And, yes, they say make your blog entries short and pithy, but when I get my rant on it's hard to stop, Explains why the books tend to break the 200,000 word barrier, certainly.

And before I start, the Shadows of the Apt Wiki has just had a superb facelift, so go check it out!.

OK, apropos of nothing save my recent Christopher Priest binge, secondary worlds for real, or for make believe:

Getting past any initial objections about considering the reality of fictional worlds, when sundry children found their way into Narnia this was presented as a real place. You’d have to stretch the text past breaking point to find an interpretation where it was all, as Edmund originally claims, just a game, imagination by consensus. Narnia exists, insofar as the books are concerned. It’s a real place, as real as the “real world”, and indeed set within a wider multiverse of linked worlds (and aren’t those parts of The Magician’s Nephew actually more intriguing than actual Narnia itself?).

There are similar stories where the balance of probabilities tilts strongly the other way, though: that the fantastic world is the product of imagination, or even mental disorder. This can also be found in work intended for a younger audience. The film Bridge to Terebithia, for example, is pretty much impossible to interpret as a genuine fantastical encounter. Although we see the world the children “visit” it’s  explicitly all in their heads.

Or the reality of the secondary world is up for grabs. Of the “big three,” for example, Wonderland could go either way, although as it is essentially a satire (indeed a mirror, in the 2^nd) of the real, a “realist” argument possibly carries more weight. On the contrary, Neverland and Oz are both presented as very real (save perhaps in the best-known filming of Oz, where they chicken out) and both Barry and Baum go as far as to present their fantastic worlds as superior and preferable to the actual one. It’s a bold move that I think would cause difficulties today – the idea of children retreating into a fantasy world being a good thing would catch a lot of flak from conservative critics (1).

Fiction aimed at adult/older audiences also shows this uncertainty. Leaving aside Walter Mitty(2), whilst the phenomenal film Pan’s Labyrinth looks on first viewing to be about a child escaping a traumatic home environment by taking refuge in her fantasies, it’s quite possible to watch through on the basis that it’s all real, and arguably that brings a more satisfying (certainly less depressing) closure to the film.

For me, I’m an unregenerate fantasist. A secondary world presented as a therapeutic tool or delusion to be escaped from in order to find wholeness is always a bit of a let down for me – “it was all a dream” sort of thing. Terebithia was a well-made film, and heavy with meaning and poignancy and all that, but at the same time the Scooby Doo of it left me feeling empty. Just my personal take, but I’ll go some distance to find a reading that will give that world reality.

Iain Banks pulls some interesting sleight of hand with some of his early “mainstream” books. On the face of it, The Bridge is a look into the damaged mind of an accident victim trying to find his way out of his own injury, and that’s the standard reading I think. The world of the Bridge that we’re presented with, however, is fascinating and bizarre, a kind of mix of Kafka and Gormenghast stretched over the unending structure of the title – it seems almost too much to be just a fleeting construct. The world is a satisfying one in its own right (lord knows there have been straight out secondary worlds with less depth (length, breadth?) than that of the bridge.)

What precisely is going on in Banks’ Walking on Glass is even more uncertain. It’s like Lao Tzu and the butterfly – anyone’s guess as to who is dreaming who. Banks, of course, has something of a unique relationship with the bookshelf, having his two personas, ostensibly genre and non-. Whilst a number of his “non-M” books are solidly rooted in the real world, one wonders how much of a sly game he’s playing with the critics. Transitions, the latest “non-M”, has a great deal of topical relevance, but although it sits there on the general fiction shelves it’s surely a stretch to read it as anything other than flat out world-switching science fiction. With that in mind, it’s worth a re-reading of The Bridge and Walking on Glass with an eye to the reality of the fantasies presented.

The secondary world can also decline in reality as a series goes on. M. John Harrison’s Viriconium sequence, for example (3), kicks off with some epic far-future dying earth fantasy that could link arms with Jack Vance or Michael Moorcock, but each iteration of the setting brings more uncertainty and a greater distance. The very reality of the world is explicitly malleable, the issues at stake become more nebulous and less epic, the heroes less classically heroic, until we are left with “A Young Man’s Journey to Viriconium”, locked out of the world that we have known, left with nothing but the real, and maddening, unfulfilling whispers. At the end of our journey, we are forced to ask if any of it was actually real, or just our own delusion (4).

