The Palace Job

Oct 17, 2012 Jennifer rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: anyone who likes fantasy or a fun heist story

Shelves: fantasy, adventure, other-worlds, heist, assassins-spies-and-thieves, favorites

(light spoilers, maybe, if you didn't read the book's synopsis)

I first found out about this novel when I heard that Patrick Weekes was publishing a novel through other fandom communities online. If you're a gamer or computer RPG fan, you may already know his name. Weekes was one of the writers on Bioware's Mass Effect sci-fi RPG series, and he was also a very vocal fan advocate during the kerfluffle over the ending of Mass Effect 3. I figured I would have to check the book out sometime just to s...more (light spoilers, maybe, if you didn't read the book's synopsis)

I first found out about this novel when I heard that Patrick Weekes was publishing a novel through other fandom communities online. If you're a gamer or computer RPG fan, you may already know his name. Weekes was one of the writers on Bioware's Mass Effect sci-fi RPG series, and he was also a very vocal fan advocate during the kerfluffle over the ending of Mass Effect 3. I figured I would have to check the book out sometime just to support an awesome guy.

And then I read the synopsis of the book.

This book, basically, could have been written on commission for me.

At it's heart, The Palace Job is a heist story, with all the tropes that entails: a Robin Hood type hero (well, heroine in this case), planning a heist for great justice from an evil man in power. Our heroine, Loch, is a tough, dark-skinned woman who is thankfully not depicted as any less of a woman for being a warrior. The story includes themes of friendship, family, loyalty, betrayal, revenge, all with clever plot twists, a little bit of romance, and swashbuckling adventure in heaps.

Seriously, you guys. This is almost everything I love in fantasy fiction, and all in one package.

The setting is a fantastic world with elements of both traditional and 'steampunk' fantasy, including magical airships and an unusual magic system which feels more technological than magical. The world-building is subtle and doesn't hit you over the head with long passages of exposition, which I quite liked. You learn about the world by seeing it through the eyes of the characters.

Oh, and the characters! Ocean's Eleven-style, Loch assembles a motley crew to help her on her mission, including a unicorn, a death priestess with a talking war hammer, and a clueless farm boy who is, of course, destined for greatness. I found all the characters very enjoyable with fun quirks, and decently well-developed for a short novel. The writing style, including dialogue, was very modern and colloquial; occasionally I thought some of the dialogue felt a little too modern for the setting, but I figured it was my own fantasy preconceptions and it never really threw me out of the story. Weekes has no trouble balancing all the balls he throws into the air, and I never once felt lost amid the large cast of characters and intricate plotting.

The tone of the book is often humorous, but the book is satirical more than it is silly, and it doesn't make light of the very real dangers to our team of criminals. Weekes not only takes a satirical jab at racism through Loch and her companion Kail, who are both part of a maligned racial minority fighting for equal rights, he also takes a poke at politics, in particular U.S. politics.

The United States' two-party government system has an equivalent in the book's Republic, with the Learned party versus the Skilled party. And those race issues I mentioned are also all tied up in the party politics as well. I particular enjoyed that the people of the Republic are apparently kept up on politics by the use of puppet shows reminiscent of "Punch and Judy" -- in which a gryphon representing one of the parties and a manticore representing the other are kept in check by a 'neutral' dragon moderator, ending with the tag line "it's your Republic". Very clever, tongue-in-cheek, and an amusing commentary on political reporting in the U.S., I thought.

