An excellent steampunk heist fantasy story, this a smooth reading book, full of good ideas, an interesting storyline full of twists and turns to keeps us the reader well engaged with it.

Highly recommended to all who love steampunk fantasy.

This story gripped me right away, from page one. It opens with Kef being dragged out of her cage in prison for her execution, and she seems to be having the time of her life. Kef is snarky, she is muscly, she is capable, confident, and smart. She definitely embodies a lot of tropes, but she feels like a well-rounded and unique character nonetheless. Despite being at her own execution, she is exactly where she needs to be, and it only takes a few pages for the action to start and for her break-out to take place. This is where we get to see phase one of her heist: free another prisoner who will join her team. Yes, ladies and gentlemen. If you hadn’t guessed it from the title already, this is a heist book! And it’s a brilliantly executed one. I think heists can be quite hard to write; it’s definitely the kind of story that adapts more easily to the screen, but it’s so satisfying when it’s well-executed on page. This was one of those times.

One of the things that really kept me hooked on The Thunder Heist was the world building. Kef lives in a world in which land is not safe for humans, so they have built themselves great city-ships and live on the ocean. Some travel through the seas, and some, like Zorith, are large enough that they stay in one place and feel protected. This is an incredibly cool setting, and there are times I would forget, such as when a character was at the opera, or at a party, or in an inn and then suddenly something in the description would remind me that all of these indoor spaces were in ships and boats. It really adds to the atmosphere. There’s even a hint at one point that this world once had Star Sailors, and that some of the metal that falls down to the earth from the debris belt that surrounds the planet are part of their old ships. I was super intrigued by this detail, and I hope it’s explored more in future books.

It is unclear if this world has any sort of specific magic system, but it does have mutants: certain people seem to change as they grow older, and either become gillers -attuned to water, with slitted eyes, gills, and webbed hands and feet- or wingers -attuned to the air, with wings and hollow bones. It’s not explained how this happens, but most of these people get taken and become slaves, working for governments or richer members of society.

One of the members of Kef’s crew, a young man names Squine, is a giller, and it’s really cool to see it up close. He’s also an interesting character because where Kef was looking for a strong and competent giller, Squine is an outcast and a weakling even among his own people. This creates an interesting dynamic, and Squine is not the only atypical member of the group…

With a relatively small cast, this book was very character-focused, and I really enjoyed reading about them all. Kef, who is already very cool, scored further points with me for being twenty-nine years old, because so many of the books that exist in this vein tend to have their badass female characters be as young as possible within the context. But I liked having a character that has already lived a relatively long life for a fantasy book main character. The other two members of her team are also older than average; Gabine, the architect, is in her seventies, and she is a lovely grumpy cynic. Harold, the alchemist, is in his forties and is a kindly, rotund man who simply goes along with the heist because he cares about Kef and knows how important it is to her. These two definitely weren’t featured enough, but I know this book was quite short, and most of the character development was focused on Kef, as the protagonist.

Overall, a really good first book in this new series. Concise in its storytelling, yet still weaving an intriguing, credible world that seems to extend beyond the pages, so that you are left wondering what else might be out there. The ending took me by surprise, but was also very satisfying; it tied up the story while still leaving room for more, and I very much look forward to visiting the Twisted Seas again.

Really enjoyed this book. I've always like heist stories, and this set in a well defined fantasy made it different and better. Enjoyed the characters and great action and pacing. Can't wait for more adventures with Kef. #TheThunderHeist #NetGalley

I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for a honest review.

Unrelenting, fast paced action a la "Indiana Jones."

Really first class world building. Here is a world where monsters keep people off the land, so cities are vast concatenations of vessels of all types, travelling around dangerous seas. Mutations randomly affect percentages of the population, giving them wings or gills -- or other, more esoteric abilities. The descriptions are evocative but crisp, not getting in the way of the story or annoying you with "fantasy overload" -- that tendency of some authors to make up so many words, names and things that the reader loses any sense of identification with a new world. I was right there in the world of the Twisted Seas, with all five senses engaged. As an added plus, there are excellent illustrations.

