The Thousand Deaths of Ardor Benn

April 2, 2018
Making dragon droppings a vital resource is about the only original aspect of this overlong epic fantasy series debut. Ardor Benn is a roguish ruse artist straight out of central casting who gets what he wants through elaborate trickery. He began his career as a Harvester, responsible for collecting different varieties of magic grit, which is ground up from various source materials. His story follows a familiar arc: Ard is hired for a high-stakes job—the theft of the royal regalia from King Pethredote, ruler of the four islands of the Greater Chain—so that part of it can be fed to a dragon and transformed into a special grit. This caper naturally ends up having broader implications for Ard’s world. Unsurprisingly, and disappointingly, he’s paired with another cookie-cutter figure: Quarrah Khai, an accomplished thief who just happens to be a beautiful woman and extremely attracted to him. The setup for the score takes too much time, and Whitesides often pulls his punches, undermining the twists’ emotional impact. This doorstop fails to justify its length. Agent: Ammi-Joan Paquette, Erin Murphy Literary.

May 1, 2018
Ardor Benn is a ruse artist who's just been given the commission of his career: steal the royal regalia, which is made from the shards of a fertilized dragon's egg and can be used to make visitant grit. Thanks to memory grit, he doesn't know why he accepted the job, aside from the challenge, but the price is right and his employer appears beyond reproach, although the reasons for requiring visitant grit are a bit murky. Ardor's already got a hitter?Raek?so his first step is to hire a thief. Enter Quarrah Khai, an understandably skeptical master thief. With the assistance of a team of masters of disguise, they infiltrate the court and lay out plans. The dragon-based grit isn't quite a magic system, but it serves as such for the plot and is the primary substance in world building. This is a light, fast read, with enough intrigue to the ruses to pull the reader in. Ultimately, it's the world, rather than the heists, that takes center stage, with the characters discovering long-hidden truths of their natural world along the way.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)