But it can go the other way. I give you Christopher Priest’s The Affirmation, where the main character is a Londoner who has a breakdown and ends up torn between the demands of the real, and the fantastic “Dream Archipelago” as he tries to address his own past and identity. Simple. Except it’s Priest, so it’s not at all. The protagonist has written an ‘autobiography’ that is not only inaccurate but takes place in the Archipelago, another world. The “him” in the Archipelago has memory issues and has to rely on an account he wrote that is set in our world. Although I suspect the mainstream reading of the book is “real world man with mental health issues suffers from delusions” it can be read the other way, it really can.

And then Mr P brings out The Dream Archipelago, and, very recently, The Islanders, the first a collection of stories set in the Archipelago’s fully detailed world (with no concessions at all to the real one) and the second a purported travel guide interspersed with short fiction, much of which relates to the stories and characters of the original, making the whole enterprise something remarkable and possibly unprecedented as a literary endeavour. But the Archipelago has its own reality, however much it cannot be mapped or quantified.  It is that rare thing, a modern secondary world – not an alternate history, not a possible future, but a world that (post-Affirmation) has no concrete link to ours, and yet is recognisably on a par with our 20^th/21^st century existence (5). Indeed — and with the caveat that, like Gene Wolfe, you can’t take anything Priest writes at face value — arguably Islanders is more fantastic than Archipelago – there’s one story pair, mentioning no names, where the Archipelago original seemed to be strongly indicative of repressed traumatic memories in the narrator, but where it’s Islander “counterpart” pretty much says, “No, that horrifying crap was real.” Priest has therefore given us a world that has gone from a dream of mental imbalance to a self-contained reality over three volumes. Of course, his next one, should he revisit the islands, might turn it all on its head again.

(1)   Unless, possibly, that fantasy world had strong Christian overtones.

(2)   Unrelated, but it is an odious thing when someone is described in the press as “something of a Walter Mitty character,” because this seems to be wheeled out specifically to describe a shyster who has taken advantage of other people and ruined their lives, but whom we are apparently supposed to dismiss as a harmlessly deslusional/loveable rogue. Digression over.

(3)   Firmly on my list of “You Must Read This” books/series.

(4)   The reworking "A Young Man's Journey to London" (in Things that Never Happen) is cited by some reviewers as Harrison 'making peace' with his earlier genre work, and though I can't comment on this, not being up on the history, it's a welcome reading but not what I took away from the story. To me it seemed to be continuing the trajectory of the original story, taking us further out and killing/excising Viriconium altogether. I found it an unsettling read but I'd be happy to find I was reading it wrong.

(5)   There is a whole extra post in this topic.

Secondly… (dramatic chord) … I have started the second chapter of book 10 today! I was under the delusion that it was the first chapter when I wrote it, but have had second thoughts since. The last book in the series promises to be somewhat nerve-wracking to write. Y'know, no pressure…

I have had sight of a draft alt fiction schedule. I'm down for "untitled fantasy panel". Kind of hard to research that topic, but watch this space.

Lastly, an article in today's Metro (3) that provoked some bewilderment. "Dust off that novel, new app could make you a best seller." This is Apple's "Author" app, and my real beef with the article was the discrepancy between what the headline seemed to promise and the subsequent proud reportage, stated in such a way as to imply that this is the app's primary source of authorial gold dust: "It allows users to drag a word file into the programme, which automatically lays it out with the appropriate chapters and headings." I mean, thank God! Because where the chapter headings go is always the part of the writing process that really causes me difficulties.

Apparently it's all very multimedia, allowing easy inserts for videos (4) and things, and anything you make with it will only be marketable via Apple's own iBookstore/iTunes outlets, which promises controversy.

(1) Yes, I get my information on when my own books are being released from Amazon. This is the world we live in.

(2) On second thoughts I'm not entirely sure what that means. Just accost me instead.

(3) If you're wondering, it's a free newspaper randomly distributed about the UK's public transport network. It has Nemi in it.

