If you are not aware of the Queen’s Thief series, I do recommend popping out and purchasing The Thief for yourself. Though you will not be getting the full experience. I, myself, have not had the full experience, because I am a Jenny-come-lately who, despite the best recommending efforts of Legal Sister, didn’t read these books until 2010, which is when A Conspiracy of Kings came out. I did not wait; I did not suffer. Others among us (like Legal Sister) read The Thief when it came out in 1996 and commenced a waiting game for the subsequent five books that only bore full fruit in this, the year of our Lord 2020.

“Stop being weird, Jenny! Tell us what the books are about!” Yes, okay, so, these books are set in a society that’s inspired by classical antiquity, drawing specific inspiration from the Persian Wars and the small Greek states that held out against the Persian Empire despite odds that were, shall we say, daunting. At the center of the series is a boy named Eugenides, who is a thief. That is basically all I can say about the series without spoiling the entire thing. These books are a complicated machine, powered by intrigue and feelings. So many feelings. They also contain the angriest women and the softest men, including perhaps the purest cinnamon roll character in all of literature. Here is a further recap of the series, just so you know what to expect. (Book one: Road trip! Shenanigans! Book two: High-octane emotional devastation!)

Anyway, my non-spoilery review of Return of the Thief is that it was tremendous, there were elephants, it was everything I wanted it to be, and I feel joyful but also bereft to know this amazing series is at an end. What follows below the line is some disconnected and spoiler-filled fangirl screaming.

(I am not doing this to tease you! These books are so extremely serialized that even mentioning certain characters in affectionate terms is a spoiler. I’m so serious. It’s a spoiler to say with affection the full names of, I’m going to say, three? of the seven major characters.)

My opinions are as follows, and I have put them into bullet points:

• I would die for Pheris
• Megan Whalen Turner very clearly has spent the last twenty-four years thinking “What if Thermopylae, but haunted” and now we must all think about that too so thanks a lot, Megan Whalen Turner
• I can’t believe that after twenty-four years of dishing out the most devastating scraps of emotional availability, Megan Whalen Turner has produced a veritable feelings orgy
  • Irene buying Gen a horse like the troll she fundamentally is
  • Sophos picking out the horse for Gen like the cinnamon troll he fundamentally is
  • every single monarch of the Little Peninsula lowkey conspiring to protect Gen from going into battle
  • HIERO EARRINGS HELP ME WHYYYYY
  • Costis going absolutely feral over the prospect of Kamet being danger
  • Eugenides going somehow even more feral over the prospect of Kamet being in danger
  • “They do not smile at first, Your Majesty.”
  • “Why that orange tree? What that tamarisk bush?”
• It turns out we have been grievously underestimating the amount of murder of which Gen is capable
• Years and years and years and years and YEARS ago Megan Whalen Turner told us that Gen would see an elephant and be like “I want that elephant”
  • It happened.
  • Also, he fed them melons
  • Irene was like “where would you even keep an elephant anyway”
  • then, in the truest expression of love, she GETS HIM THE ELEPHANTS
  • I thought he was going to steal an elephant
  • This was better.
  • (because of my feelings)
• Of all the characters I would die for, I would die for Irene the most. Evidence:
  • Elephants; op cit.
  • “I did not become inappropriate all by myself!”
  • “I am not here to cut Sophos’s food him”
• THERMOPYLAE, BUT HAUNTED
• Disaster bisexual Relius (!) and disaster virgin Teleus (!!!!)
• the play to catch the conscience of the king
  • I was SO ANGRY at first
  • I was UNIMAGINABLY angry, like, I was ready to burn some shit down
  • not least because “swayed by a pretty face” like how actually dare you insult Irene Attolia in this manner
  • and then? Megan Whalen Turner?
  • just?
  • changed everything???
  • and Cenna said, “But it was funny, Gen, wasn’t it?”
  • and actually, it’s not Hamlet’s stupid fucking play plan; it’s someone who knows Gen well enough to call him by his nickname being an absolute dick to Gen
• I know I already did a whole bullet point about emotions but:
  • Pheris’s whole strategy of being underestimated
  • The King of the Strategy of Being Underestimated, Attolis Eugenides Eugenideides, doesn’t not fall for it
  • “To hell with Lader if he thinks I will not trust you”  H E L P  M E.
  • PHERIS
  • P H E R I S.
• the moment when Irene is like “you think Kamet is dead?” and Gen is like “yep” and Irene is like “without Costis burning down the entire Mede Empire about it?” and Gen is like “Ah.”
• The whole thing ends with a dance party! Just what you want!

