating 4 out of 5]

Okay, the series has jumped into kind of comic book/serial vibe. Our heroes keep going from one crazy situation to the next with wars everywhere as Dante continues to remake the politics of the map. I love how he's continuing to work with transportation networks in this book, I think that's just a really interesting perspective you don't get in a lot of world-building books. Apparently we're not going anywhere east of the Woduns in this series but we're still going into new places west of the mountains and bringing new kingdoms into the circle of influence of Narashtovik. In what is a very clever move, the author has been bringing a new story line into the picture. I've got a lot of theories about Raxa's story line and can't wait to see where it leads. This is a great way to keep the series interesting and prevent fatigue with the main characters. I wish more authors would do this.

[Danny B · Rating 2 out of 5]

Having read both Cycle of Arawn and Cycle of Galand (the first 3 at least), this one is the worst in the series by far. O the main plot is interesting enough. You get exciting combat, exploration of new locales, discovering cultures of said locale, and of course witty conversation between the two lovable dumdums.

Then you have the B plot: Raxa. It's like the writer watched all those horrible Marvel films featuring a bland female protagonist and thought "hey, my books can use that!" She goes through zero personal growth and everything just falls her way. You can probably read the first few pages of her chapters then skip to the end because you know she'll set out to do what she accomplishes with minimal fuss.

Another problem Raxa's plot creates is it just shows how much the writer relies on cliffhanger cuts. Right when things get interesting he jumps to the other plotline. The plot was interesting enough as is, him choosing to do this just made it jarring.

[Chris Evans · Rating 4 out of 5]

Edward W. Robertson writes a decent story. Like previously, the lore is interesting and the characters are likable. Nothing about it makes it really stand out of the crowd though. What I don't get is what the point of the thief side story was, it doesn't connect to anything that happened in this book or the previous one. I'm guessing it plays a part in the next one, but it seems a bit sloppy not to set it up with the main story in some way.

Of course, as previously stated, this is not actually book 2 of The Cycle of Galand, it's book 5 of The Cycle of Arawn, and I didn't know I should have read that series first when starting this one, and I've had far too many spoilers for that to bother reading it now. So it's entirely possible the thief girl was set up there and I just don't know.

3.5/5 stars rounded up.

[Aubria L. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another good installment of the Cycle of Garland series! If you like the chemistry between the two protagonists Dante and Blays, you will enjoy the Silver Thief!
Also, there is a second storyline developing in this book about a thief name Raxa, who is quite interesting to me, she is operating in the Sealed Citadel, Dante’s home turf while Dante is away! She stole something of great value to our sorcerer protagonist! Mmmm... how will the author tie these two storylines together? I guess I will have to continue in the series to find out!

[Dylan Mullaley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Audiobook
Whole series review since I'm reviewing after the fact.

While not terrible, the continuation of the Cycle of Arawn series, the Cycle of Galland, does not live up to the same standard as it predecessor and starts to feel like a cash cow the author is milking for its last few drops by the later books. The first few here were ok, but the stakes just keep rising and rising, and the characters keep doing less and less. I quit after The Light of Life which is book 4 of 10 in this new series.

[Salvatore · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really very entertaining book. The interplay between Dante and Blays is about the best I have ever come across. You certainly get the sense that they are very comfortable with each other and that there is a lot of history there.

Well done to Edward for this, its really well done.

[Christian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another great book in the series. It's always fun to travel with Dante and Blaze on their journeys. But now a new character has been added and I like her a lot. Will be diving into book 3 soon to see where it takes them all.

[Natverse · Rating 4 out of 5]

The ethnic cleansing part chipped away at my soul a little. :| It's rare to find a book that tackles something so serious and heavy fantasy, while still remaining witty and humorous in the dialogue. I am really impressed by this author.

[Viridiana Kholin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sadly not as good as the first one.
Not as gripping. I tended to loose focus every time we went back to the thief's story line.
Still it wasn't bad, I like Dante and Blays enough to continue onto the third book.
We'll see how it goes.

[Benjamin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another excellent book from Robertson. Pacing and plot are on point, and (as always) the banter between Blaze and Dante has plenty of laugh out loud moments. I'm taking notes on writing dialogue from this author.

[MMF · Rating 4 out of 5]

Honestly, and I almost wrote this as my review of the first Cycle of Galand book, I am perfectly content just to read about Dante & friend doing hijinks and having battles. There's a particular charm to this series I can't quite put my finger on. Maybe it's that it doesn't try to offer simple answers to complex world problems. Maybe it's just smart enough to give me the thing I want, which is the hijinks and adventure and the banter between characters I want to see interact.

I will say that, as of the end of this book, I don't know what Raxa has to do with anything yet, so it's hard to say if I like her and her POV. I didn't dislike her, I was just left going "and... SO?" I'm sure the payoff will make it worthwhile – another thing this series does, is have payoffs good enough that I forgive whatever foibles were necessary to set them up. I dunno, I'm not smart or anything, I just had a good time.

[Tim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another fantastic entry! A new land, more political tangles, and more of Dante and Blays giving each other crap. Dante has to learn how to combat new magic and learns more about how their world works. It follows a similar formula as usual but as always you get to experience something different.

[Zoe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not quite as good as the previous but i was trying to do too many things and lost slight concentration

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty dadgum good. And i dont use that term lightly.

[Grifter12outlook.com · Rating 4 out of 5]

Looking for the Next

Glade I picked up the series, it's been a great ride and page turner! Already half through another but will have to start Book 3 ASAP.

[Suzy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fun Fantasy

Great read. So much fun. From the clutches of defeat, Dante and Blays escape victorious. Now they have more friends. I can't wait to find out what happens next.

[David Blaylock · Rating 3 out of 5]

For some reason this felt like a book 3 in a series, not book 2.

[Lee Barney · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've read the entire last series along with book one of this series and this has been my.