Ardor Benn is no ordinary thief. Rakish, ambitious, and master of wildly complex heists, he styles himself a Ruse Artist Extraordinaire. 

When a priest hires him for the most daring ruse yet, Ardor knows he’ll need more than quick wit and sleight of hand. Assembling a dream team of forgers, disguisers, schemers, and thieves, he sets out to steal from the most powerful king the realm has ever known. 

But it soon becomes clear there’s more at stake than fame and glory — Ard and his team might just be the last hope for human civilization. 

Discover the start of an epic fantasy trilogy that begins with a heist and quickly explodes into a full-tilt, last ditch plan to save humanity.

OK, I’m going to tell an embarrassing story. I’ve told this story to a handful of people, and also have posted it to my Instagram stories at some point. And it ties into the book review, to a certain extent.

So, I try to be relentlessly positive online in regards to books, movies, shows, etc. I guess all I mean is, I try to stay away from posting about things that I don’t like, instead focusing my energy on the things that I love. Obviously, I’m a human being, and I have my moments of negativity online. We all do. And one of those rare moments for me turned into a great reminder of when to keep my mouth closed.

A couple years back, a friend of mine had posted about THE THOUSAND DEATHS OF ARDOR BENN, and how much she loved it & thought it was a really underrated fantasy novel. For reasons that are no longer clear to me, I took the opportunity to respond to her and say that it was the rare case of an Orbit book with a cover that really didn’t do anything for me (in regards to the original cover for this book).

Now, the author, Tyler Whitesides, WAS NOT TAGGED in my friend’s post. I would never have dreamed of responding like that if he was. And yet…he somehow saw the exchange and responded to me.

At which point I died.

But he was honestly super cool about it and wanted to let me know that there was going to be a brand new cover for the book’s rerelease, and he said he hoped I would dig it more. Which…holy fuck, do I?! Orbit did cover reveals for all three books in the trilogy at once, and released the crazy rapid-fire release schedule for these books (one each in October, November, and December). I’m gonna do my best to keep up, but these are all pretty chonky books!! ANYHOW!

The fantasy heist subgenre has a lot of big fans, but when I look at lists of some of the best fantasy heist novels, I realize it’s not something I have a lot of experience with. People refer to The Gentlemen Bastard books, Mistborn, Riyria…and these are all still on my TBR. But THE THOUSAND DEATHS OF ARDOR BENN is pitched as Mission: Impossible, but with magic and dragons, so yeah, let’s do that!

Right up front I want to say…this was something of a mixed bag for me. The book is very well written, and I was interested & engaged with the world. And I found myself more & more fond of the characters as the story went on. I think what I struggled with the most, and this possibly shows me a bit about my preferences when it comes to fantasy, was the sheer weight and information about the magic system. It was just…a lot to take in, and seemed to permeate nearly every aspect of this book.

Now, the magic system itself? I thought it was wicked cool and had to stop and remind myself every once in awhile that I was reading a 730-page epic fantasy novel with a complex magic system that has, at its root…dragon shit.

I mean. Ha! To his credit, Whitesides doesn’t play this for laughs too frequently, but yeah, wow…dragon shit. The dragons in this world eat something, nature takes its course, and then the dragons, tidy creatures apparently, blast the shit with their flame. This is then processed into different kinds of powders, or Grit. There are many different types of Grit, and I’m not going to try to describe them all! Needless to say, they all factor heavily into the great ruse at the center of the story.

Ardor Benn is our hero. A ruse artist (extraordinaire), not to be confused with a conman. Ardor is hired to pull off a seemingly impossible ruse, but he’s not the type to back off from a challenge. And he has his own legend and status to consider, of course. Ardor’s closest friend is a man named Raek, and they’ve been working together for years. But to pull off this particular ruse, they bring in a third: a thief named Quarrah Khai.

I was drawn to Quarrah in the early going of the book, and she ultimately became my favorite of the three. Where Ardor loves attention & accolades, Quarrah is the consummate thief, preferring the shadows, blending in, going unnoticed. When all was said and done, I really liked all these characters. The friendship between Ardor and Raek, in particular, is really cool and perhaps a bit atypical from what you might expect. There’s a great deal of openness & trust between them that gets put to the test while planning everything that goes into the ruse.

I’m gonna veer away from anything else plot-related, mostly because this review has gotten entirely too long and probably a bit (wildly) unfocused. I feel like the thing I’m struggling with saying here (because I am generally a ball of anxiety when it comes to posting this type of criticism), is that this book felt entirely too long to me. Like, somewhere in this book’s 730 pages is a really fun & unique fantasy world, a cool heist, and a trio of pretty engaging characters. But as I said earlier, to me, those elements that I enjoyed felt somewhat bogged down by the intense detail regarding the Grit/magic. This is entirely a personal thing for me, as this book has some hardcore fans. I have every intention of carrying on with the series…this book is well written & has plenty of thrills, as well as some heartfelt moments too. I’m just hoping for a tighter focus on the characters in book two!

Big thanks to Orbit for sending this one my way!