A dark and intricate fantasy for readers of The Book of Dust and Leigh Bardugo. City of the Uncommon Thief is the story of a quarantined city gripped by fear and of the war that can free it. Intrigued? Read on to discover the full synopsis and an excerpt for Lynne Bertrand’s City of the Uncommon Thief, which releases on February 9th 2021.
“Guilders work. Foundlings scrub the bogs. Needles bind. Swords tear. And men leave. There is nothing uncommon in this city. I hope Errol Thebes is dead. We both know he is safer that way.”
In a walled city of a mile-high iron guild towers, many things are common knowledge: No book in any of the city’s libraries reveals its place on a calendar or a map. No living beasts can be found within the city’s walls. And no good comes to the guilder or foundling who trespasses too far from their labors.
Even on the tower rooftops, where Errol Thebes and the rest of the city’s teenagers pass a few short years under an open sky, no one truly believes anything uncommon is possible within the city walls.
But one guildmaster has broken tradition to protect her child, and as a result the whole city faces an uncommon threat: a pair of black iron spikes that have the power of both sword and needle on the rib cages of men have gone missing, but the mayhem they cause rises everywhere. If the spikes not found and contained, no wall will be high enough to protect the city–or the world beyond it.
And Errol Thebes? He’s not dead and he’s certainly not safe.
On one of a thousand mile-high roofs of a quarantined guild city, Odd Thebes wakes up late in his travel tent. Last night, two new runners from his guild tower, Thebes, tangled themselves in a petty theft from Fremantle, the regnat’s armory. It was, they thought, a meaningless gut run, a prank, an attempt to acquire an object of local value to prove they had the courage to run the fly-lines…
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Open in new tab About The Author: Lynne Bertrand is the author of two books for very young readers. This is her first book for young adult readers. She works in A&R for a music label and lives with her family in Northampton, MA.
