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!

Threaded | Flat

From:

asakiyume

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? --FOR REAL

This is one of those books (another is The Moorchild) that I read when my kids were the target audience age--I think this was given to one of the kids. I really enjoyed it--I didn't love it in the intense way I loved The Moorchild--but I still really liked it. I recall thinking was really a well-told story that took some twists and turns that were surprising and good. And I liked the setting a lot, and the way gods were referenced (... IIRC???)

From:

sovay

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 read the book for the first time when it came out and recognized the ring at once and Sutcliff was an important writer to me, especially The Eagle of the Ninth and its first couple of sequels, and I wasn't even sure what the intertextuality signified in this context, but it made me so happy.

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...

I would have to source it, but I remember Turner saying in interviews that she pruned a lot of wider-world, non-essential character material out of the final draft of The Thief because she thought it was going to be a standalone and then haha, whoops. I believe the emotional scaffolding of that relationship may have been one of the casualties.

From:

troisoiseaux

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.

YAY!

I read the series for the first time last year, but I already feel like I should re-read it, or at least The Thief— especially, as you said, because of a new understanding of the Sophos bits post-Conspiracy of Kings but also because, somehow, I got my wires crossed and thought Gen was supposed to be in his mid-to-late 20s rather than late 'teens (?) in The Thief.

From:

telophase

Wandering through from network:

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.

I picked up that Gen was hiding something, but because of my past reading and a trope I particularly liked, I guessed that Gen was hiding his gender and was actually a girl. And I assumed that was the case so much that when the actual reveal came, it was disconcerting. (I adored girl-masquerading-as-boy stories as a kid and teen.)

From:

philomytha

I honestly can't remember if I spotted Gen's identity or not in the first book. I inhaled these books all at once some years ago but haven't ever been back to them - your reread is making me think I might like to revisit them.

really, if you wouldn't get down on your knees and swear to die for this person, is it even worth calling it love?
Truer words were never spoken! (You can tell I grew up on Sutcliff, can't you...)

From:

copperfyre

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.)

From:

skygiants

I was extremely aware that Eugenides was coyly keeping something back as a narrator and was probably the Thief when I read the book for the first-time-I-remember in college, but also I got so many moments of, like, narrative half-remembered resonance throughout the experience that I walked away convinced that I had probably actually read it for the first time a few years prior and had simply forgotten all about it. Unfortunately I only started keeping records of my reading after that date so the truth will never be known! (But I tend to keep an extra eye on first-person narrators in case they are cleverly dancing around some particular piece of truth -- I blame Mary Stewart's Ivy Tree for that one.)

The Temple scene is so good, the best part of the book, IMO. I love all the other books for a lot of other reasons but I'm not sure she ever again matches quite that level of eerie helplessness in the hands of the gods.

From:

kiraly

Ohhhhh you're doing Queen's Thief reviews, I'm excited! It's been long enough since I first read The Thief that I'm not sure if I picked up that Gen was the Queen's Thief or not, but I did have the mistaken impression that he was a girl for the first part of the book (I think I had read some other book where the main character also started out in prison, and was a girl, and mixed them together in my head). I spend a lot of time hanging out in a discord server for the series though so I can tell you that there are definitely adults who do not pick up on the twists on their first readthroughs...we are all constantly bemoaning our lack of reading comprehension, haha.

Anyway I'm excited to read the rest of your reviews, and also to see what you think of Return of the Thief when you get to it!