{"id":716,"date":"2011-07-22T21:50:11","date_gmt":"2011-07-22T21:50:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog-test\/?p=716"},"modified":"2024-01-21T11:41:13","modified_gmt":"2024-01-21T16:41:13","slug":"turner_attolia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/2011\/07\/turner_attolia\/","title":{"rendered":"Turner, Megan Whalen: Thief, The; The Queen of Attolia; The King of Attolia; A Conspiracy of Kings<\/cite>"},"content":{"rendered":"

It is quite difficult to coherently explain why I like Megan Whalen Turner’s Attolia series (The Thief<\/cite>, The Queen of Attolia<\/cite>, The King of Attolia<\/cite>, A Conspiracy of Kings<\/cite>)<\/strong> so much, because most of those reasons involve enormous spoilers for the first two books. On the other hand, this problem would have been more vexing before the fourth book, because I didn’t like that nearly as well and as a result am less enthusiastic about recommending the entire series to people.<\/p>\n

These are published as YA, though the first is the one that fits most comfortably in that genre. They are fantasies mostly in the same way that Swordspoint<\/cite> is, that is, they are deliberately set not in our world in an ahistorical and nonmagical time and place. They do weave in many recognizable historical elements, mostly Greek history and mythology (regrettably, it appears the principal bad guys are Persian-analogues). However, a small but significant strand in the series involves deities in a way that I found really cool and unusual.<\/p>\n

Structurally, it may be useful to think of The Thief<\/cite> as a prologue. I enjoyed it, because it’s the kind of first-person narration that is right up my alley, but it is very different from the rest of the books and is probably not necessary to read first. Of the rest, Queen<\/cite> and King<\/cite> are reasonably described as younger cousins of Dunnett’s Lymond Chronicles: not nearly as formidably complex, but with something of the same slightly distant, yet highly Id Vortex-y<\/a>, approach to complex characters and their relationships, politics, and revelation of plot. I didn’t like King<\/cite> as much at first, because I found it disorienting to have a new character as a narrator, but it definitely grew on me, so if you like Queen<\/cite>, it’s definitely worth reading all of King<\/cite> as well.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, then there’s Conspiracy<\/cite>, about which I have two criticisms. One is that the first-person sections don’t work as what they are purported to be; this only shows up in small ways but it’s the kind of thing that bothers me. The other is an enormous spoiler for the book’s end, which I discussed back in the day over at LiveJournal<\/a> (which link shows just how backlogged I am here). Upon re-reading, yes, I still don’t like it; worse, it makes me very dubious about the direction of the series.<\/p>\n

So if these sound appealing, to the limited extent I can convey their appeal without spoiling them (and they really are best read without spoilers), you might consider reading through King<\/cite> and then stopping for the moment: it doesn’t end on a cliffhanger, and that way if the rest of the series doesn’t redeem itself, then you won’t have spent the time. But the first three are definitely worth reading.<\/p>\n

(Series name note: the fan-created consensus appears to be “Queen’s Thief,” which I don’t like. “Attolia” isn’t really accurate either, but at least has the virtue of being in two of the book titles.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is quite difficult to coherently explain why I like Megan Whalen Turner’s Attolia series (The Thief, The Queen of Attolia, The King of Attolia, A Conspiracy of Kings) so much, because most of those reasons involve enormous spoilers for the first two books. On the other hand, this problem would have been more vexing … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Turner, Megan Whalen: Thief, The; The Queen of Attolia; The King of Attolia; A Conspiracy of Kings<\/cite>“<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,15],"tags":[417],"class_list":["post-716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-sf-and-fantasy","tag-turner-megan-whalen"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=716"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/716\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2506,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/716\/revisions\/2506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}