In the first few pages, Kef, sentenced to death and in chains, manages to explode into action as she lays the groundwork for her Thunder Heist and she really doesn't quit till the last page. Kef is one of those tragic but tough villain-heroes, you come to understand what made her the way she is, but you never quite like her for it. However, since she is carving her way through people, seas, walls and doors with reckless abandon you don't really have time to worry about that.

The pace of this story is great, I never found myself bored.

Personally, I prefer a bit more humor to leaven all the guts and gore and conflict. Kef is deadly serious about everything she does and while she makes smart remarks from time to time, you get no sense she thinks anything is funny or there is a lighter side. She's a woman on a mission and everyone else is just a means to an end, even those she seemed to care about. You could argue that the horrible things that led her to this heist justify that easily, so if you like a tragic story, where the protagonist fights against impossible odds, you will like this. No funny sidekick here, all the characters were serious/tragic as well. To be fair, it wasn't unrelentingly depressing, there was plenty of relief from the spectacular fantasy and action elements like monsters, storms, super fast boats, alchemy and mutant abilities.

Also, there were a number of threads left dangling -- several times the author would leave you with a cliff hanger where you wonder what choice Kef is going to make or what this has to do with the story -- but in at least two notable cases doesn't tell you, just goes on to the next part of the story. While this can be done well in a series, setting up the next installment, here it fell flat. I wondered why that bit or character was put in there at all.

Overall, a better than good read. I will definitely pick up the next in the series and I am interested in reading more of this author.

The Thunder Heist by Jed Herne is a fun, fast-paced heist adventure serving up high seas mayhem, but without ever feeling like the high seas.

Kef Cutmark is the leader of a crack team of pirates, a crew at the top of their game and including mutant wingers (flyers, with wings and hollow bones) and gillers (swimmers with gills and webbed feet). Zorith is one of a series of ship-cities – thousands of boats chained together to form one floating metropolis. Unlike the other ship-cities though, which are powered by oil, Zorith’s power lies in the lightning tower at its centre. And Kef means to steal it.

The premise, the characters, the world – all are interesting. This book however doesn’t manage to pull them all together into a great story. There just isn’t enough meat on the bones, and the fast-paced writing and sharp-tongued dialogue aren’t enough on their own to make up for it.

There are a number of things left unexplained, and with a bit of space dedicated to them, I feel the story would have improved quite a bit. Firstly, we’re advised of Kef’s crew, but we never meet them. Instead, Kef recruits a new crew for this most daring and dangerous of jobs. There’s no real explanation for this, just a throwaway comment along the lines of her needing some time away. Yes, the recruited crew members have their individual talents that are vital to the heist, but it just seems odd to me that the crew Kef has worked with for some time, and trusts implicitly, is not the one taking on this job.

The characters themselves are ok, but not nearly well enough fleshed out. Kef, being the main character, fills almost every page, but even then we don’t delve deeply enough into her character to truly get to know her. The writing seems to have too narrow a focus, is too linear, not looking beyond the specifics of the job at hand. For Kef then, we see action and reaction, but not much more.

There is one time where we start to see a softening up of Kef’s hard exterior, a literal sidestep from the plot where she has a couple of hours to kill. This comes to nothing though, there’s nothing leading up to it, there’s nothing spoken of it afterwards, it’s all just brushed off in the space of a couple of paragraphs. It was just a bit odd, a very out of place section of the book, like the author decided not to include the scene, but didn’t rewrite the chapter to remove all trace of it.

For the other characters, we don’t get into their heads enough to see what makes them tick. Indeed, every chapter is from Kef’s viewpoint until we get to 60% through the book. From that point on, a half-dozen or so chapters are given over to various other characters, but not with enough focus to build on what we see of them from Kef’s eyes – in fact one of them is not even seen in the book outside of their chapter, just there to give a snippet of information that doesn’t quite resolve an unresolved plot point.

Moving on to the world and we come to one of the high points of The Thunder Heist. We never set foot on dry land, just being told that monsters roam there and so everyone lives on the Twisted Seas. What this gives us is a floating society, where cities made up of many ships tied together sail around mining seaweed for the oil that gives them power. On Zorith we get to see what the society looks like, and we also hear of other societies on other ships. For this, we get a decent level of detail – certainly enough to paint the picture we need.

