She will lie, cheat, steal, and betray anyone she needs to with full assurance that such a vow puts her in the right–the ends justify the means. Kazi explains away the majority of her decisions with the excuse that she made a vow to her queen. We are meant to understand that both the protagonists take things that do not belong to them.ĭance of Thieves, however, never really wants to take a hard look at the choices its characters make. The title of the book is Dance of Thieves, after all. He, along with the rest of his kin, accept the necessity–and profitability–of housing blackmarket dealers, physically threatening the opposition, taking half the king’s taxes to care for the city, and chopping off body parts when they need to punish someone or get information. Jase, meanwhile, has to make the hard choices to keep his family’s dynasty running. Kazi may have given up her life of crime on the streets, but she still, as Jase points out, is willing to enter his home under false pretenses and betray his family. And her secrets, combined with Jase’s commitment to his family, threaten to tear the two apart at various moments of the story.īoth Kazi and Jase are meant, I assume, to be morally dubious characters. However, Kazi is searching for a criminal that she believes Jase’s family is harboring. Their romance is quick and sure–being chained together creates intimacy that otherwise might have needed time to grow. They begin badly, with Kazi threatening to cut Jase’s throat, but soon move past that moment as being kidnapped by labor hunters forces them to work together. Read at your own risk!ĭance of Thieves tells the story of Kazi and Jase–one a former thief now working as the queen’s soldier and the other part of a family who recognizes no laws but their own.

Dance of thieves about