Was it perfect? No. As I said earlier, occasionally the modern dialogue would throw me off, and it is a fairly short novel which means Weekes has to cram a lot of character development and plot twists into 300-some-odd pages. However, I loved it a lot, and I would proudly shove this book into the hands of as many people will listen to me go on about it.(less)

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Oct 20, 2012 Brandon Zarzyczny rated it 2 of 5 stars

First off, I have to say that while I enjoyed parts of the book, the formatting is absolutely horrendous. It's so bad that I have to assume that the publisher used some sort of automatic conversion to the eBook format and didn't bother to check it before uploading the book to Amazon. This greatly affected my enjoyment of The Palace Job, and I would advise everyone to stay away from this Kindle book until it is fixed. As for the quality of the story, it's okay for a quick light fantasy romp, but...more First off, I have to say that while I enjoyed parts of the book, the formatting is absolutely horrendous. It's so bad that I have to assume that the publisher used some sort of automatic conversion to the eBook format and didn't bother to check it before uploading the book to Amazon. This greatly affected my enjoyment of The Palace Job, and I would advise everyone to stay away from this Kindle book until it is fixed. As for the quality of the story, it's okay for a quick light fantasy romp, but it just isn't anything amazing.

For the world building of this novel, the world is very reminiscent of a Final Fantasy game. The magic isn't too well described, but it has a lot to do with auras and illusion (there's probably more in the world but it wasn't really used in the book), and a whole lot of crystals. The crystals are kind of a magical catch-all, where they are used to power things, used as keys, used as real world analogies like voice recorders, it's never explained how they work and are just present throughout the story. For the creatures, while there is an Elf at the end, it's not Toilkenesque. It's more based on European mythology, with magical creatures like Satyrs and Unicorns. The government is a partisan two party system reminiscent to what we have, and there are three main races, white people (natives to their Republic), black people (named Urujar with no explanation to where they came from), and people from the Empire (that I interpreted as being Asian, though I could be wrong). The world does have a much more powerful/advanced people in their history, called the Ancients, that provide a lot of the artifacts in the world, including the floating city that most of the book takes place on. Apparently they had a long term war with beings from another dimension (Glimmering Folk) and to defeat them they all left this plane of existence. This provides some prophecy in the story where one of the team members is the heavily foreshadowed Chosen One, fated to face the representative of the Glimmering Folk in a battle that will change the face of the World/Universe. In this world, there are Gods, and they give various powers to their priests/disciples, but it's not detailed as to exactly how much power they have and what their intentions are.

The characters in this book are very unique, but I found there to be too many of them, and they were a bit too stationary. At the beginning of the book, it was a real chore, where each character was being introduced to the reader. The sections were short and kind of goofy, especially combined with the author's inconsistent third person perspective. There's just too much here, all of the characters are just kind of thrown at the reader. While this may work to a certain extent in an Oceans 11 style movie, in a book it was kind of jarring. The group consisted of two Urujar jack-of-all-trades leaders of the group (though the second in command could also enrage anyone by insulting their mother), a female shape-changing Unicorn with mind control abilities and a sexual fascination with virgins, a goth death-priestess with a magical sentient war-hammer, a lockpicker/demolitions expert, a contortionist/parkour expert, a sorcerer specializing in illusion, an apparently useless teenage boy that's mostly there as a good luck charm, and a police investigator that may or may not help them out. I found all of these characters to be fully formed for the most part, this was partly a good thing, but on the negative side I really didn't see much character development. Who the characters are at the beginning of the story is pretty much who they are at the end. I think that this may be a result from having 10 main characters, there just wasn't room in the book for all of them to evolve past their roles in the twisted plot. Related to this, the author had the need to set all of his characters up together romantically, and all of the couples felt forced, except for possibly the one with the leader of the group. It just felt kind of weird and unrealistic, the only character that didn't get set up was the magical sentient War-hammer, and I almost kept expecting it to fall in love with some magic sword that might be randomly introduced. For the villains in this book, some of them are decent, but most of their reasons for doing the horrible things were forced or illogical. I did like though how the main characters aren't squeamish, and when they get the chance most of the villains/enemies are killed. I will say that the names of the characters are generally really unique and fit the world without being a mouthful. Also, I will say that the main characters are funny and entertaining, I won't be immediately forgetting them. My favorite character was probably actually the zombie introduced near the end, who was interesting, different, and kind of funny. Also, I found all of the female characters in this story were very unique and well done.