(4) This seems to be an alarming attempt to up the ante, especially for epic fantasy. Am I supposed to be collaborating with Peter Jackson on my next one or something? (5)

(5) If you're reading this, Mr Jackson, seriously it would be an honour

These are the fantasy awards, after the David of the same name, voted for by you, the readers.

If anyone would like to support the home team (2), voting is accomplished here. Also up for grabs are the Morningstar Award for best newcomer and the Ravenheart award for best cover art. Go cast your stones (3)!

(1) Can you say "Split vote"?

(2) Or, you know, vote for someone else, but I may never forgive you.

(3) Now I've written that, it looks weird.

Janine already has a body of work out there, of a somewhat different sort, but shortly she will be bringing out her first Arabian Nights fantasy, Heart of Flame, which was published as an ebook by Samhain on 20^th December 2011, and will be out in paperback later this year.

JA: Hi Adrian. Thanks for having me here on your blog!

AT: So, honing my interviewing skills: What's the lowdown on Heart of Flame?

JA: Well, it’s a fantasy-romance  – you can probably tell that from the cover style, heh.  My heroine, Taqla, is a sorceress  in 9^th century Damascus. When the Amir’s beautiful daughter is kidnapped by a djinni, she agrees to help merchant-traveller Rafiq ( a Sinbad type) rescue the girl, because she’s fallen in love with him. But she can’t tell him that. She can’t even let on that she’s female – she’s in magical disguise. They set off on this quest which ends up becoming more complex and dangerous and crazy as they go on, dragging them into wilder and weirder places – swamps, ancient temples, desert ruins, cities halfway across the world — and getting them into seriously deep trouble with undead emperors and pagan gods and hungry ghouls. This is all before they even tackle the djinni…

AT: This is a departure from your previous writing?

JA:  Yes; there’s a lot more plot … and a whole lot less sex. My normal genre is erotica. Heart of Flame is a romance, and it’s not even a straight romance because there’s so much of the magic/monsters/adventure element. So, cross-genre. But the romance is still pretty steamy. If you read the uncensored One Thousand and One Nights, there is an unabashed sexual element there.

AT: The mythic Middle-east is an area I've not seen a good take on in a while, in fantasy fiction. Where are you drawing your setting from?

JA: It’s a fantasy version of the real 9^th Century Middle East – and let’s be honest, it’s very much the Thief-of-Baghdad, Golden-Voyage-of-Sinbad Arabian Nights. I’m not an Arabic historian. My starting point was a translation of the traditional 1001 Nights, strongly larded with the Ray Harryhausen-era  Hollywood movies I grew up with.

I also used a lot of 19^th Century Orientalist art, by people like Jean-Léon Gérôme, as inspiration. These are wonderful, photo-realistic-looking paintings of a Middle East that was only just opening up to the Victorian West. But again, even those depict an exoticised, prurient, filtered version of reality, intended as entertainment as much as education.

I did my historical research too, I hasten to add!  Philip Hitti’s History of the Arabs was my bible. It’s just full of the most wonderful incident and detail. I love it. And I’ve been lucky enough to visit Syria and Jordan and Egypt. I did call on those experiences.

AT: How does your setting contrast to its historical counterpart?

JA: I’ve been historically accurate where I can – I use some historic personages like Caliph Al-Ma’mun, and the scholar Ibn Ishaq of the House of Wisdom, who sets my heroes off to find the answer to a riddle — though I did mess with the dates very slightly. The main thing I bore in mind was that I was writing in a mythological setting, so facts were subservient to the Arabian  Nights ‘look’ of the thing. Rafiq fights with a scimitar (which were really a later introduction: Arabic swords at the time were straight). He drinks cardamom-flavoured coffee with fellow merchants (coffee probably hadn’t reached Baghdad from Yemen at the time).  He plays backgammon and smokes a hubble-bubble pipe (tobacco an obvious anachronism, and the water-pipe was a C16th Indian invention). But honestly, that sort of thing is as integral to the Arabian Nights as genies and magic rings – I couldn’t do without them!

AT: What sort of fantastical elements can we expect  — a lot of fantasy at the moment is relatively low-magic and gritty — where does Heart of Flame fall on that scale?

