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With Leigh Bardugo’s work receiving well-deserved attention, one of the highlights of his Grishaverse books is Six of Crows with its fantastic heist plot. Everyone loves a good heist, right? The sympathetic criminals we hope will succeed, the team dynamics built between strong personalities, the skill of a complicated plot well done. Here are other great SFF flight novels to scratch that itch if you want to. Italian work⦠But in space.
Roshani Chokshi’s Golden Wolves
The Universal Exposition of the Exposition Universelle arrives in Paris and presents with its technological marvels a fragment of Babel, a magical artefact that allows whoever exercises it to have power over the elements. Séverin can reclaim his place among the French elite if he manages to steal it – and with a squad of five other uniquely-talented society outsiders he brings together, he may well be successful.
Clockwork Boys by T. Kingfisher
A group of criminals are sent on a spy mission to try to uncover the secrets – and weaknesses – of mechanical soldiers in a neighboring and hostile kingdom. It’s up to a paladin, an assassin, a forger and a scholar to save the day⦠but only if they don’t kill each other along the way.
The Quantum Thief by Hannu Rajaniemi
In the distant future, a post-human con artist and spirit burglar languishes in Dilemma Prison, where every day he must find himself and kill himself before his other himself can kill him. Saved from his grief, he gave him a chance to regain his freedom and all he lost⦠if he can complete the flight he never failed. And this time, he’s got an investigator on his heels.
Flying the Sky by Megan O’Keefe
Wanted swindler and dishonored nobleman Detan Honding and his companion, Tibs, have one last, big heist they want to do to get out of the town of Aransa, where they’ve already made too many cons. All they have to do is steal an entire airship, one that belongs to an exiled commodore. But as they attempt to finish the job, an assassin who changes his face begins to assassinate members of the Aransa government, and the heist takes on a resolute flavor of political intrigue.
The Quantum Wizard by Derek Künsken
Belisarius never intended to become a crook. But as a created being designed to have nearly impossible knowledge and insight, his deadly flaw is revealed to be an almost suicidal drive for knowledge and a deadly aversion to boredom. These readers have served him surprisingly well as a criminal, but even he starts to get bored again … until a client offers him enormous wealth and an even more interesting problem: the smuggling of a squadron of secret warships through an enemy controlled wormhole.
The crown jewels of Walter Jon Williams
Drake Majistral is a licensed burglar and one of the best in the galaxy. It was even ranked among the top ten by the Imperial Sports Commission. But even someone in the top ten can make a big mistake, and that’s what happens when Drake steals an item so valuable and wanted it goes from a payday to an intergalactic political incident in an instant. . Now he’s got everyone from murderous militias to a maniac with a giant sword on his tail and something to burn to fence in.