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The Queen of Attolia The Queen Thief Book 2 Megan Whalen Turner Books

Download As PDF : The Queen of Attolia The Queen Thief Book 2 Megan Whalen Turner Books

The Queen of Attolia The Queen Thief Book 2 Megan Whalen Turner Books

This is the second book in the Queen's Thief fantasy series. I wish to avoid spoilers, so I will say less than I might about it. But, for the record, I like both this book and its predecessor very much. I like the characters, minor as well as major. I like how the author lets some quiet yet telling moments pass with little fanfare, trusting the reader to recognize them. I like the writing, which usually slips by unobtrusively, being perfectly in keeping with the story, yet contains occasional beautiful and precise turns of phrase, such as this fragment from chapter five, "Every morning, when the sunlight forced its way around the edges of the window curtains, trimming them in light..." For me, this story is trimmed in light.


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The Queen of Attolia The Queen Thief Book 2 Megan Whalen Turner Books Reviews

The Thief
The Queen of Attolia
The King of Attolia
A Conspiracy of Kings
Thick as Thieves

by Megan Whalen Turner

This is one of those series of books that you really ought to read in order. While each book can and does stand alone, this is a tale that unfolds like a flower, one petal at a time, and you owe it to yourself to let yourself enjoy it the way it was meant to be enjoyed. Take Humpty-Dumpty’s advice. Begin at the beginning, go on to the end, then stop — and then wish that there was more to the tale!

So Imagine a land that looks like Greece but isn’t, inhabited by a people with Greek sounding names, who worship gods with Greek sounding names, but who have pocket watches, window glass, and flintlocks. They speak a common language, worship common gods, but have divided themselves into three separate states Sounis, Eddis and Attolia The queendom* of Eddis is both protected and trapped within its mountainous geography. It is sandwiched between the kingdom of Sounis on one hand, and the queendom of Attolia on the other. The king of Sounis covets Attolia, Eddis, and especially Eddis’ queen. The Queen of Attolia is struggling to keep her throne and her power against the machinations of the large empire of Mede across the sea to the south. Like the wolf at the door, Mede is hungry to get a foothold on their shores by using intrigue and influence to gain control of all three states, and another powerful empire to the north of them is equally determined not to let this happen.

The tale starts with The Thief, whose name is Gen, locked in the palace dungeons of the king of Sounis for being what he is, a thief. It’s a heist tale, suspenseful and exciting; it sets the stage for everything that comes after. By the end of it we have come to understand the where’s and why’s of the story, and have met all the important who’s but one.

The Queen of Attolia is the second book in the series. It continues the career of Gen the thief, and introduces us to the last of the key players. Attolia's queen is a woman who must walk a tightrope to stay one step ahead of the machinations of the Mede ambassador who already sees himself as Attolia’s next king. None of her choices are good; she has to decide which choice is the least bad and then live with the consequences of it. It's a darker book, full of grim realities. When Gen falls into her clutches, she takes something important from him, but he steals something much more important from her.

In The King of Attolia, the third book, Attolia gets the king it needs but doesn’t want, and in order for Gen the thief to obtain the one thing he wants most, he also has to take what comes with it — which is the last thing he wants

I think the story was originally supposed to end here, but I can see how Ms. Turner couldn’t let it go. There was still one person who needed to tell his story.

In the fourth book, A Conspiracy of Kings, the chief advisor of Sounis’ young apprentice, whom we met in The Thief, gets to tell his tale. It is the story of how a boy becomes a man, how a man becomes a king, and how the young apprentice puts the heir of Sounis on his throne.

I suspect that Ms. Turner succumbed to the plea that every story teller hopes to hear, “Just one more story! Please!” That “one more story” is Thick as Thieves. In it, the chief slave of the former Mede ambassador to the court of Attolia tells how Attolia’s king enacted his revenge on both master and slave.

I was lucky that the first three books were already out when I started The Thief. I only had to wait two days for the second and third books to arrive from . I read them again when the fourth book came out, and have just finished reading them all again now that the fifth book is out. I know at some point I’ll want to read them all again. Yes, they are that good. By the end of the first chapter of The Thief, the characters had stepped off the page and into the miniseries that was playing in my head as I continued reading. As I said at the start of this, do yourself a favor and read the books in order. Just when you think you know how the tale is going to go, the tale takes an unexpected twist. Things are not what they seem, and people are not who you think they are.

Oh, and did I mention the volcano?

*Don’t tell me a queendom isn’t a thing. If a country ruled by a king is a kingdom, then a country ruled by a queen is a queendom. Sit down and hush.
While well written, this second installment is heavier in that the protagonist deals with severe consequences that are haunting and not appropriate for younger readers.

The plot twists like a river down a canyon, but at the end, the reader is left asking the same question as Gen. Was he betrayed, and if so, were the setbacks really necessary or just there to be torturous?
Ugh. So good. Why are these books so short? I want more.

Gen is probably one of my new favorite characters. Right behind Uhtred. And maybe Jericho Barrons. I'd have to read earlier Fever books to be sure. He's clever and proud and yet wounded in a way that makes you want to take him under your wing like a tiny bird fallen out of its nest and nurse him back to health.

This book was written in third person instead of the first person POV in The Thief. I was sad to lose the closeness with Gen but it was necessary for the story to be told this way. Otherwise you'd never know how Attolia was feeling and the story wouldn't have the same impact.

I did have this story spoiled for me because I got greedy and looked at the synopsis of the next book without realizing that the first three words of it were one giant reveal. It didn't lessen my enjoyment of the story however and maybe was helpful in that I had an idea of where it was all headed. Looking back, this book isn't so much about that turn of events as it was the journey to get there.

Turner's writing is clean, concise and efficient. Not poetry, but I mean this as a complement. Flowery writing in fantasy gets tiresome. Turner is a story teller, and she won't let you forget it for a moment.
This is the second book in the Queen's Thief fantasy series. I wish to avoid spoilers, so I will say less than I might about it. But, for the record, I like both this book and its predecessor very much. I like the characters, minor as well as major. I like how the author lets some quiet yet telling moments pass with little fanfare, trusting the reader to recognize them. I like the writing, which usually slips by unobtrusively, being perfectly in keeping with the story, yet contains occasional beautiful and precise turns of phrase, such as this fragment from chapter five, "Every morning, when the sunlight forced its way around the edges of the window curtains, trimming them in light..." For me, this story is trimmed in light.