Yesterday, I finished Thieves’ Quarry by D. B. Jackson and found it a worthy sequel to the first book in the series, which I reviewed here. My review of Thieves’ Quarry follows this image of the book’s amazing cover.
D. B. Jackson has crafted another fun historical fantasy with Thieves’ Quarry, the sequel to his first novel in the series, Thieftaker. The series takes the reader to colonial Boston and a world where conjurers, called “spellers,” live secretly among the population. Among them is Ethan Kaille, a thieftaker who retrieves stolen goods for a price. And like the first book, Kaille once again finds himself investigating a mysterious murder committed by a new and deadly conjurer.
The murder involves the strange and sudden death of the crew of the Graystone, one of many British warships that have arrived in Boston Harbor for the Crown’s occupation of the city. Agents of the Crown hire Kaille to find the killer, and he must do so quickly, before the colony’s lieutenant governor has every speller in Boston put to death for the crime.
The novel’s mystery is well crafted, with plenty of twists that kept me guessing until the end. Just as intriguing is the series’ magic system, which plays a key role in the tale. When casting, spellers need the aid of a ghost-like familiar (in Kaille’s case, an old medieval warrior he calls Uncle Reg), and every spellers’ magic and ghost has a unique color to its glow. Once Kaille discovers the color of the magic used on the crewmen, he just needs to find the conjurer to whom the color belongs to identify the killer. Jackson has been revealing clues about the magic system in each book, but he has left much of it unexplained, keeping the mystery behind the ghosts and their origins alive for a future tale. Yet he’s explained enough here to make it “believable,” and in many ways the magic system is one of the reasons this series work so well.
The rest of the books’ appeal lies with the characters who populate this fictional Boston, from Kaille’s rival, Sephira Pryce, to his friends at a tavern called the Dowsing Rod, and even historical figures like Samuel Adams. (Honestly, between the tavern and Adams, I always feel like having an ale while reading these books!) Also, the series is inching closer to the Boston Tea Party, and Kaille is beginning to question his allegiance to the Crown. All of this creates a unique world to which I am eager to return. And fortunately, the next book in the series, A Plunder of Souls, is waiting on my shelf.