The best fantasy books featuring thieves run on nerve. A thief can’t kill his way out of trouble the way an assassin can. He has to talk, climb, lie, or run, and the fun is watching him do all four in the same chapter. Add magic, guilds, and cities full of locked doors, and you get some of the most entertaining books in the genre.
I spent a long time writing about assassins in Alchester, and the character readers ask about most is a thief. So this list is a natural follow-up to my best fantasy books featuring assassins. These are the thief-centered fantasy books I recommend, from the modern heavyweights back to the sword-and-sorcery stories that started it all.
The Modern Favorites
The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch (Gentleman Bastard Sequence)
If you read one book from this list, make it this one. Locke Lamora is an orphan raised by a false priest in the canal city of Camorr, trained with a handful of other boys into a crew of con artists called the Gentleman Bastards. They fleece the nobility with elaborate long cons while pretending to be small-time pickpockets. Then a killer called the Grey King starts murdering the city’s crime bosses, and Locke’s careful game falls apart. The banter is sharp, the cons are clever, and the violence hits hard when it comes.
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Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo (Six of Crows Duology)
Kaz Brekker runs a gang in the trading city of Ketterdam, and he walks with a cane and a grudge. A merchant offers him a fortune to break a prisoner out of the Ice Court, a fortress nobody has ever breached. Kaz assembles five outcasts, each with a skill and a secret, and plans the job. It’s a young adult book, but the heist plotting holds up for any age, and the crew’s loyalty to each other carries as much weight as the job itself.
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The Blacktongue Thief by Christopher Buehlman (Blacktongue)
Kinch Na Shannack owes his guild a small fortune for teaching him to pick locks, scale walls, and fight with a knife. A botched robbery binds him to Galva, a knight hunting for a lost queen, and the two set off across a country still scarred by goblin wars. Kinch narrates in first person, and his voice is the reason to read it: profane, funny, and honest about what a coward he can be. The sequel, The Thrice-Bound Fool, is out now.
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Thieves in Sword and Sorcery
Swords and Deviltry by Fritz Leiber (Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser)
Every fantasy thief owes something to the Gray Mouser. This first collection tells how he and the barbarian Fafhrd met, and the centerpiece, “Ill Met in Lankhmar,” won both the Hugo and the Nebula. The two meet in an alley while robbing the same pair of Thieves’ Guild members, and they become friends on the spot. Leiber’s Lankhmar is the template for the city every sword-and-sorcery thief has prowled since: smoky, corrupt, and run by a guild that doesn’t tolerate freelancers.
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Thieves’ World edited by Robert Lynn Asprin and Lynn Abbey (Thieves’ World)
A group of writers including Poul Anderson, Marion Zimmer Bradley, John Brunner, and Joe Haldeman agreed to share one city and write stories set in it. The city is Sanctuary, a backwater port full of cutpurses, smugglers, and failing sorcerers, and much of the action passes through a tavern called the Vulgar Unicorn. This 1979 anthology launched the shared-world format and helped make the seedy thieves’ quarter a fixture of fantasy.
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Master Thief by Scott Marlowe (The Elizabeth West Capers)
Yes, this one’s mine. If you’ve read the Assassin Without a Name books, you know Elizabeth West: the thief who keeps outwitting the Assassin. Master Thief goes back to where her story starts. The guild gives Liz one job as a trial: get into a nobleman’s mansion and steal the Dawnfire Crystal. Pull it off, and she earns the rank of master thief. Fail, and she proves everyone right about her. It’s the first book in The Elizabeth West Capers, a series of standalone heists set in the gas-lit city of Alchester, and it’s the earliest story in the Assassin Without a Name timeline, so you can start here without reading anything else.
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Thieves in Epic Fantasy
Theft of Swords by Michael J. Sullivan (Riyria Revelations)
Royce Melborn is a thief with a cold streak, and Hadrian Blackwater is a swordsman with a conscience. Together they work as Riyria, taking dangerous jobs for nobles who don’t want their names attached. Then a job to steal a sword ends with a dead king, and they’re the ones blamed for it. Sullivan self-published the series before a major publisher picked it up, and it reads like old-fashioned adventure fantasy built on a friendship you’ll believe in.
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The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner (The Queen’s Thief)
Gen bragged in a wine shop that he could steal anything, then proved it by stealing the king’s seal. That landed him in the king’s prison, which is where the king’s magus finds him. The magus needs a thief to recover an ancient treasure, and Gen is short on alternatives. It’s a Newbery Honor book with a narrator who complains about everything, and the ending turns the whole story over. Readers who stick with the series say the later books are even better.
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Mistborn: The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson (Mistborn)
Vin is a half-starved street thief who survives by staying unnoticed. A charismatic thief named Kelsier notices her anyway and recruits her into the most ambitious heist ever planned: overthrowing a god-emperor who has ruled for a thousand years. The crew, the planning sessions, and the double-crosses give the book a heist novel’s bones under an epic fantasy’s scale.
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Where to Start
New to thief fantasy? Start with The Lies of Locke Lamora. If you want something lighter or you’re reading with a teenager, try Six of Crows or The Thief. If you love classic sword and sorcery, Swords and Deviltry shows you where the whole tradition began.
And if you want a heist set in a gas-lit city, with a thief who has to prove herself to a guild that expects her to fail, pick up Master Thief. You can get it on Amazon or buy it direct from my store.