Museum of Thieves

Tanner, L. (2010). Museum of thieves. Delacorte Press. 320 pages. ISBN 9780375859786

Primary genre: fantasy

Other elements: friendship, family, coming of age, politics, survival

Intended reader age: 8 and up

Synopsis:

Goldie Roth’s dreams are dashed when her Separation Day is put off because a bombing in the city. The city of Jewel determined long ago that their one precious commodity, their children, must be protected at all costs. They way they now do this is by using silver gaurdchains with their children until they come of age. These gaurdchains keep the children safe, they keep them from wandering from the eyes of adults, and keep them from being taken by kidnappers. So when Goldie is denied her chance at Separation she takes it into her own hands. Now Goldie is a runaway, being chased down by the Blessed Guardians. The only place she can find refuge is the in the Museum of Dunt, but this museum has secrets of its own. When the city put away the terrible things that can happen to keep their children safe, those things had to go somewhere and now they want out.

Review:

This is a book that took me a while to get into. The rules of the world were not very clear from the beginning so that made it slightly difficult to understand everything that was going on. After learning some of the rules though, it became easier to read and I fairly flew through the story. The concept of finding a place for thing as we create new order was one that I encountered first in the Fablehaven series. This idea that as our world changes and we push out old ways of doing things and things we once believed in, that they need somewhere to go, is an interesting one. These things don’t just disappear, someone always remembers.

I thought it was amazing the way that Tanner related the issue of independence after codependence for so long. This is a world where people are always attached to another person for almost their entire day. And at night, they are usually chained to their bed. So when our heroine is faced for the first time with something new and unexpected she does exactly what any normal person under those circumstances does, she freezes. She has never had to handle a dangerous situation because her society has removed all danger. I also like that this girl, Goldie, was not the first to break away from the rules of this society.  Too often it is the main characters in the story who get these brilliant ideas, even though people have been living under these conditions for hundreds of years. I always feel there must have been at least one other person to come to the same conclusions as this character did. But, Tanner does not ignore that possibility, she admits that this has happened but the fears are so ingrained in everyone else that those other people were not able to make a difference.

There are now two other book sin the series and I am greatly looking forward to checking them out. The second book is City of Lies and the third is Path of Beasts. This book definitely left it open for the characters to continue and I am interested to see where they go.

I think I like this one more than the one on top.