JA: Hah! Old-fashioned high-magic fantasy, I’m afraid. My heroes travel on a magical silver horse, otherwise they’d never reach the places they have to go to. Taqla uses her sorcery to get them out of all sorts of trouble. They meet various monsters, including one holy one, that come out of Arabic and Persian legend. They parlay with an animated statue and a dead man made of flies. And then there are several djinn … and that scary scary angel …

AT: What would you give as your sources of inspiration?

JA:  My inspiration as a writer has always been Angela Carter. Lyrical but totally unsentimental, she lulls you with her fairy-tale prose and then sticks you with something really cruel. In Heart of Flame you’ll also find some sneaky nods to my other favourite writer, H P Lovecraft: there’s a copy of The Necronomicon in the House of Wisdom (under its Arabic name, of course) and the ghouls are Lovecraftian as well as Arabic. This may be the first time anyone has ever snuck the Cthulhu Mythos into a romance novel.  I would like to think so!

AT: How about film and TV depictions of similar settings. For me, I'd put forward the Hallmark Arabian Nights TV Movie as a surprisingly good shot at the genre.

JA: Yes, I enjoyed that: lush, clever and romantic. The tattooed genie from their Aladdin stayed with me as the mental image of my djinni antagonist. I’ve also watched Pasolini’s artsy 1974 version (lots of boobs), but didn’t much like Prince of Persia despite the pretty CGI scenery. The fact that their entire cast was white struck me as … inexcusably cowardly.

My favourite version is still The Thief of Baghdad: given that it was made in 1940, its cheesiness is completely excusable.  Oh, what I wouldn’t give to have a movie version of Heart of Flame with Ray Harryhausen animated monsters!

AT: A great deal of fantasy settings that include a middle-eastern-ish culture tend towards the "religious fanatic adversary" type, and obvious, in the West, that entire part of the world is a sensitive cultural and political issue. Has that influenced the book, and how did you approach that?

JA: It’s impossible not be aware of current events and political attitudes, even when writing a historical fantasy. I did try to be careful. Well, you know me: I’m not naturally the soul of tact and sensitivity…

I mention mosques but don’t set any scenes in them. I mention the Qu’ran once, but I don’t mention the Prophet.  I use the word “God.” My heroes aren’t pious but they are respectful Muslims. The thing to remember is that the Islam of the 9^th Century Abbasid Empire, the “Golden Age of Islam,” was not the same as modern fundamentalism. It was urbane, scholarly and tolerant. Jews and Christians of various sects were part of society.  People drank wine. And Caliph Al Ma’mun imposed a rationalist, non-literalist theology, heavily influenced by Greek science and philosophy.

So yeah, it’s possible that I might offend someone. But you can’t stop people taking offence if they want to. My intentions are certainly positive, for what it’s worth. Rafiq and Taqla are my heroes, after all.

Okay, I’ve probably burbled on enough. Thanks, Adrian!

Anyway:

I'm not going to lie to you, it's been a rough ride. I'm slick with blood up to the elbows, and my normal protests that the story unfolds of its own momentum, with minimal fiddling from me, are starting to sound like the officer who tries to shed his guilt by claiming he was only obeying orders. There have been a lot of crunch points in the books so far (look at how Salute the Dark turns out) and The Air War is going to have its share, but book 9 has some moments that sent me away from the keyboard for a bit of a lie down until my hands stopped shaking. I've said goodbye to a few friends, over the last handful of months (2).

After all, we're getting towards the end of the final plot arc. These things are only to be expected.

There's a lot of work ahead, obviously — first off I've got to print it off and re-read it on paper, to pick up all those inconsistencies that have crept in, and ensure it's actually as satisfactory as my memory currently claims it is. In the meanwhile, I'm revisiting 8 while I go through the edits on that, which makes an interesting juxtaposition, as book 9 is somewhat of a sequel to 7 and 8 together.

Next stop: Book 10 — "Seal of the Worm", a phrase that Air War will illuminate somewhat. However, I'm hopeful that I'll get some short stories done first so watch this space.

(1) or: "whatever the hell we end up calling it", but I'm quite happy with "War Master's Gate".

(2) This is sounding a bit like JK Rowling's dire portents during the Harry Potter series. Yes, it's true, General Tynan does put Dumbledore on the crossed pikes. It's dramatic necessity.

