The premise behind The Thief of Always is a combination of the ideas that drive two famous stories from myth and literature: The Odyssey and the story of Doctor Faustus. In different ways, each story deals with the human desire for endless pleasure and the disasters that such a selfish desire can create.

While the majority of The Odyssey focuses on the arduous, 10-year journey of Odysseus and his soldiers as they voyage home after the Trojan War, the aspects of the epic that relate most directly to Barker’s novel are the crew’s encounters with the Lotus Eaters, the sorceress Circe, and the alluring song of the Sirens. During their travels, Odysseus’s men nearly succumb several times to tempting pleasures that lead to trouble or death. Among the Lotus Eaters, the crew becomes drugged into perpetual lassitude, and Odysseus must rescue them from their own lack of motivation and force them to continue their sea voyage. Similarly, when the demi-goddess Circe hosts them at a sumptuous dinner, they fall victim to her spell, and she transforms the men into livestock. Once again, only their wily captain can rescue them by convincing her to restore them to human form.