Megan Whalen Turner

The Thief Trilogy — (1996-2010) Young Adult. Publisher: "I can steal anything." After Gen's bragging lands him in the king's prison, the chances of escape look slim. Then the king's scholar, the magus, needs the thief's skill for a seemingly impossible task — to steal a hidden treasure from another land. To the magus, Gen is just a tool. But Gen is a trickster and a survivor with a plan of his own.

The Thief

“I can steal anything.” With that boast, Gen sets into action a course of events that could affect kingdoms. When he boasts that he can steal the King’s Seal, and then delivers on his promise, he is arrested and thrown into prison, where he languishes until the King’s Magus approaches him with an offer: freedom if he can steal Hamiathes’s Gift, a legendary stone that carries with it the right to rule the kingdom of Eddis.

Megan Whalen Turner writes a delightful mythic fantasy that takes the reader on a secret journey through a country whose culture and religion are loosely based on Ancient Greece. Turner’s land appeals to all the senses; The stench of the prisons, the heat of the sun, and the splendid views of ancient olive tree fields come off the page and play like a movie in the reader’s mind. The landscape, both physically and spiritually, is a vibrant part of the story.

The characters are very well done, from Gen (the whining gutter rat), to the Magus (the determined scholar), to Useless the Elder and Younger (Gen’s nicknames for the Magus’s two apprentices). The evolution of each character, and of the relationships between all the main characters, unfolds naturally and with believable adjustments to the trials they face.

The Thief starts a little slowly, but turns into a masterfully told tale of intrigue and adventure. In fact, I may have been late coming back from lunch the day I finished it because I was so sucked into the tale that I lost track of time. There are lots of twists and turns to the story. I saw one of them coming, but another took me completely by surprise. In retrospect, it seems completely in keeping with the story, which for me is a sign of good story telling, and not shoehorning in surprises just for the sake of a Big Reveal.

This is YA fiction that would appeal to a nine year old, but does not lose its appeal for adult readers as well. It is the first book in a trilogy, and I already have the second book on hold at the library so I can continue to follow the adventures of Gen. —Ruth Arnell

The Queen of Attolia

Eugenides ends The Thief in triumph, but within the first chapter of this sequel, he is back in the prisons of the Queen of Attolia, where he loses his hand to the executioner’s axe, while the Queen looks on impassively. Forced to deal with the rest of his life as the Queen’s Thief of Eddis, with only one hand, he bitterly retreats to his rooms in seclusion, leaving Eddis without his skills just as the peninsula erupts in warfare, from both within and without.

With a title like The Queen of Attolia, you know that she is going to be a major character, and most of the book is spent in political maneuvering between the queens of Attolia and Eddis, but I was unprepared for the role that she takes on towards the end of this book. I’ll include spoilers at the end of this review, but I shall just say that I found the backstory behind this development highly unbelievable. The Queen of Attolia is much more psychological than The Thief, which may displease some of the younger fans of the series. The political machinations also seemed to be drawn out considerably, and it wasn’t until the last third or so of The Queen of Attolia that I felt the story line really seemed to move forward. This is symptomatic of many second books, as there is a need to get the story from point A to point B, and the action is sometimes a bit contrived to make that happen.

Even with an implausible development in the interactions of the characters, The Queen of Attolia is still a good story. Darker both in content and tone than The Thief, parents may want to read the first few chapters with their children to discuss Eugenides having his hand chopped off. In the last fifty pages, Megan Whalen Turner sucked me back into the story and I am looking forward to book three, if for no other reason than to see if she can make me believe what happened in book two.

They are in love with each other? Really? No, I mean it. Really? He saw her as a young girl dancing in the gardens and fell in love with her. She listened to his fevered dreams outside his prison cell (where she had put him) and fell in love with him. And then the next time he ends up in the prison, she chops his hand off, but she still loves him, and he can forgive her chopping off his hand, and thereby destroying his professional life, but it’s all okay, because of twoo wuv. Seriously, Turner has her work cut out for her in book three if she wants to make me buy this. —Ruth Arnell

The King of Attolia

Gen is now The King of Attolia, married to the woman who he has loved since childhood, who also ordered his hand cut off when he was caught snooping around the castle. At the end of the last book, The Queen of Attolia, he offered to marry the Queen to seal a peace treaty between her country and his native Eddis, keeping secret from almost everyone that he has been in love with her since his youth. Now he is king of a country that considers him an enemy, and his marriage a political sham rather than a love match.

