4.25 Gen Stole My Heart StarsI had a great time reading this with a few friends at Buddies Books & BaublesI liked The Thief it was a solid 3 star read, it took a little while to get into but the ending was very solid. The Queen of Attolia though….well let’s just say that it had some very unexpected and crazy surprises in store for me. It was so much better than the first book with complex characters and more than one twist I wasn’t expecting. I really love it when a book blindsides me with something that I never saw coming and there were exactly 3 instances in this book where I had no clue ‘that’ was going to happen until the bomb dropped.This series might seem to read a little slower than some other fantasy novels because a lot of the tension and build up is political intrigue and posturing. It is about cunning and sneakiness, who is telling the truth, who is lying and is everything what it seems or something else entirely. I like smart dialogue like that where I’m trying to figure out the true motives and intension of all those involved. I had inklings and suspicions of the actions and reactions of all the characters but I never once knew for sure and to me that is extremely entertaining.The characters and their emotions are complex and intricate. I started this book disliking the Queen of Attolia, shortly into this I despised her, then I grew to maybe feel some empathy for her, to finally possibly understanding her and perhaps maybe now I have an smidgen of like happening for her. It was an emotional journey and I can say definitively that I have a healthy respect for her character. She is smart, cunning, manipulative and merciless sometimes. But The Queen of Attolia is a great three dimensional character doing her best to rule a country full of Baron’s who do not want to be ruled by her and she is so alone. There was a shadow behind the wardrobe, a deeper one at the edge of the window curtains. She sat up against her pillows. She pulled the bedclothes up as far as they would go and suppressed a perverse wish to have her old nurse come to chase away the darkness, perverse because she didn’t know if she wanted the shadows to be empty or not. She sat watching until the day dawned and the shadows lightened and were gone.Eugenides totally WOWED me. His growth in this book alone is amazing. He is not just the scheming prankster of a boy he once was. He went through some very traumatic experiences in this book and they have changed him. He is different now, but we the readers get to travel with him through that transformation and it is not always easy. This book is sometimes much darker than the previous installment. Eugenides might have taken a little time to bounce back after his tragedy but he got there with a little nudging. ”Stop whining. Eugenides said.“What?” Eddi’s expression shifted from wary to puzzled.“That was the message. Fe me, alone among mortals, the gods send their messenger to tell me to stop whining. That’ll teach me to go hide in the temple.”I had so much fun watching Eugenides get back on his feet and up to his old tricks. Everyone better watch out, he has a new ambition and plan that I think he was willing to go to the grave for.Eddis is another great character and smart Queen. It is so interesting to compare how similar and different she and Attolia are. Each is ruthless for their people and will do anything for those they care about. They are both smart, cunning and able to see into the true motivations of those around them. But where Attolia is surrounded by people trying to take a kingdom away from her Eddis is surrounded by family, friends and subjects that would protect and keep her in power at any cost. Eddis is allowed to seem softer and kinder because of this but do not let that fool you she is just as ferocious. “Magus,” she said from the doorway. “I’d heard that you had come.” Eugenides swung to look at her. “You started a war in my name without telling me?” he asked. “You will have to excuse me,” said the queen to the magus as if she hadn’t heard. “I overslept, or I would have greeted you earlier.” “Are we at war with Attolia?” Eugenides demanded. “Yes,” said his queen. “And Sounis?” asked Eugenides. “Nearly,” said Eddis.Being a Queen at war leaves no room for sympathy in most. The battle between the two Queens showed how each used their strengths to maneuver against opponents. I enjoyed the alternating PoVs to get a full picture of the story.I was happily surprised by the direction this story took and I had a great time trying to figure out who was going to outmaneuver who. I think Eugenides wins in that regard though. I think he could test a monk’s patience and get Gandhi into trouble. I’m really interested in seeing what he will do in his new role for the next book. Barron’s Beware Eugenides is coming for you is really all I can think of saying on that.
Well well! So our pleasant, feather-brained little fantasy romp grew a bigger, bitchiner sequel. Turner made the very good choice of switching from first person to roaming third, and tossed us straight in to political intrigue and war and post trauma.So – and, frankly, this is one of those spoilers that has to be revealed because talking about the book without it is like talking about Harry Potter without talking about magic . . . this sentence was going somewhere. Since when is drunk reviewing this hard?Anyway this book! Which I liked very much, this book is about acquired disability, and identity changed by trauma, and all of that stuff. I reflexively withdraw from books with sudden acquired disability plotlines. I am predisposed for dislike from two directions: I have the lifelong disabled person’s disdain for badly done flailing and trauma and howling and “how will I ever survive I’d rather be dead” (um, you may have heard me demurely mention this on a previous occasion), and at least in the past four years I’ve also had the periodic raw-nerved sensitivity of sudden loss that can’t tolerate acquired disability actually done well. So it’s not that my standards are high so much as that they are . . . complicated.So reading this book and watching myself respond to it was actually really instructive in pinpointing what works in acquired disability stories and what doesn’t. What I liked about this book was that the acquired disability and the post-violence trauma were different processes. People almost never get that right, but they really are. Even when they spring from the same event, and even though they are both fundamentally a kind of violence done to identity, they . . . operate in different keys. They are different necessities to reconcile the old identity with the new circumscribed reality, with what you can’t do now and with what everyone else thinks you can’t do (also two different things).The other thing I liked was that the disability in this book was not about fetishizing pain or woobiness, but instead about fetishizing the person who came out the other side. The former is far more frequently creepy than the latter. And here the process is nicely drawn, with some beautiful moments in Gen’s long, quiet winter in his room, feeling out the new boundaries of his body one tiny increment at a time. And, “I thought I was doing so well.” Oh, yes.Here’s what I didn’t like. I think it is cheap and it is easy for author’s to shorthand their character’s post-disability trauma entirely into their discomfort with the injury being seen. It does make sense – the gazes of others are of course self-definitive, and this is a thing that people go through. But when you channel so much of the aftermath trauma into body discomfort you’re playing with fire. Because disability is not biological. It is not somatoform. Disability is a sociological condition rooted in the embedded culture’s incapacity to, I don’t know, embrace universal fucking design, and the resultant discord it projects back at the disabled person. I realize I’m being all modern social theory at a little young adult fantasy book, but you know what? You do have to deal with the physical pragmatics, but when you get bound up in this idea of body-based disability shame, you’re permanently stuck in the physical and you can’t get anywhere else. Anywhere a lot more interesting, frankly. Also, modern theory is just how I roll when I’m tipsy.So anyway. It’s a book about a smart-mouthed kid who gets hurt, and how he gets up again after, and how it hurts the people around him, and how it hurt the person who hurt him. Big stuff, for a silly little young adult fantasy.