You may recall my story The Dissipation Club that was published in the collection "Dead but Dreaming 2" — I also submitted a story for a similar collection from Miskatonic River Press, "Horror for the Holidays", and it's currently looking as though that's been accepted. The story is "Season of Sacrifice and Resurrection" and is more canonically Lovecraftian, albeit without mentioning any Names. Fun stuff. "Horror for the Holidays" is currently down as "available soon".

I'm also having a story published in an Andy Remic–edited anthology under the title "Vivisepulture" — this will be available as an ebook, and the story is called Pipework, featuring an altogether nastier exploit of my supernatural detective Walther Cohen (star of The Dissipation Club and a few others that have yet to see the light of day.). Other authors in that collection include such august names as Neil Asher, Guy N. Smith, Ian Watson, Ian Whates, Gary McMahon and a number of other serious heavy-hitters from the fantasy/horror genre — including Andy himself. It's likely to be strong stuff.

Finally, and most peculiarly, I'm contributing to a collection of stories and articles that Storm Constantine is putting together on the theme of World of Warcraft, to be entitled "What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been: Wilderness Survival Tips from the World of Warcraft (1)". I'm contributing an article about hunters (and the insects that love them), and also a piece of fiction, The Indecipherables in partnership with Justina Robson in which we mercilessly have a go at a considerable amount of WoW lore and intellectual property.

Finally — a reminder — signing in Oxford Saturday 19th November Waterstones, 12–2, Signing at Thought Bubble, Leeds, 1-2pm Sunday 20th. In between, much scurrying from place to place. Finally Friday 16th December 12–2 is the Leeds Waterstones.

(1) And even though I play the damn game I can't write, read or hear that without thinking of the South Park episode.

It ties in some ways with a future blog piece I intend to do some time, in which I track my dirty fantasy feet into the august halls of SF to talk about the current utopia/dystopia split in the sort of SF I'm reading, which I think has some interesting patterns. Now I've mentioned these intentions I fully expect to be silenced by fantasy's Big Brother for daring to open my vile elves-and-dragons-writing mouth about it . Perhaps the Clarke award will send "The Hunter" after me for my temerity…

However, there's SF and there's SF, and what I really have to say in this blog post is directed at the trailer for The Darkest Hour. And what I say to it is, "Really, Darkest Hour trailer, really? Because that's, like, the lamest alien invasion scheme since the Martians forgot to get their jabs, or maybe those other guys from that other film who were allergic to water, and came to one of the few places in the galaxy where it's at." (2)

Now bear in mind I'm working from the trailer only, here, so maybe the film makes sense of it. Many's the trailer that fails to represent the film it's publicising, although seldom does the trailer actually screw it over. So, what you're saying, Darkest Hour trailer, is that the aliens have a three stage plan: 1. Invade, check. 2. Eat all the electricity, check. 3. Kill all life.… er, what now? So, hold on, invisible alien menace, where do you think all that yummy electricity comes from? Have you heard the goose/golden egg saying? Isn't that like someone trying to secure a supply of hamburgers by wiping all cows from the face of the earth? Meh. Go back to your invisible spaceship and think it over. Just sign up with PowerGen or something.

And also — hold on, they eat electricity, but when they're around, they make electric-powered things work, like lightbulbs and car radios and, apparently, trams (2=3). OK, that does make for a really nice sort of horror thing, where you can have lightbulbs going on as the equivalent of T-Rex's ripples in the water, but isn't that like them vomiting up their dinner everywhere they go? What sort of crazy-ass inefficient metabolism do these invisible aliens have, exactly? Yeah, I totally had those human kids, but then I chucked up so hard I made a tram go, and they got away?

(1) Children of Men is in the same sort of category, and one of my favourite films ever. Also see Equilibrium which, while it didn't hit it off with me in the same way, has some really nice little touches exploring the whole "sensation" theme throughout the movie.

(2) I did not actually shout this out in the cinema, but I was thinking it pretty damn hard.

(3) Is this a spoiler? I don't think it's a spoiler if they put it in the trailer.

They're a staple of fantasy fiction that goes back to its most influential roots (1), and recently there's been a grand resurgence of books specifically showcasing thief leads.

(1) And I'm not qualified to go into the whole mythic archetype businss but, suffice to say, legendary tricksters and thieves show a basic character type that's probably as old as stories themselves.