The King of Attolia is told from the point of view of Costas, a soldier in the Guard who is assigned to be an attendant to the new king. He starts out considering Gen a weak, lazy, inadequate excuse for a monarch, and slowly comes to see that the king is putting on a front to draw out his enemies so that he and the queen can consolidate their power. When he stumbles onto a foiled assignation attempt, he realizes that he needs to drawn the king’s powers out into the open so that all will recognize his authority.

I've read many reviews of The King of Attolia which are written by people who loved it and think it's one of the greatest love stories they've ever read. It is a moving romance, except for one big thing: I just can’t believe that these two people have been secretly in love with each other since childhood. I didn’t believe it at the end of the last book, and the incredulity was never remedied in The King of Attolia. While there are some genuinely touching moments, and I appreciate the difficulty that Gen undergoes in having to take responsibility and be king, my problem is that I can’t appreciate the pathos of his situation because I can’t believe in his reason for sacrificing his own happiness. This is one of the few series for which I can say that I think readers who skip the first two books may enjoy the third more — just because they don’t have to believe the complicated back story between the two main characters.

This causes difficulty for rating The King of Attolia. It’s a really good story in and of itself, so it doesn’t seem fair to ding it for things beyond the covers of the book. However, it’s difficult to have a moving romance when the reader can’t believe that the characters are actually in love with each other. I will recommend The King of Attolia, but with the caveat that if the end of The Queen of Attolia irritated you, The King of Attolia will not fix that. —Ruth Arnell

A Conspiracy of Kings

Eugenides is now the respected, if not loved, King of Attolia. When his childhood friend improbably becomes King of Sounis, Attolia’s neighboring country and historical adversary, Eugenides has to choose between loyalty to his new country, his queen, his homeland and his friend. Is there any way to balance the competing claims on his heart and his conscience?

This fourth book in THE THIEF series by Megan Whalen Turner brings it back to his former brilliance. The character of Gen and his friend Sophos, returning from the first book, are portraits of conflicting desires drawn with a fine-pointed pen, and inked in with exquisite detail. The magus is back in full form, and we learn even more about Eddis, which fleshes out the background details of the lives of more than one of the characters.

While the fourth book in a series, A Conspiracy of Kings would serve as an acceptable stand-alone book, because the point of view in this book is not Gen, but Sophos, who didn’t appear in the last two books at all, and was one of the supporting characters in the first. Megan Whalen Turner covers enough of the back story that new readers will not be lost, but the emotional complexity of the relationships amongst all the characters will be not as powerful if this is your introduction to this series.

A Conspiracy of Kings, and indeed the entire series, serves as an interesting study in what qualifies as young adult literature. The story is an intriguing blend of action and philosophy. Political machinations between and within warring nations are balanced against action as gripping as any summer blockbuster thriller. The final battle scenes at the holy city of Elisa are just crying out to be made into a big screen epic in the tradition of Peter Jackson or James Cameron. I found myself holding my breath at places, reading as fast as I could to discover how Sounis would possibly emerge victorious against the forces stacked against him in rows of armor and weaponry reaching into the thousands.

The political issues — of the cost of leadership, making decisions that will leave thousands dead, the value of sovereignty, and the limits and value of friendship — are treated to no less of an absorbing investigation than the action. This story left me breathless from both the action and the emotional investment skillfully drawn out by Megan Whalen Turner’s talented writing. It also left me wondering if the depth of the material being covered would be truly understood or appreciated by younger readers. The multi-layered characters and the seriousness of the issues being addressed make this a weightier read than a lot of young adult fantasy I have read, and make me have no qualms about recommending this jewel of a tale to adult readers as well as junior high and older young adult readers.

A Conspiracy of Kings will have you spellbound from its opening pages to its last, enigmatic words. I can only hope that Megan Whalen Turner will be returning to this world and following the adventures of these characters into the future for years to come. —Ruth Arnell