Turner, Megan Whalen - The Queen of Attolia

Sequel to The Thief. Thankfully, coffeeandink warned me prior to reading these books that the back cover of The Queen of Attolia would spoil The Thief, so be warned!

Gen, the erstwhile hero and epononymous thief of The Thief (yay SAT words!), now finds himself embroiled in court intrigue and political quandries as the three countries of Eddis, Attolia and Sounis find themselves alternately at war while still attempting to hold the Mede Empire from taking over all three of them.

And now I have no more to say in summary because it would spoil The Thief. In fact, while you're at it, don't even read the summaries or back cover of The Queen of Attolia either. Just go get the book. Seriously! It has actually cut into my Saiyuki Gaiden squeeage and obsession and now I am completely squeeing and obsessing over this and must get The King of Attolia at once. will ignore book-buying moratorium is special case am totally desperate Ok, will give some more thoughtful reasons below...

Everyone should go read The Queen of Attolia because it rocks and has court intrigue and politics and countries at war and Turner makes it all real and practical and still wonderfully enticing. And you should read because the queen of Attolia and the queen of Eddis are both awesome characters, though complete opposites. And you should read because I now adore Gen after being quite fond of him in The Thief, because you get to watch Gen really grow into his own in this book and be sneaky and thief-like and enormously brilliant, and he does so and is still the irritating, brash, troublesome thief of the first book.

I would love it just because it hits nearly every one of my buttons, from court intrigue to the rogue-ish hero to the ice-cold queen of Attolia, but it honestly is a very good book. All the characters are nicely complicated and imperfect, and while it took a few chapters to get used to the third-person POV (The Thief is first-person POV), Turner makes it work because the situations are so complex. And I love that the three-way tangle that Eddis, Attolia and Sounis find themselves in makes sense and that Turner looks at logistics and food supplies, at reservoirs and rivers as strategic options, how each nation's different resources lead to different strategies. She's very obviously thought her world through, and it shows. And she does it without too many brain dumps, and she makes it exciting.

Even so, the book is still firmly focused on its characters and their emotions, and that makes it all the more effective. I actually wouldn't categorize The Queen of Attolia as YA. The Thief feels firmly in that category, but The Queen of Attolia feels like a wonderful, giant, fat fantasy book the way they should be. It's complex, and Turner handles all of the politics and the characters very well.

Several people commented in the post on The Thief that lots of people tend to like Thief better than Queen, but oh, I totally fell in love with this book. I enjoyed Thief, but it didn't make me squee like this one did. I can see why people might like Thief better -- it's a lighter book and some not-so-great things end up happening to Gen in this one. But that's why I like this one more.

( Spoilers for The Thief and for The Queen of Attolia )

Heading out in a few hours to buy the next book.

ETA: Oh also, Queen can be read as a stand-alone book, though I'd recommend reading The Thief anyway just so you can have the fun of watching Gen develop.

ETA:

buymeaclue's review (spoilery)

Westerfeld, Scott - Midnighters: Touching Darkness

Second in a trilogy (I think) that involves five teenagers all born precisely at midnight. I read the first book a while back and didn't hate it, but also wasn't too impressed either.

This book thankfully isn't bogged down with necessary explanations of what everyone's powers and limitations are and why only they have said powers; nor is it as Jessica-centric as the first book. This made me happy, because Jessica and Jonathan were actually the two characters that bored me the most. I also liked it better because it started getting into midnighter backstory and past history, which lent a sense of overhanging tragedy. I am a total sucker for backstory, especially tragically ending backstory that must be righted by the current characters.

Dess and Melissa and Rex thankfully have more to do in this book. The first book was a little too standard-YA-teens-with-power for me, in which the kid who could be cool had she not Sekrit Powers gets sucked into a secret superhero team consisting largely of the outcasts of the school. The problem I still have is that I get a sense that Westerfeld doesn't like Melissa and Rex as much as the other characters because they're not as typically "cool." Rex also has the standard fearless leader characteristics that make most of the other people on the team take him less seriously.

But I really liked Dess' role and the combination of math and weaponry. I like her brain very much, and I like that she doesn't fall into the standard stereotype of strong but not too smart warrior. I also continue to like Melissa just because she's prickly and no one else likes her, and I'm glad she gets more to do as well. I even liked Rex better, thanks to a few revelations about him and what he has to go through in the book.

I'm more impressed with the series now, and would like to see where it's going.

Links:
- rilina's review

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I am snuggled up on the couch with toasty warm rats on my lap, and the first loaf of bread I have ever baked sits on the stove, cooling down so I can eat it. I had white bean rosemary soup of heres_luck fame for dinner, and the beans were velvety and delicious (two phrases that I never thought could describe beans before I cooked). I can see the beautiful, hand dyed, lace weight yarn I bought at the yarn market at Stitches West, and it's beautiful and soft and angora and I will make a lovely lace shawl from it and kill my fingers in the process (ow, the pain of size 0 needles). My hands are recovering from kneading said bread (dill and onion), and even though I swore just a few hours ago to never try and make bread again until I got myself a stand mixer, I'm already reconsidering because it smells so good. I'm in the thick of The King of Attolia, and damn, it's good. And my Tivo is recording ice dancing for me as I type.

Ah, life, you are good.