osprey_archer | Book Review: The Thief

Last week when I was organizing my tags I realized that I didn't have a tag for Megan Whalen Turner, and moreover apparently never reviewed any of her books on this blog?? Which lit a fire under my long-smoldering plan to reread the first five Queen's Thief books before at last tackling Return of the Thief, which has been on my TBR shelf for *mumblecough* a while.

Today at long last, I have begun this journey with The Thief! I first read this book in the late nineties, when I was eleven or twelve, and I must have reread it more a few times back then because I found I remembered it far better than one single read would account for. But it's been years since my last reread, so while I was rereading it as an adult I also felt a clear echo of my childhood reactions.

The first time I read it, I was absolutely gobsmacked by the revelation at the end that Gen was, in fact, the Queen of Eddis's cousin Eugenides. As far as my younger self was concerned, this came completely out of the blue, but rereading it now I can see all the hints seeded throughout, right down to the fact that Gen gets flustered when he and the Magus discuss the Queen's cousin Eugenides! I'm curious if people who read the book for the first time as adults are more apt to guess Gen's true identity? Let me know if you did.

Also, this book offers some truly high-quality whump, to which I couldn't put a name as a child, not that this stopped it from fascinating me so deeply that it stuck in my mind for years. The part where Gen gets dragged into the sunlight after months in the dark prison and he has to drag his arms free to shield his eyes! The way Pol just cuts off the infected scab on his wrist! The scene where Ambiades ties Gen's hands too tightly and the blood pools in his fingers!!! Just everything.

I passionately adored fantasy as a child (actually, I still passionately adore children's fantasy; I just don't seem to have fallen in love with adult fantasy in the same way), and I loved and still love the unusual setting of this series, with its echoes of ancient Greece although the technology is far more Renaissance. The Queen of Attolia's Guard carry guns, although the guns' accuracy is so poor they tend to use swords for actual fighting; pocket watches have just recently invented. We learn so much the climate and geography and history and economics of Sounis and Eddis and Attolia just from the snatches Gen overhears of the Magus's lectures to his apprentices Ambiades and Sophos. The world feels much bigger than their little band, and so lived in.

(Aside: it's so interesting to reread the Sophos bits now. The first time through I was so intent on Gen and his adventures that I barely paid attention to Sophos, dismissing him (as Gen does) as "Useless the Younger," an inexperienced and shy young man who is always blushing... so I was rather startled when he became the protagonist of his own book, A Conspiracy of Kings.

I didn't particularly like A Conspiracy of King's, and, unlike The Queen of Attolia and The King of Attolia, I don't think I ever reread it. It will be interesting to see how I feel about it this time around.)

I also love the way that the magic manifests in this world, that so much of it is in the realms of myths and legends, and when it intrudes on the everyday world part of the way that you know it is magic is that everyone believes, not without question, but without being able to believe their own questioning. ("Do you have any doubts?" Gen asks Sophos, when Sophos questions whether this plain gray river rock is truly Hamiathes's Gift, with the power to anoint the ruler of Eddis. "No," Sophos admitted. "I just don't understand why I am so sure.")

And I love, love, love the scenes where Gen explores the temple, which is usually underwater but exposed to the air for just these few nights of the year. The tension of knowing the water will come back, the deep quiet of the temple, the simplicity of it that is in its own way very frightening. The only trap is a door which has a keyhole on the outside but not within, so if you go in that corridor and the door closes behind you, you can't get out...

And the added uncanniness that there are no bones in the trap: surely some thieves have been caught there, but all the bones in the temple are together in one pool - as if someone moved them there. (Indeed, there are number of things that move in this temple, perhaps by the rushing water... but perhaps by unseen hands.) Gen searches the pool, just in case Hamiathes's Gift is there. It isn't, but among the bones he finds a signet ring, and steals it for himself; and in the light of the next morning finds it is marked with a dolphin.

I knew from reading in an interview (I don't remember where, sadly) that this is an intentional reference to Rosemary Sutcliff's Dolphin Ring books, so I was waiting for the scene, but it still made me clap like a seal when it happened. I hadn't read any Sutcliff when I first read The Thief; one of the pleasures of rereading things as an older and wiser person is to be able to catch these references.

Sutcliff died a few years before Turner published The Thief, and this finding of the ring feels in some ways like Turner is picking up Sutcliff's fallen mantel. Of course, they ARE very different writers, particularly in terms of prose style - I read one Sutcliff book as a child, Song for a Dark Queen, and I REALLY struggled with the prose... although the subject matter didn't help, mind. Turner's style I found far more accessible.

But they do share a central preoccupation with loyalty/fealty. The most important bonds the characters share are usually bonds of loyalty rather than romance, or sometimes loyalty alongside romance, but really, if you wouldn't get down on your knees and swear to die for this person, is it even worth calling it love?

On the topic of romance, I was curious if I would see signs of the crush that Gen (in the next book) is going to claim that he's had on Attolia for years. Maybe it was there all along, like the breadcrumbs pointing to Gen's true identity that I totally missed as a child? But alas, in the case of Gen's crush, I still don't see it. Possibly Turner wasn't planning a sequel yet (although the way she sets up the wider political situation SO sounds like she was) or hadn't yet decided that the sequel would involve a romance between Gen and Attolia...

However, those are musings I should save for my review of The Queen of Attolia! Onward in the readalong!