Putting my RPG hat on for a moment, but let's make the grossly inaccurate simplification of three hero types — strength-based, wits-based and magic-based. Of these the warrior sorts are arguably the most prevalent and the most distinct from the other two. The warrior's first recourse is threat, direct confrontation and violence. That doesn't mean he doesn't have other strings to his enormously overpowered bow, but he meets trouble head on — look at the majority of David Gemmell heroes — or Conan, for example. Conan outwits or outmanoeuvres a lot of opponents, but generally when their particular abilities mean that he can't just stick a sword in their ear.

Magic heroes tend to shade somewhat into, usually, the thief part of the venn diagram. Magical heroes seldom resort to their magic in the first instance, and their magic is also generally less reliable than the warrior's brawn (it has all sorts of limits, or the story would be very short and quite dull). Magic heroes therefore tend to borrow heavily from the thieves in solving problems with their wits (Ged from Earthsea, Kvothe from Name of the Wind (2)) and/or their lore and acquired knowledge (which is where they start to deviate from the thieves who tend to be brick ignorant about most higher things). Some of them also fall back on the inner warrior, with Elric as a prime example — but the key thing about a magic hero is that it's the magic that defines him as a character. Whatever else he has, he is a wizard first and foremost, set apart from the host of muggles who, usually, regard him with suspicion. This archetype works perfectly well even if there is no magic at all — it's the perception of the wizard that makes it (Merlin in Cornwell's Arthurian series is a good one — is he magic, is he not, we just don't know). But I'm basically now writing the wrong blog entry. Thieves, then.

(2) A very thiefy magician.

A thief's first resort is his stealth and/or wits. The tricky, slippery thief often ends up in a fight, but seldom by choice and only when all else fails. There are some obvious and much-loved examples, but I'll fling a couple of names out — Leiber's Gray Mouser (3) from Lankhmar, and Tolkien's Bilbo Baggins. Seriously — OK, his being labelled a 'thief' is some clumsy racial stereotyping from Gandalf that has tarred every diminutive fantasy character ever since (4) but Bilbo is a sneak and trickster born, and he deals with almost all of his problems by outthinking his opponents — trolls, Gollum — he even gets the dirt on Smaug.

(3) Yes, Mouser knows some magic, but it pretty much drops out of the books by the end of the first one.

(4) Yes, even Fly-kinden. But they're tricksy, you see. Can't trust them.

So, who are the new usual suspects? I have four of them to lead into the interview room in just a minute, but it's worth noting that the genre is stepping beyond the stereotypical cutpurse and second story man. Traditionally, thieves steal by the fairly direct means of taking things without consent — whether from rich merchant's houses or cursed temples (5). Where they are a supporting character, usually backing up the warrior, they provide lockpicking, comic relief and local knowledge, and occasionally death with pathos. Where they are the lead, generally, they defy vastly more powerful enemies and walk off with their loot. Finally, most fantasy thieves are urban — even if they leave their home city they are usually back.

(5) Possibly only once.

However: tonight on the couch with me and stealing my wallet are:

- Locke Lamora, from Scott Lynch's The Lies of, well, Locke Lamora;

- Easie Demasco, from David Tallerman's The Giant Thief;

- Drothe, from Douglas Hulick's Among Thieves; and

- Warden, from Daniel Polansky's The Straight Razor Cure.

All of these have the classic thief's arsenal — they get through life by their wits, they resort to violence as a last resort rather than a first, and they defeat their enemies by being smarter, instead of faster or stronger. However, they're all stepping away from the stock fantasy thief as seen in some earlier books, and a thousand D&D campaigns.

The first thing that really strikes me is that none of this new rogue's gallery is actually the traditional fantasy thief. Locke is a con artist gulling the wealthy of their money with fantastically elaborate schemes, Easie is a thief, but far more of a roving rural type — something like Autolycus rather than the Gray Mouser (6) (8), Drothe is a professional informant, and Warden is a drug dealer by current trade. They also interact with the rest of the underworld quite differently — the traditional fantasy thief tends to live in a world where there is a Thieves' Guild (and often just the one weirdly unified organisation — enough so that Pratchett has great fun with the idea in his earlier books) but is usually no friend of it, and tends to be a rogue thief (9), loner (or working with a single partner) and freelancer. Conversely, Locke has his own gang, and it meshes into an overall network of other gangs under a nominal leader, Easie's world has no more of a guild than thieves who know other thieves (or at least we don't see it), Drothe is an integral part of a large and organised gang, which is itself part of a complex and constantly shifting gang picture across his city. Warden is aggressively a freelancer, in a city where most vice is controlled by warring gangs.

