I read all The Thief books just last year (in the midst of having a very hot summer, so the vaguely Ancient Greekness of them seemed very appropriate) and I loved them, and honestly The Thief was probably my least favourite of the bunch? I’d heard that there was A Big Twist and I clocked to Gen being Eugenides The Thief, and then spent the rest of the book thinking “surely that can’t be it?” but then that mostly was the twist. I also read The Thief right after reading another book series which used ‘not telling the reader everything’ to incredibly well, to devastating effect, and The Thief rather paled in comparison on that front, unfortunately for it! But then I adored all the rest of the series and read them very quickly (when it was truly too hot to do anything but hide in a basement with all the lights off and read).
I loved the Gods in The Thief so much, though. And the series definitely feels Sutcliffian to me, which is so much my jam, I read a steady diet of Sutcliff as a kid and it definitely shaped me. All that loyalty, to person and to country and to ideal! Queen hit so many of my buttons on so many levels - Oh, delightful!
I also didn’t think Gen/Irene was set up in The Thief, but then it really got to me by the time we got to King of Attolia. (Honestly if I’d just read Thief as a stand-alone I feel like I would have come out of it wanting Attolia/Eddis complicated politics and complicated romance.)
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Date: 2022-01-25 11:23 pm (UTC)I loved the Gods in The Thief so much, though. And the series definitely feels Sutcliffian to me, which is so much my jam, I read a steady diet of Sutcliff as a kid and it definitely shaped me. All that loyalty, to person and to country and to ideal! Queen hit so many of my buttons on so many levels - Oh, delightful!
I also didn’t think Gen/Irene was set up in The Thief, but then it really got to me by the time we got to King of Attolia. (Honestly if I’d just read Thief as a stand-alone I feel like I would have come out of it wanting Attolia/Eddis complicated politics and complicated romance.)