This is the end of my screaming thoughts. But maybe I will add more later. Who knows? I love this fucking series.

The post Return! of! the! Thief!, by Megan Whalen Turner appeared first on Reading the End.

If you haven’t read the Queen’s Thief books, I advise you to walk away from this post straight away and read them. The Thief is the first one. It is fine. The Queen of Attolia is the second one. It is an infinity of fire emojis. Get on it.

Anyway, so this one. Nahuseresh, formerly the Mede ambassador to Attolia, who was so magnificently put in his place by Attolia in The Queen of Attolia, had this secretary called Kamet who helped him escape from Attolia. In Thick as Thieves, Gen sends an Attolian soldier to help Kamet escape from the Mede, an event which — fortunately for Kamet — coincides with Nahuseresh’s untimely death by poisoning. A road trip ensues.

If you can bear a very minor spoiler that even I, a woman notoriously bad at guessing spoilers, was able to guess, the Attolian solder Gen sends is Costis. When I figured this out (I swear it’s not much of a spoiler, it’s very guessable very early), I nearly died of delight. The King of Attolia is my favorite of the three books, partly because we get to see how the hell Gen and Irene live their life now, but largely because of Costis, the sweetest cinnamon roll maybe in any book ever. What with Costis being a major character and the whole book being about a road trip, there was just no chance that I wouldn’t love Thick as Thieves.

Thick as Thieves bears the closest resemblance to the first book in this series, The Thief. Kamet and Costis travel widely through Mede, constantly in lowkey or highkey peril, as often as not dirty and wounded and uncomfortable and complaining. But of course, Turner has advanced tremendously as a writer since twenty years ago when this series began (itals bc I can’t believe how long this series has been happening, not bc I’m mad at Megan Whalen Turner about anything), and she’s better than ever at conveying everything that happens between the lines of dialogue these characters are actually saying to each other.

Which brings me to my next point: Thick as Thieves is gay as hell. My sister texted me a little way into reading it to be like “Kamet sure is talking about Costis’s muscles a lot,” and my friends, truer words were never spoken. The whole structure of the story is romantic, from the forced proximity of the road trip to the tending each other’s wounds to the looming Big Lie that threatens their ?friendship? happily-ever-after. While it would have been nice to have a female protagonist for a change (especially given how fucking great the queens of Eddis and Attolia are and thus how confident I feel that MWT could give us the greatest female protagonist of our time), a queer road trip story was pretty terrific too.

Have you read Thick as Thieves yet? Did you find it to be substantially gay? Will you be requesting Queen’s Thief fic this Yuletide?

The post Review: Thick as Thieves, Megan Whalen Turner appeared first on Reading the End.

When I was a little girl, I used to finish a book and turn around and read it all over again.  The Little Princess, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Travel Far, Pay No Fare.  I’m not talking about rereading (I still do loads of rereading), but finishing a book and flipping it over and starting all over again, because you can’t stand the idea of leaving it behind right away.  And look, I was serious about Megan Whalen Turner before.  I loved those books.  When I finished the first three and got the fourth from my ever-obliging big sister, I left the fourth one lying around for several days while I reread the first three.  All of them.  In order.  Picking up on details I hadn’t noticed the first time through.  Only then did I carry on with A Conspiracy of Kings.

