In preparation for a Readercon panel I reread Megan Whalen Turner’s series The Queen’s Thief, including the last novel, which I didn’t really remember, and the post-series collection Moria’s Pen.
Apparently I wrote up the first four a while ago, so that saves me some time. I have to say that the fourth, Conspiracy, looks worse to me now because it is extremely weird about slavery.
The fifth, Thick of Thieves, simply does not have enough there there. Extremely little happens, and to the extent it’s supposed to be a look at the Medes, I don’t think it’s successful.
The six and final book, Return of the Thief, feels so much like a direct sequel to The King of Attolia that it reinforces my feelings about the fourth and fifth. I love the narrator, but as the book progresses, it ranges further and further afield from what he knows, which bugs me despite the lampshading in the prologue. I understand why a novel might decide that fidelity to a narrative framework is less important than smooth and unremarked switching between multiple POVs at moments of high tension, but you know me, that’s never going to be the choice that I would have preferred.
As for the way the plot resolved, I did not find it exactly consonant with the rest of the series, but it did resolve and I was glad of it.
Finally, I would not read the post-series collection Moria’s Pen, because the stories in it are pleasant but inessential … right up to the point where one drops a post-series event that would be monumental and says, "but that was generations ago and no-one knows what happened! moving on." Why. Why would you do this to me.
It was, by the way, very amusing to be reading this series while also in the middle of a deep dive into the Homeric epics, again for Readercon. For that, see the next post.