The Thief

The Thief is a young adult fantasy novel by Megan Whalen Turner, published in 1996 by Greenwillow Books. It is the first book of her Queen's Thief series, and it was a runner-up for the Newbery Medal in 1997.

Gen is in prison for boasting about a theft he may or may not have committed, and the king's magus has a use for him. The bargain is a journey: Gen is taken along to steal an object that belongs to the gods, and the party's progress across the country is the book's main action, with the theft at the end. What Gen tells the reader along the way is part of the puzzle, because he is a man who says more than he means and less than he knows.

Turner writes in Gen's voice and keeps the reader as uninformed as the magus's companions, and the series continued into further volumes set in the same country, with later books following other members of its court and reading the same events from another side.