The story of this book follows pretty closely to the parameters set up by Oceans 11. The two main characters start off the book, and with the beginnings of a plan they then go around the country putting together a crack team with the purpose of pulling off a nigh impossible heist. They face various problems setting everything up, and they prepare for the job using a similar vault. When the actual heist/palace job begins, everything relatively quickly starts to fall apart, but a lot of it was actually intended. There's twist after twist after twist after twist, until it starts to get annoying. The characters all get pretty beat up and almost die multiple times, but I always knew the characters had plot armor. The story itself isn't bad, it's a little contrived but it works. One thing I didn't like here, is that some of the plot twists relied on poor writing in my opinion, especially in a third person perspective, where things were going on that the narrator didn't mention at all. I know this happens in the movies, where more was going on than what they exactly show you, but in a book I found it kind of annoying. Usually the author at least gives you a hint somethings going on, usually in the form of "then I explained my plan to him" or something like that, where the reader isn't told exactly what's going on to create suspense later, but here it was different. I still had the idea that something else was going on, but it wasn't implied actually in the book too well.

The writing in Palace Job mostly isn't horrible, but it's only okay at best, with the book moving pretty fast and being a real page turner at parts. However, I had a problem with the narrative, where it is Third Person, but it is completely inconsistent. With it at times being completely objective, where the narrator can't see into any of the characters' minds, but at other times the reader does get a view into one or multiple minds. With every break, it switches around to which characters are being featured. I found this a bit jarring, as many of the breaks can be very short. I generally would rather have a select few main characters being featured in the narrative, so the reader can learn more about their motives and reasoning, instead of slightly looking in the minds of every character in the book. Another very confusing problem was the author's decision to at times include multiple characters conversations in one paragraph. I don't know why he didn't use a paragraph break, as I was confused about who was talking most of the time the author did this, especially because declaratives aren't usually included. I just don't see the point of doing this, when I read my brain is trained to read the he said, "..." and "...." she said and understand what's going on without actually acknowledging it. By breaking these literary rules, any time it occurred the flow of my reading would be slammed to a halt while I tried to ascertain what was going on. I also found the action to be lackluster at times, it worked well when it was vaguely described, but every time Weekes tried to go into detail it generally became confusing and really tough to visualize. The book also has a lot of weird other languages, with the cities, and sometimes whole conversations being in random fantasy non-English imaginary words. Personally I just found these parts to be annoying, especially when other than in general terms the reader doesn't know what's being said. Every time I found these parts, I generally just skipped over them.

Finally I can get to the biggest problem with this book, the formatting and/or editing. Throughout the book there are dozens of doubled words, many spell-check errors, and dozens of very weird instances of words being replaced with random numbers or letters. The spell-check errors weren't horrible, I mean they do halt my flow when I notice a different word than it was mean to be (it's probably worse than just a normal misspelled word) but I read a lot of indie self-published books and I'm relatively used to it. The doubled words however, were more disconcerting especially since I wasn't used to them. The absolute worse were definitely the weird misspellings, that I can only imagine are artifacts from an automatic format conversion program. This usually occurred with words that have apostrophes, as an example I'm and I'll were many times changed to "I11, Ip, or I1." I tended to notice that these problems many times occurred more than once on one page, and then may not occur again for awhile. One of the times I happened to set a bookmark was on page 264 Location 4281, where in 3 paragraphs 4 uses of I'll were replaced with I11. I didn't bookmark all of the problems, but another I noticed was where at one point the start of a sentence was "Y" and then there was a page break, and then it started back up with "Why...." These problems occurred often enough that it really negatively effected my enjoyment of the book, and I really don't think that this eBook should be on sale in its current state. There were also other weird problems, but they didn't occur often enough to be immediately memorable as I write this review. With all of these formatting problems, I can't imagine that the author actually included them in his manuscript. If I had to guess, I would say that whoever is in control of the eBook conversion over at the small-press that published this book just copied and pasted the word document into a pdf, and then used a program to automatically convert the file into the eBook format. Then no one bothered to proofread the eBook before uploading it to Amazon and selling it to customers filled with artifacts from the conversion.