Outside of the plot and the characters, I found the writing itself to be a bit hit and miss. While the vast majority of the book was well written, there were a couple of decisions that didn’t work for me. For the most part, as mentioned, we see from Kef’s point of view. We see her get into scrapes, and get out of them in true action-hero style. Then as things start to ramp up, we see her get into danger… and instead of seeing an escape, we cut to a non-Kef chapter, in which Kef turns up, having escaped. There’s no explanation of what happened, we just know that it all worked out. This just didn’t seem in keeping with the rest of the book.

In another scene, there’s a whole big paragraph, almost an entire page, made up of a single sentence. Commas abound, but otherwise there is no break for almost 150 words, and it made for difficult reading. I think this might have been an intentional device, used to highlight the intense nature of the scene, but it just didn’t do the trick for me, contrasting too much with the style of the sections around it. Short sharp sentences would be less jarring for me here and make for quicker, more intense reading.

As for the main event, the heist itself was actually pretty good, with some unexpected twists just as you think you’ve got a handle on what’s happening. There are still some unanswered questions, but these don’t detract too much from the enjoyment, even if they would improve the storyline were they answered.

Overall, The Thunder Heist could do with some extra depth to its pages, but it’s still a fun read. If you’re looking for fully fleshed out characters and an intricate plot with multiple arcs weaved together, you might find this to be a bit lacking. If you’re looking for a nice easy read with plenty of action and excitement however, The Thunder Heist might be the book for you.

The Thunder Heist is a fast-paced fantasy adventure featuring pirates, lightning-magic, thievery and sarcasm in abundance. This book drops you straight in the middle of the action which made it really easy to get into as we are introduced to the main character, Kef Cutmark - who is determined to get revenge on the place and the people who enslaved her as a child.
I have to say, one of the big things that drew me to this story (aside from the heist plot) was the crew of 'unlikely allies' mentioned in the synopsis that gave me the impression there might be some sort of found family aspect to the plot (AKA my favourite trope). But they weren't actually all together until about 50% into the book - and they didn't actually all work together for long - so that was kind of disappointing for me. While I did like Kef, there was no one character who I really loved at all while reading, I think this is probably due to the heavy plot-focus of the book so it was just difficult to really connect with any of them in less than 300 pages.
I did love the ending though, the plot twists worked well and the stakes felt super high, and I thought the writing and world-building was really good throughout. I am planning to read the sequel when it comes out - I'm desperately hoping it'll feature Kef's ship crew and that I will get that found family I've been waiting for.

"The Thunder Heist" is an action-packed fantasy novel that had all the potential to be an amazing read: badass female MC? Check. Wonderfully weird setting, with floating islands, mutant species and monster-infested seas? Check. Pirate and a HEIST? Check. I was ready to love it, however I did not.
It might have been me, maybe I wasn't reading it with the right frame of mind, or maybe my tastes have just changed. I liked some bits of it: the spectacular and gloomy setting, the floating island, all the different mutant species. I liked some of the characters (Gabine mainly, and Kef at times: morally grey and ruthless characters are always my favourite), however they felt flat to me at times.
I think the main problem for me was the fact that there's enough action scenes and plots to power an entire series but not enough background information, not enough internal monologue explaining the whys and the reasons. I wish Kef had been sketched a bit better too: yeah, she's a badass, she smirks and laughs and kills and taunts, but her personality feels quite incomplete at times. I also feel like the story would have been better, for me, if she had her crew with her too: I liked the sound of them and the one thing that never ceases to make me fall in love with a story is found family. So, that's a shame.

However, if you're looking for something action-packed, with lots of twisty plots, and a kind of steampunk, fantastical atmosphere, this could be just your cup of tea.

Morally grey characters pull off a heist in a fantasy world where monsters roam the seven seas.

I have to say, I read the book the whole way through. I’m not always into mortally grey protagonists, and Kef’s actions sometimes made it hard to root for her, but it was overall an enjoyable story.

(Thanks to NetGalley for providing a free ARC in exchange for an honest review.)