Let the Angry Robot reviews roll on as I get more and more comfortable with reading on the Kindle.

“Even the wicked can’t rest when a vicious warlord and the force of enslaved giants he commands invade their homeland. Damasco might get away in one piece, but he’s going to need help.

Big time.”

It’s been a while since I picked up a fantasy book that wasn’t Urban Fantasy. Giant Thief is much closer to my High Fantasy roots though it lacks the ‘sorcery’ component of ‘sword and sorcery’ which pretty much defines the genre. The only ‘fantastical’ element in the story is the existence of the giants themselves.

Removing most of the fantastical elements from has allowed Tallerman to focus on building his world and his cast of characters instead. The main cast features heavily on the standard Dungeons and Dragons character sheet with protagonist Easie Damasco fulfilling the wily thief archetype while his (mostly unwilling) allies are Saltlick, a stupid-but-loyal giant, a stubborn female politician and a taciturn city guard while their opponent is a murderous, barbarian warlord. All that’s missing is a spell-caster.

Despite the clichés, the characterisation is fun and consistent and the cast are well illustrated, for the most part. The same can be said for the primary locations. If you’ve read fantasy before (or played fantasy themed games), chances are you’ll already be familiar with the various locations - a den of thieves, prostitutes and other undesirables; a maze of tunnels carved beneath a fortified city; a lavish palace and bustling docks are all present and correct Tallerman gets some credit for his vision of the giants’ realm.

The two biggest problems I had with Giant Thief were those of inconsistent tone and an abrupt, jarring ending.

The former spread through the majority of the narrative and felt as though Tallerman was unsure which sort of fantasy he wanted to write - an epic, sweeping fantasy with nations at war (like Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time) or an intimate, character driven story (like Robin Hobb’s The Farseer Trilogy) - and the final product is a confused mash of elements from both which don’t gel too well with each other.

The other issue, the jarring end, came from two distinct areas in the home stretch of the novel.

1. An unsatisfying final confrontation with the antagonist. In (most) fantasy novels, particularly in ones which adhere to genre conventions as strictly as this one does, the antagonist is usually dispatched through either the direct actions of the protagonist OR their own machinations falling apart around them at a crucial moment.
   Neither of those happen here and I was left with a “Seriously? That’s it?” feeling at the book’s close.
2. An abrupt (and narratively unbelievable) change of heart from Easie. For the whole story, he was a shallow, untrustworthy, petty thief who only ever thought of saving his own skin. Okay, so he’s not the most noble-minded protagonist around but honestly, that was refreshing.
   But no. The big pivotal scene where Easie decides that he needs to step up and stop the Warlord comes when he witnesses the murder of a character that he himself had just been caught stealing from. A person that Easie didn’t know, care about or even like at all.

At the end of the novel, I found myself unsure whether it was the start of a new series or a stand alone and that brought one final problem into sharp focus. If it’s a new series, then too much has been wrapped up and provides no hook to move the reader on to the next book but conversely, if it’s a stand alone, then there are too many (relatively minor) details left completely unresolved.

Overall, it’s a shame I found Giant Thief so unsatisfying because I sped through the novel and I did enjoy my time with it for the most part. I’m also fully aware that I am something of a genre snob - for the majority of my reading life, fantasy has been my primary focus - and I am simply oversaturated in the conventions and clichés of the genre. It is entirely possible that some one newer to fantasy (and more open-minded) will enjoy Giant Thief without noticing (or caring about) any of the issues I had.

When I started reading fantasy I certainly didn’t start with the cream of the crop but what I did start with acted like a gateway into the genre and for all my personal issues with it, there’s absolutely no reason that Giant Thief won’t function in exactly the same way for other people.