A Conspiracy of Kings is about Sophos – remember Sophos?  Darling studious bookworm Sophos from The Thief?  Don’t keep reading this review right now, if you haven’t read the foregoing three books, because I can’t really talk about A Conspiracy of Kings without spoiling the books that have come before.  Again I say unto you, stop reading this review and go do something else, if you have not read Megan Whalen Turner’s other books.

Are you gone?

Okay then.  So Sophos, heir to the king of Sounis, is on the run.  The barons of Sounis and the ambassadors of the Mede are making trouble for Sophos, necessitating a flight to Attolia, where his old friend Gen is now the King.  The book opens with Sophos, whom Gen has believed dead, finally reaching the sanctuary of Attolia – well, relative sanctuary, given that the country of which Sophos is king is at war with the country of which Gen is king.

I’ve read several reviews of A Conspiracy of Kings that expressed regret at the way the narrative shifts away from Gen.  Now look, I enjoy spending time with Gen as much as anybody, but I thought Sophos was a splendid point-of-view character.  In this book, Turner deals with the question of choosing the sort of person you want to be: Sophos has the opportunity to decide whether he wants to go back to his old life.  Or in fact he has several opportunities, and until he’s practically forced by circumstance, he doesn’t step up and take responsibility.  It’s only when he’s got his back against the wall that he makes the decision to grow up.  Sophos.  Bless him.

(Anyway, there’s plenty of Gen.)

What can I say?  Everything I loved about the foregoing books, I loved about this one.  I loved seeing Sophos grow up, especially because he comes to terms with doing things he’d rather not do for the sake of his country, without losing his (can I say this and not make you gag? Only I can’t think of any other way of putting it) sweetness of spirit.  There were further political machinations, and a gaining-the-throne scene that pleased me by being quite unlike Sophos and yet perfectly in line with the arc of his character development.

Have you read this yet?  Do you think it would be a good thing to have one of the queens narrate the fifth book that Megan Whalen Turner is undoubtedly engaged in writing at this very moment so that she can release it tomorrow and fill my life with yet more joy?  I suppose it would be tricky to have Attolia as a POV character, given that she’s so buttoned up, but I think Eddis would be an interesting narrator.

Other reviews:

Book Lust & The Written World
Stella Matutina
Charlotte’s Library (incidentally expresses exactly how I felt when I started reading this book!)
Book Nut
Angieville
A Chair, A Fireplace, & A Tea Cozy
Truth, Beauty, Freedom, and Books
Dear Author
One Librarian’s Book Reviews

Did I miss yours?  Tell me if so, and I will add a link!

The post Review: A Conspiracy of Kings, Megan Whalen Turner appeared first on Reading the End.

When I really love a book, I want everyone who I think would like it to read it so that they can love it also.  To this end, I will wheedle and cajole and sometimes manipulatively give the book to them as a gift so they will feel guilty for not reading it.  It’s for their own good.  In short, I cannot rest until the joy has been spread.  I am an evangelist for the books (and films and TV shows) that I love.  I know that marketing principle where you have to remind people a whole bunch of times before you can expect them to take action, and I do it.  Only because I want my loved ones to have the same joyous reading experiences that I have had.

My big sister does not operate quite in the same way.  From what I can observe, she has a more live and let live philosophy.  If she tells me a book is good, and I then don’t read it, it’s possible she may never bring it up again.  If she tells me a book is good, and I start it and don’t like it, she will probably leave it at that.  SO NOT LIKE ME!  I will pester the crap out of people until they give my books another chance.  Her, not so much.  So I can’t always tell from her recommendations the difference between a book that is good and my life is empty without it, and a book that is, you know, fine.

(Or else possibly she and I act the exact same way in regard to books we love madly, and I am making up a lot of self-justifying claptrap because I feel that without a reason for my not having read these books years ago the universe is too bleak and wretched to be bothered with.)