In closing, while this is a very negative review, I did enjoy most of the book. It's just that all of the formatting problems and some other issues really ruined it for me. From just the story, I'd probably give it 3 stars, or 4 if I was feeling really generous. However, with the problems present in at least the eBook, I'm giving it 2 stars on Goodreads, and 1 star on Amazon. I'm also going to try to email the publisher and tweet the author about these problems. If you're a fan of light fantasy, without all of the problems I would recommend this book. However, as it currently stands every reader should stay away from the eBook.

Update: I received an email back from Tyche books about the formatting problems, basically when converting from pdf to text file the program messed up, and it wasn't noticed. Apparently the program they use is fixed, and an updated version of the eBook is being uploaded to the various stores. For anyone that has already bought and downloaded this version, when Amazon updates you're going to have to contact Amazon to receive the new updated kindle file (I've done this once before and it was kind of annoying, but basically just send them an email and they'll point you in the right direction). Since the author had nothing to do with most of these formatting problems, I gave it another star, and in the coming weeks I might possibly give it one more once my annoyance has faded. (less)

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Oct 06, 2012 Glenj rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fantasy

This is the type of unknown hidden gem of a book that if someone far more cool and well known than I posted or wrote about it would receive a lot of hype and deservedly so. This fantastically fun blend of old fashioned heist caper meets dungeons and dragons is a truly enjoyable read. What I love so much is that story never veers from being a pure heist-caper at its heart in the vein of The Italian Job or Oceans Eleven (think the originals of both, not the awful remakes) but where as the rogue le...more

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Sep 30, 2012 Brian rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fantasy

The description of a Ocean's Eleven meets fantasy (which I've seen in several places) is very apt. Both have an ensemble cast of characters and plans within plans. It's pretty rare in a fantasy book that I don't have an idea of where the plot is headed, but Weekes managed to suprise me multiple times.

This is a great heist story. It's gritty without being too dark, but it still has a lot of humor in it. I literally laughed out loud several times and there's one part near the end when I had to sto...more

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Jan 10, 2013 MMOGC rated it 4 of 5 stars

Recommended to MMOGC by: Brian

Shelves: fantasy, thieves, action-adventure

A great book -- though, a couple heads-ups beforehand:

1) If you are planning to read this on the Kindle, be forewarned that there are quite a few formatting errors and typos, which the author explained to me over Twitter were introduced by the publisher's scanning software. Ultimately these errors weren't too bad, just mildly distracting, and I certainly can't fault Weekes for those.

2) However, I also found the writing to be a bit rough, though this might be attributed to the author's own uniq...more A great book -- though, a couple heads-ups beforehand:

1) If you are planning to read this on the Kindle, be forewarned that there are quite a few formatting errors and typos, which the author explained to me over Twitter were introduced by the publisher's scanning software. Ultimately these errors weren't too bad, just mildly distracting, and I certainly can't fault Weekes for those.

2) However, I also found the writing to be a bit rough, though this might be attributed to the author's own unique style. The best way I can think of to describe it is it almost feels like Weekes wrote this book like he was describing a movie, one that only he can see in his head. There were parts where I found descriptions to be sorely lacking. Scenes with lots of conversation bouncing between multiple characters were especially tough on me, since these work well on a big screen when the audience can follow the speakers visually, but it doesn't fly so well on the written page. And in a book like this, there certainly were a crapload of characters to keep track of.

Those were the two main obstacles I had to overcome, but apart from them I have to say this was very enjoyable. I was sucked in completely somewhere between the first couple of chapters -- after prisoners Loch and Kail escape their sentences and start planning their heist by recruiting other thieves and other talented individuals to their cause. No shocker that this book has been described as Ocean's Eleven meets fantasy, as that's pretty much the whole story, with a magical twist.