What do You think about The Queen Of Attolia (2006)?
Oh my god.Honest to goodness spoiler lies within.(view spoiler)["Unable to guess the answer, she asked, "Who am I, that you should love me?""You are My Queen," said Eugenides. She sat perfectly still, looking at him without moving as his words dropped like water into dry earth."Do you believe me?" he asked."Yes," she answered."Do you love me?" "Yes.""I love you."And she believed him. (hide spoiler)]
—Jo
Now I finally understand why everyone seems to like this book so much more than the first. You see, The Thief is a wonderful little book filled with excellent writing, an interesting protagonist, an exciting fantasy world and a great big twist near the end. The Queen of Attolia had all of this, but it just had more of everything. It was everything I loved about the first book... on steroids.Every character and every sentence - damn it, every word even! - is important, serves it's own purpose and is never wasted. This is a characteristic in books that is rare but oh so wonderful when you manage to find it.Being told in 3rd person, unlike book one which was from Eugenides POV, allows the reader to see the bigger picture and to better understand the world that forms the backdrop of this series and the political relationships between Attolia, Eddis and Sounis. But, oddly, at the same time I felt like we also got to know Eugenides far better than in The Thief, and I loved him all the more in this second installment. He's such a perfectly imperfect character, he's flawed, he's brave without being ridiculously self-sacrificing, he's a little devil and yet you can't do anything but be on his side. Whatever happens to him in the next book has suddenly become very important to me.And it's not just Eugenides... I mean, how easy would it have been for the author to make the Queen of Attolia nothing more than a villain sat on a foreign throne? But that's not the story Megan Whalen Turner is trying to tell. Like I said, Turner doesn't waste characters and her use of 3rd person in this novel lets us readers see the real queen behind that stone mask of cruelty. Of all the qualities I like characters to have, complexity is quite possibly my favourite.But I think the book was really sold to me when Turner managed to successfully pull off a romance that surprised me, pleased me and just generally worked without being soppy or cheesy. A young adult novel with romance that doesn't make me cringe? Genius.
—Emily May
I have such mixed feelings about this book. I can't deny that it's an amazing book, but at times, I just wanted to throw it away and howl in frustration -- not because any of the characters were misbehaving, but because of the twists and the turns and all the bad things that I don't like happening to anyone. I think I should never write a book, ever, because I hate doing unpleasant things to my characters, and as for killing off characters I like -- forget it! The Queen of Attolia is one hell of a ride. If The Thief was fairly predictable, well, Turner makes up for it in spades with this book. I started saying WTF!!! about five pages into the book, and I didn't ever stop until the end of the book. Turner's writing just gets better and better. It's sort of like how I felt towards the Kate Daniels series. After the first book, I was shrugging my shoulders saying, What's all the hype about. And then I read the second book, and the third, and I couldn't stop or put the books down even though I hadn't slept in forty-odd hours, and my eyes were gummy and I looked like someone from the zombie apocalypse. The Thief was kind of the same experience. The first book was good, and I really liked it, but the second book was EPIC! (Sorry to steal your adjective, Jillian!) *** SPOILERS ***I love Gen, no two ways about it. He stays true to character in The Queen of Attolia, with flair, but no flamboyance. Turner does a brilliant job with his character, making him clever-as-hell, but very, very human. SO imagine my shock when this model character suddenly declares a hitherto unsuspected love for his nemesis! To fall in love with someone who so obviously scares the crap out of you, who tortures you till you've lost your reason for living, well, that just feels unhealthy. So when I first heard Gen's declaration, I was not buying the love story. That was one of the parts where I wanted to chuck my book against the wall, so it's a good thing I was reading an ebook. I wanted to scream NO NO NO, you were doing SO well!But you know what, Turner managed to make the whole thing believable! I'm not saying I'm totally convinced, and I had some The Fountainhead-type flashbacks, but I could deal with the love story, and that is saying a lot, considering how Turner spends most of the first half of the book making us hate The Queen of Attolia, despite her occassional glimpse of humanity. Again, the thing with the Mede ambassador was no big surprise, but this time I'm convinced Turner actually set it up that way. *** SPOILERS END HERE ***This book wrenched me out of my complacent Urban Fantasy hole, where it's all action with very little emotion (at least the stuff I've been reading lately!) turned my perceptions topsy turvy and made me want to cry, and cheer and laugh. I loved the experience, even if I hated some parts of the book. Some side characters I'd love to see more of are Sophos, who does not appear in this book at all, the Magus of Sounis, whom I'd like to see a lot more of, and Gen's father, who is so awesome for someone who gets about ten lines in total! I can't wait to go read the third book, and for anyone who hasn't gotten hooked on this series yet, go buy the book RIGHT NOW!
—Vinaya