(6) That's Autolycus from The Winter's Tale (7), not Xena.

(7) And that's Shakespeare, not Helprin.

(8) Which I am constantly typing "The Grey Mauser" for some reason.

(9) Honestly not sure about the phrase "rogue thief"

Aside from Easie, however, they all maintain the thief's traditional urban haunts, although the cities have moved on from the MGM Middle Ages that a lot of fantasy used to take place in  - Lynch and Hulick's cities have a definite rennaisance feel, and Polansky's setting feels like a weird fantasy version of the 20's/30's crime scene, with ethnic gangs and a Great War in the recent past. In fact, as Warden himself is the equivalent of an ex-cop, and his story plays out far more like that of a PI than an actual criminal, there is a very pulp detective feel to the endeavour.

The other thing that caught my attention was the view of magic — and I think this reflects the changing attitude to magic across fantasy writing in general at the moment. Lankhmar was so full of magic you couldn't lob a brick without hitting two gods and a dimension-travelling wizard, but there was more magic in the secondary world in those days, and we have entered an age where the mystical takes more of a back seat to the physical. Easie's world has the fantastic without necessarily having the magical — there's nothing overtly supernatural about the giant of the title for example. Magicians figure prominently in Locke's life, to his detriment, but they have been reduced to money-minded, vindictive hirelings, with obvious parallels between their guild and the organisations of the thieves themselves (save that the thieves are far more congenial company). In The Straight Razor Cure (10) there are some serious wizards, but as in Locke's world, magic does not command, but serves, and the plot includes references to a magician corps that acted as combined special forces/artillery during the war. Among Thieves has a slightly different angle — the world is more overtly magical, with an Empire run by an eternally reincarnating Emperor who's going off his rocker generation by generation, but that sort of magic is for the high-ups — Drothe himself is no magician, but he knows and makes use of practitioners in the same way as he would do any specialist expert. Magic intruding on his world (and it's a major plot point) is something he could live without.

(10) And frankly that is one of the best titles for a book I've seen in a long time.

Finally, there's morality. Everyone knows that fantasy thieves, after all, have hearts of gold, and that their larceny always ends up serving the greater good. But that kind of Dick Van Dyke cheeky chirpy thief (usually a sidekick too) has also gone the way of all stereotypical things, and (again a representation of the current mores of fantasy) we're left with a much more ambiguous tapestry. Locke is perhaps the closest — as a con man, after all, he robs from the rich (because there's no point enacting elaborate confidence tricks on the poor), and he has an intriguing religious angle as well that sets him apart. Easie, on the other hand, spends pretty much the whole book trying desperately not to do the right thing, and his struggle with his own self interest forms the core dynamic of the book. Conversely, as I've noted, although Warden is a drug pusher (and addict) — mostly to the rich and powerful it's true — he is also a man who can't ignore his moral compass — and interestingly he lives in a world where crime matters far more: however gritty his world, the abduction and death of a single child is a matter of public outcry and attention, whilst in many settings it would be lost in the background noise. Hence Warden spends more time playing thief-taker than actual thief.

Perhaps most intriguing, from the morality point of view, is Drothe. We first see our hero having someone brutally tortured for information: he's not a nice man. However, he looks after his own, whether it's the people he lodges with, or his fellow Kin (thieves) — he has an extremely complex hierarchy of loyalties, but they make up a big part of his character and motivations, and in the end he is willing to take great personal risks to defend the Kin as a whole against threats from outside. This makes the relationships between thieves and gangs of thieves (and other organisations, such as the weird warrior order that Drothe's closest friend belongs to), their betrayals, shifting alliances and infighting, the focus of the book, all as seen through Drothe's eyes — at the same time cynical about it and inherently invested in it.

That, frankly, is far too long a post. Enough about thieves.