The first quarter of the novel was probably my favorite part, as it comprised all the character introductions. We have two ex-soldiers-turned-thieves, a tinkerer/lock picker extraordinaire, one talented acrobat, a shape-shifting unicorn, a death priestess and her magical talking hammer, a wizard, and his young friend with a big secret. Like I said before, lots of characters to keep track of. With such a huge cast, I wasn't expecting much terms of character development which under these circumstances would be understandable, but I was nonetheless impressed given the restraints the author had to work with. Each character was unique, given an interesting background and an important role to play. Surprisingly though? My favorite character was the justicar Pyvic, the "inspector" in this story, and not one of the thieves.

One other thing about the characters: I find "group" heist stories are often sausage fests (I mean, look at Ocean's Eleven, Reservoir Dogs, etc.) so I have to say I feel like giving Patrick Weekes a big kudos for writing a book featuring an ensemble which includes quite a few females -- females who aren't there solely there for token purposes or to be romantic interests, I might add! In fact, not counting the talking warhammer, half the team are women. Anyway, this observation did strike me as I was reading, so I just thought I'd add the thought as an aside.

As I was saying, I realize a big cast necessitates taking away from character development somewhat, but I also want to note that it might have taken away from the world-building as well. Though don't get me wrong, what we are given about the setting and its background is adequate and more than enough to follow the book, but I wouldn't have minded a little more description. I gathered that we have a world here which is populated by humans, dwarves and elves. The humans are comprised of different races, defined by geography and history. There's an established political system in place. Multiple tongues are spoken by the people, but at some point one of the characters also spoke French, which was referred as an ancient language. I'm pretty much intrigued with all of it. Weekes obviously put a lot of thought into this world, and it's just a shame he didn't get a chance to fully flesh it out, but then again, I totally get that there's a story to be told and that takes priority.

And that is what drives everything in the end, after all. The story. Full of political intrigue, twists and turns, double crosses and hidden agendas, it's actually quite amazing to me how the author managed to cram all that goodness into this average-length book. It definitely makes up for everything else.

Bottom line: this book is clever, humorous and a lot of fun. If you're looking for a light read with a good action-filled and fast-paced story, you won't be disappointed.(less)

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Dec 30, 2012 Lorina Stephens rated it 2 of 5 stars

The Palace Job, by Patrick Weekes, is a quick, easy read that doesn't require anything of the reader other than being awake. It's pure fantasy pulp, a sort of Ocean's Eleven meets horny unicorn, sentient war hammer, and butch-bitch disinherited baroness.

There isn't much here to grab your attention, no remarkable writing, no ingenious plotting. Weekes' attempt to write book from a black perspective is a bit laughable, with a very white-centric focus. There is a social structure and several insti...more

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Oct 12, 2012 Kelly rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: ebook

I normally start a review with a small plot summary, but so much happened in this novel, my plot summary would not be small. Long story short, Loch and her… I want to call it a ragtag band; her collection of accomplices feel thrown together by circumstances and they are, really. So, Loch and her band set out to steal something, and they do. But a lot of stuff happens along the way. For the long story, you’ll have to read the novel. But, as a review isn’t much of a review without some impressions...more I normally start a review with a small plot summary, but so much happened in this novel, my plot summary would not be small. Long story short, Loch and her… I want to call it a ragtag band; her collection of accomplices feel thrown together by circumstances and they are, really. So, Loch and her band set out to steal something, and they do. But a lot of stuff happens along the way. For the long story, you’ll have to read the novel. But, as a review isn’t much of a review without some impressions, here are some clues as to what you’ll find along the way.

There is a death priestess. She used to be a love priestess, but things change. She has a talking hammer who used to be a king. (Things change, eh?) The hammer is a member of this band; it talks, it is assigned a share of the proceeds. So is the sixteen year old virgin with the incomparable name ‘Dairy’. I loved Dairy. I cheered when they took him along and made him a part of the crew. I just had a feeling he’d be important—and he was cute. They have a magician who can spin illusions, a safe cracker and her extremely athletic, talented and lethal sidekick, a unicorn (yes, a unicorn) and Loch’s faithful comrade in arms, Kail.

