Last year, I read and enjoyed Cornelia Funke’s Inkheart. I saw The Thief Lord in a teacher’s classroom last week, and I decided to pick it up.
It read very quickly–it’s shorter and less dense than Inkheart–and it was an enjoyable story, but it didn’t nearly captivate me in the way that Inkheart did. The Thief Lord is much more a middle-reader novel than a YA one.
The Thief Lord is the story of two young boys, orphans, who are trying to escape the aunt and uncle who have applied for custody of the younger brother, Bo, but want to send the older brother, Prosper, to boarding school.
Prosper and Bo flee to Venice, the city their mother used to tell them stories about. They fall in with a group of street kids with a mysterious leader, Scipio The Thief Lord. Scipio gives the kids a place to live and keeps them warm and fed.
The boys soon find themselves being tailed by a private detective, hired by their aunt.
The story is fun, and it takes some unexpected turns, and even an element of fantasy.
I have just learned, via Amazon, that the book was adapted into a film.
I gave this book 3 stars on my goodreads profile.