The Crown Jewels (Divertimenti, volume 1) by Walter Jon Williams

[james_davis_nicoll]

A flamboyant thief fulfills a seemingly minor commission and wins the attention of an alarming number of patriots from two empires.

The Crown Jewels (Divertimenti, volume 1) by Walter Jon Williams

Comments

[dagibbs]

I think this series was one of the earlier WJW things I read, though in an SFBC omnibus (Ten Points for Style), and I also quite enjoyed them. Perhaps I should reread them.

[chrysostom]

I liked this (and the two sequels), but I felt like they weren't quite as good as they might have been.

[anna_wing]

I loves those books. They were the first WJW I read, and everything else in his oeuvre while nice was a bit of a disappointment after that...I like the Anthony Villiers books too, and will forever regret the non-existence of The Universal Pantograph...

[dwight_benjamin_thieme]

The Divertimenti are far and away my favorite WJW output. I just don't get why they weren't more well-received at the time, or now for that matter.

[rwpikul]

I could see some amusing worldbuilding bits stemming from the idea of theft being OK, provided you follow the rules.

Perhaps the well-to-do would have "theft objects" as a form of conspicuous consumption. Pretty, (and expensive), items whose sole purpose is to be the thing you tempt thieves with. Of course, there will be the conflicting needs to show your theft object off while also making it hard to steal. A gentleman thief would, of course, make a big deal of showing off what he has stolen.

And to release a plot bunny: A group of families decided to settle the ownership of some special place/item through 'trial by theft'. They commission a set of theft objects, one per family. The family who can bring the entire set to some particular location is deemed the winner and they get {insert prized thing here}. Cue story of theft and counter theft, possibly complicated by external thieves who don't know what's going on.

[(Anonymous)]

The word mascotry sometimes refers to all the practices surrounding mascots, but it also applies to students from various universities "nicking" each others' mascots. Web searching finds references to this among the various London institutions, and an instance at least as late as 2019.

CGCU's nickable mascots are Bolt and Spanner (a giant bolt and a giant spanner); RCSU's is Theta (a giant thermometer).

[(Anonymous)]

And there's the (formerly) long lost Platypus Trophy, which was traded (and stolen) between the Oregon Ducks and the Oregon State Beavers for decades until it vanished and was forgotten, only to be rediscovered by pure accident.

It's a platypus because combine a duck and a beaver and what do you get?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platypus_Trophy

Teka Lynn

[maruad]

I remember really enjoying the book and one of the sequels (I was unaware there were two).