These are the good guys. Then there are the accomplices and if I start listing the villains, we’ll be here all day. There’s a lot going on, but the beauty of this novel is I didn’t get lost once. We’ve all read long and complicated books with a horde of characters and several intertwined plots where we have to flip back a page or a chapter to refresh our memory of who is who and what on earth is going on, right? Patrick Weekes tosses nine balls in the air (this ragtag band) and keeps them spinning while adding plates and dancing a jig. It’s an impressive feat and makes for a rip-roaring good read.

Loch recruits her band after escaping from prison. On her trail are the prison Warden, who will not be made a fool of (but who is, repeatedly), a justicar, who is justice, and the woman responsible for putting her in prison. Several other parties are interested in Loch, including the man responsible for all the evil, the Archvoyant who killed her family and stole the treasure she wants to steal back. This would be enough to carry a novel, but The Palace Job also includes politics and themes: family, redemption, love. Good versus Evil.

Loch is always one step ahead of her cohorts and enemies, a fact I failed to recognise over and over, meaning I perched on the edge of several seats, knuckles white, wondering how she would extract herself and her companions from this mess. Despite the fantastic setting of the novel, however—a world where the palaces cling to an island suspended in the sky on crystals powered by the sun—the plots and foils all seemed plausible. From my perspective, anyway.

The book is also funny, which comes as no surprise. Patrick Weekes is a writer for BioWare’s Mass Effect games which include a grim and gritty storyline underscored with humour, dark and light, and incredible humanity. So, the fact his characters in The Palace Job all feel very real is no surprise, either. Finally, the intertwined plots and separate quests, the reasons this ragtag band clicks together seamlessly, despite the fact it shouldn’t, work. No thread is forgotten and no storyline is left untended, meaning the conclusion is satisfying for all involved.

The Palace Job is a remarkable first novel. I look forward to reading more from Patrick Weekes.

Written for and originally published at SFCrowsnest.(less)

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Dec 02, 2012 Lindsey Duncan rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: funny-fantasy

I'm going to be tough on aspects of this book, but before I do, I just have to state this upfront as the most important point: this book made me gleeful.

The Palace Job is best described as a high fantasy novel crossed with a heist movie, with loving emulation of the latter in the characters, the patter, the elaborate scheme, the hidden agendas, and the magitech that stands in credibly for laser grids and state-of-the-art security systmes. The latter aspect is done particularly well: it's evocati...more I'm going to be tough on aspects of this book, but before I do, I just have to state this upfront as the most important point: this book made me gleeful.

The Palace Job is best described as a high fantasy novel crossed with a heist movie, with loving emulation of the latter in the characters, the patter, the elaborate scheme, the hidden agendas, and the magitech that stands in credibly for laser grids and state-of-the-art security systmes. The latter aspect is done particularly well: it's evocative enough to be loving homage, well-described enough that the reader can follow along, yet seamless and logical when considered in context of the fantasy setting. The team that Loch assembles is a motley crew with several briefly outlined but still satisfying personal side-stories ... but I think I would have preferred a little bit more focus on them, especially the romantic subplots. For instance, one of the characters is betrayed, and I would have loved to see his emotional response.

The humor in this book is wonderful and largely timeless - it relies on running gags, character quirks and interplay, and the occasional pun ... rarely supplemented by parallels to our modern world. The pace snaps right along ... until the actual raid, when I felt it got bogged down in too many people trying to accomplish too much, which inevitably takes too many pages. Here's where the attempt to translate a heist movie to a written medium falls down a bit: what could be handled in 5-10 minute montage ends up taking 30-40 pages. It takes longer to read, absorb and keep track of those pages than it does to do the same with the visual montage. This is a tough problem, and I can't really hold it against Weekes that it wasn't perfectly handled.

Another part of the heist movie trope that I thought suffered in translation was the trick / trap that the characters have planned, but the reader / viewer doesn't know about until afterwards. There's a lot of "all will be become clear" in a movie that I feel just doesn't work in a book. Personally, I couldn't suspend my confusion for long enough - I found myself going back to ensure I hadn't missed something. I don't think the book would have been ruined by giving us a few more internal clues as to what lay ahead.