I do not necessarily know that your life is empty without Megan Whalen Turner’s Queen’s Thief series.  But mine was.  These books – The Thief, The Queen of Attolia, The King of Attolia, and A Conspiracy of Kings, which I have not yet read – are set in an ancient-Greece-like (but not ancient Greece) fantasy world with religion and mythology and politics.  They are made up of pure win.  They make me want to stride up and down gesturing energetically and shouting about how good they are.  The politics are twisty and complex and feel realistic but do not bore me to tears.  The characters grow and change, and when they interact with each other, there is all this boilingly tense subtext underneath the actual words that they are saying.

A very true story about me: I love subtext.  I’m mad for subtext.  Considering the epic crush I have on words, I am mighty appreciative of things left unsaid.  Subtext.  The simmery-er, the better.  When I find an author who can make me quiver with tension during a scene where it’s just two people sitting around talking, I’m hers for life.  (Or his, of course!)  I will overlook a lot of flaws in a book that knows how to play its subtext.

Take, for example, Mary Renault’s The Charioteer, a very imperfect book, God knows, but I love it quite passionately for its dialogue, every line of which means at least one thing other than the actual words being said.  Or take nearly any scene between Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane in Dorothy Sayers’s mysteries, and you will see it is rife with beautiful, crackling subtext: see in particular the scene by the riverbank in Gaudy Night.  You know that one?  Damn good scene.

Megan Whalen Turner is also very good at this, so I may have been too high on subtext to spot any flaws.  I have seen reviews that found the plots of (some of) the books in this series slow, but I didn’t mind.  I was too busy enjoying the lovely character interactions.  The central character is a person with a tendency towards self-concealment, and many of the twists in the plot arise from your (or other characters’) (or both) not knowing him as well as you think you do.  This is a very cool kind of plot twist – the kind that makes you go back and reevaluate actions and words that you thought you understood the first time around but you really did not.  (Unless you’re me.  If you’re me, you did. I sneakily find out plot twists ahead of time by causing my sister to tell them to me.)

(While I’m gushing, can I get some love for the phrase “plot twist”? I dunno who came up with that, but that’s a brilliant phrase for it!  It makes a wonderful image in my mind!  TWIST.)

I guess since I have gone on and on about them, I should briefly say what these books are about. They are in a series, and since I know other people who are not me dislike spoilers, I don’t want to say too much about any one book and spoil the ones that came before it.  Very vaguely then: The Queen’s Thief books are about a thief called Eugenides (Gen), who lives in a section of the world that is not altogether unlike ancient Greece (before Alexander the Great, this would be).  For one reason and another, Gen finds himself mixed up with people in high places, and political turmoil, of varying scope and consequence throughout the several books, ensues.

I gobbled up The Thief, The Queen of Attolia, and The King of Attolia this weekend all in one mighty gobble, and then I had to wait and borrow A Conspiracy of Kings from my sister.  I hope the fourth book lives up to the previous ones and does not wrap up everything up tidily but rather leaves many things open for future books that Megan Whalen Turner is going to write swiftly and release promptly.  Thanks to Memory for reading these recently – your reviews tipped me over the edge!

Once again there are too many other reviews of these books for my slow old computer to load and then link to, plus I am tired and want to go to bed early tonight, so if you are yearning to see what the blogosphere thinks of Megan Whalen Turner I refer you to the glorious and oft-consulted-by-me Book Blogs Search Engine.

Because it is rich with mythology and features the gods, I am counting these books towards the Once Upon a Time Challenge, yet another challenge about which I have in no way forgotten.  How could I?  It has such a pretty button!

So how about it, everyone?  Are you a book evangelist?  Once you have made your initial recommendation to your loved ones about a book you adored, do you keep knocking on their doors in suits with copies of the book in your hands, or do you shut up and leave them alone to read whatever they darn well feel like reading?  How good is the phrase “plot twist”?  Are you, too, a subtext junkie?

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