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The Queen's Thief series
Mar. 23rd, 2010 08:06 pmHaven't posted in awhile because I've been mainlining Megan Whalen Turner's The Queen's Thief series.The books are, in order, The Thief, The Queen of Attolia, and The King of Attolia. There's also a fourth book out, A Conspiracy of Kings but since it literally just came out today, I haven't read it yet. They're YA books, and thus fairly quick reads, but that certainly doesn't mean that they're not COMPLETELY engrossing.
Gen, the titular Thief, has become one of my all-time favorite fictional characters, and one of the things I love about the series is how Turner lets him grow and develop. The Thief was an excellent book, and she could've very easily have done more of the same for the second book — have Gen go on some crazy mad quest to steal something Big And Important — and it would've been a very good book. Instead, within the first couple dozen pages of The Queen of Attolia, she went and did something crazy huge which I will not give away here save to say that it made it abundantly clear that this was not going to be a retread of the first book. At all. In fact, Gen grows up enough within the span of that book (which I think takes only a year or two of book time at most) that, had I skipped from the first to the third book, I'd have been all, "Oh, come on, you can't ask me to believe this is the same person, really now." But it makes sense if you read it all in order. Actually, come to think of it, it might also make perfect sense if you start with the third book and then go back to the first two. That might be really interesting, actually, although it'd spoil the big surprise at the end of the first book and a good chunk of the second book.
Oh, and did I mention that the series takes place in a world that's a bit like Ancient Greece with late medieval/early renaissance level technology? And that Turner constructed her own, incredibly fascinating mythology for this world? It's pretty awesome.
In conclusion, I highly, highly recommend these books.
ETA: There is a much more coherent review here, still pretty much spoiler-free.
Gen, the titular Thief, has become one of my all-time favorite fictional characters, and one of the things I love about the series is how Turner lets him grow and develop. The Thief was an excellent book, and she could've very easily have done more of the same for the second book — have Gen go on some crazy mad quest to steal something Big And Important — and it would've been a very good book. Instead, within the first couple dozen pages of The Queen of Attolia, she went and did something crazy huge which I will not give away here save to say that it made it abundantly clear that this was not going to be a retread of the first book. At all. In fact, Gen grows up enough within the span of that book (which I think takes only a year or two of book time at most) that, had I skipped from the first to the third book, I'd have been all, "Oh, come on, you can't ask me to believe this is the same person, really now." But it makes sense if you read it all in order. Actually, come to think of it, it might also make perfect sense if you start with the third book and then go back to the first two. That might be really interesting, actually, although it'd spoil the big surprise at the end of the first book and a good chunk of the second book.
Oh, and did I mention that the series takes place in a world that's a bit like Ancient Greece with late medieval/early renaissance level technology? And that Turner constructed her own, incredibly fascinating mythology for this world? It's pretty awesome.
In conclusion, I highly, highly recommend these books.
ETA: There is a much more coherent review here, still pretty much spoiler-free.
