Reading The Republic of Thieves felt like sitting at a table with old friends you adore but who can’t stop hurting each other.
You know how some books make you feel like you’ve been waiting all your life to get to that one particular chapter? That’s what The Republic of Thieves felt like for me. I had been waiting so long to see Locke and Sabetha together, to finally see her not just as this name Locke whispers with half a prayer and half a curse, but as flesh and blood, walking onto the page and just… owning it. When she actually shows up, it’s like the entire book breathes differently. She’s sharp, she’s dangerous, she’s everything Locke both dreams of and fears, and the moment they’re in the same room you can taste the tension. It’s not just romance—no, it’s like history and hurt and longing all tangled up.
But before Sabetha has even made an appearance there is Locke on his deathbed. I was hurt over that more than I expected to be. It broke my heart to see this man, who never leaves a plan unorganized or a step unsavoured, with nothing to do but wait to die. Not only is he ill, he is deprived of all the tricks and confidence he keeps behind his back. And then faithful Jean refuses to release him. I was clinging to the book as though I had been pleading with Jean: ask him not to die, ask him not to give up. And when the Bondsmagi present them that devil’s bargain of life in place of service, you are perfectly aware that Locke will accept it. He will curse the gods with spit before he will bow down, but he will stoop down at this, since to die is not possible.
And then, the job. Oh, the job! It is not even the politics the Bondsmagi want Locke and Jean to rig an election in Karthain. It’s about proving a point. They set Locke against no one but Sabetha. the discovery came as a cold shower to me. Locke has been dreaming of her, follows her ghosts all this time and all of a sudden she becomes his opponent. And she’s good—really good. The interchange between the two was one of my favorite things. Each plan Locke believes to be smart, Sabetha is already a step ahead. He leaps about after every play she makes. It was as though we were looking at two great chess players who are in love and hopelessly so, yet cannot confess this without disemboweling themselves.
The flashbacks to their youth as apprentices in Camorr with Father Chains made it all the more bittersweet. Young Locke, desperate to impress, and young Sabetha, so fierce, so unwilling to be overshadowed. You see the way Locke fell in love with her not just because of beauty but because she was his equal, his rival, his flame. Those memories cut deep, because you know how much baggage they carry into the present
This wasn't one of my most vulnerable moments, but when Locke, after much prompting by Sabetha, reveals to her the extent of his affection, not in some sweeping, grand statement but in the manner in which he has always carried her shadow with him. And she does not cuddle into his arms like a fairytale. She resists. She is fed up with him making her the subject of his fetish, fed up with how their lives have been sculpted with chains that they did not deserve. That was a blow--not only to Locke, but to me, sitting there hoping this time the story might soften. But that’s what makes it so raw. Love in this book isn’t easy. It’s knives and bruises and longing that may never rest into tranquility.
Even the very election itself, the plays of Sabetha, the counter-moves of Locke, Jean running himself crazy trying to keep them afloat, it was thrilling. It was almost too true to fiction how they fool with the votes, how they play with the guilds and citizens, how they run a political campaign like robbers—how absurd it is. And still, in all of it, the towering presence of the Bondsmagi was a reminder that they were chess pieces in a more massive and uglier game.
The ending haunted me. Here and there Locke conquers Sabetha, but never really. She fades and never comes near enough, and is leaving him uninured and infuriated and still in love. And then comes that malicious discovery of the Bondsmagi concerning Locke--about who he was, or what he had been deprived of. It’s suspended like a knife over the following book, and I despised and admired that I could not be closed to.
Reading The Republic of Thieves felt like sitting at a table with old friends you adore but who can’t stop hurting each other. I laughed, I winced, I wanted to scream at Locke to stop being so reckless, and I wanted Sabetha to finally let her guard down. And yet I wouldn’t trade a single moment of it, because it gave me exactly what I wanted: the mess of them together. The Republic didn’t just feel like a book about schemes and elections—it felt like a book about how love can be the most dangerous con of all.
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