Yes, I'm critical of this book ... but I would definitely recommend it, because ultimately, I loved it. It has the perfect blend of the familiar and the surprising, both a touching tribute to the heist story and its own, unique tale. It even made me tear up once. Check this one out.(less)

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Sep 28, 2012 Sarah (Workaday Reads) rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: canadian, read-in-2012, 5-star-in-2012

This is a humourous action-packed story that is full of surprises. The idea of a magical heist that is comparable to Ocean’s 11 sounds incredibly fun, and this book does not disappoint.

The characters are an eclectic group that really fit together well. I loved them all, but I especially loved Kail. His mother bashing comments made me laugh every time. They lent a simple yet familiar element to the story. In fantasy world with active magic, the fact that mother bashing generates the same reaction...more

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Feb 20, 2013 Annah Lång rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fantasy

I think the best way to describe this book is to compare it to a good action movie.
This may discourage a lot of people, but bear with me. It's got nice characters that are more or less archetypes all of them but with enough spice to make them actual characters you care about. It does show that Mr Weekes strong point is, as he puts it himself, witty banter, swashbuckling and general action. It's a quick read, it's funny and the story is well constructed.
The only thing that may scare potential rea...more

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Oct 16, 2012 Laura rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: high-fantasy

What an awesome book! Weekes established a fantastic worldc, and even more fantastic characters. There was just enough back story for each character that by the time things started to get real, I cared for each and every one of them. And excited to see budding romance. :) But I'm a sap and look for it everywhere.

So great. :) I'll be looking forward to more from Weekes.

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Sep 30, 2012 Kana marked it as to-read

Shelves: e-galley

Summary
Received copy from Publisher.

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Dec 30, 2012 Jacqueline rated it 3 of 5 stars

It was a fun escape but not a super easy read. It was a pleasant read and I enjoyed it.

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Oct 23, 2012 T rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: thieves, fantasy, tbb-2012

Book was ok. First half was a bit dull, but got better during the heist. Terrible formatting for the ePub version, lots of mistakes (double words, no paragraph breaks, 1'11) that pulled me out of the book.

07/11/12 edit: Got the corrected e-versions (I checked the epub and pdf), still a lot of mistakes. Don't bother with the e-versions, hopefully the physical copy is free of these mistakes.

17/01/13 edit: There's still mistakes in the Dec corrected edition. (A mistake caused by a correction in fac...more

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Oct 15, 2012 Stephanie Ryder lum rated it 4 of 5 stars

I've always appreciated a good heist novel, and The Palace Job fits the bill. Just be sure to read it in one go - I left it for a week and got lost as to who was who and had to start over. Worth it, though.

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Sep 17, 2012 Wealhtheow marked it as to-read

Shelves: fantasy

described as ocean's 11 meets the princess bride.

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Oct 25, 2012 Katharine rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-2012, review

Review to come soon.

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Oct 01, 2012 Ornella rated it 5 of 5 stars

Awesome book! Review to come.

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Jan 26, 2013 Sherry Ramsey rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-2013

This should really be 3.5 stars, but silly Goodreads...just not enough gradations for me. :) I liked the ensemble cast of this fantasy/caper, and the writing style was quick and easy. The plot got a little bogged down here and there, but for the most part it was fast-paced, with lots of snappy dialogue, diverse characters, and an interesting world-landscape.

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Mar 10, 2013 Ale rated it 4 of 5 stars

Funny, witty, and incredibly addicting. Very few books these days keep me reading until late at night, and this one of them. The characters are very well crafted, and the plot moves quickly, with surprises at every corner. I wasn't crazy about the ending, but other than that, very much enjoyed this book.

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May 20, 2013 Donna marked it as to-read

May 19, 2013 Nonzerosumness marked it as to-read

Shelves: iml

May 17, 2013 Benedek marked it as to-read

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The Palace Job

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