The Queen's Thief and Invisible Ficathon

[raven]

So I’ve been having trouble trying to write a review of The Queen’s Thief series by Megan Whalen Turner, despite the fact I’ve just devoured all four books in a joyous rush. The problem is every book in the series has a game-changing spoiler for the one before, so! Even describing the premise of the books is a spoiler! Even the character detail I like best manages to spoil the first two books! I was telling happydork about them the other day and I think I said, “So, Gen is one of my favourite [spoiler] protagonists,” only I didn’t say ‘spoiler’ (spoilers) and metaphorically kicked myself. Yeah. Okay, so let’s be vague! They are enormously enjoyable YA fantasy books, kind of like Diana Wynne Jones but with less of the overwhelming whiteness of being, and have an interesting approach in that they’re fantasy without having magic. The first one, The Thief, is definitely YA, then from the very first chapter of the next one, they take a much darker and more complex turn, though that said I would have loved them as a teenager, I think. Anyway! The protagonist, Gen, is so much fun, his friends and relations possibly even more so, and the books say a lot of interesting things about faith and identity, while also having battles and heists and hijinks. Also, [spoiler] [spoiler]ing [spoiler] is amazing. So now you know.

Anyway, so, basically the only non-spoilery thing I like about the books is that while the author clearly has a taste for the Greek myths, she’s created her own pantheon of gods, goddesses and myths, with their own stories, in which Gen is well-versed. (He is named after one of the gods, which leads to some interesting resonances.) He occasionally recounts the myths, and true to any mythology I ever heard of, he and his friend-and-antagonist the king’s magus then go to battle about how the story is supposed to go. (What I also like is that this is why he and the magus are both antagonists and friends: they may be diametrically opposed in terms of everything they hold holy, but they agree at least that the myths are important, and should be told right. Well, quite.) And jadelennox was running invisible_ficathon, a gift exchange for fictional canons, so I wrote one of Gen’s myths: On names; or why it rains at a hanging. (No spoilers! Somehow.)

I also recommend the Invisible Ficathon in general, actually. What I like about it is that is that the point of it isn’t really the stories – I suppose some people really were dying for fic written of “canons” that are in some cases just a few words long – but the ficathon as a whole, which is a collective piece of performance art. I love the carefully-constructed requests for Galaxy Quest and Ghost Soup Infidel Blue fic, that sound just right: full of fannish love and reference and even fannish entitlement (! If you don’t write this exact story I will HATE YOU FOREVER!) and you probably would be excused for not realizing that they’re… completely made up. There are missing scenes for episodes that don’t exist, badfic parodies of badfic that doesn’t exist. And as well all the tropes of multi-season sci-fi show fandom, there’s sweet Quidditch RPF (which is to say, magical Quidditch; I’ve realized recently I know more than one person who actually does play Quidditch, for the London Unspeakables), a fic that fictionalises everything around it (what, you mean the AO3 isn’t a journal of kidlit book reviews?) and, amazingly, a fic that purports to be fanfiction of a proto-Indo-European myth, the hero and the serpent. Fanfic that foregrounds the role of women, at that. Isn’t fandom wonderful.

Comments

[musesfool]

Oh man, those books ARE hard to talk about without spoiling! But so, so awesome.

And I do love having the otp tag: "he stole her heart, she took his hand."

[raven]

!!! that is the BEST tag. So... arch. :)

[kaberett]

Thanks for the rec; have added to the to-buy pile. :-)

[raven]

Hurrah! Hope you like.

[soupytwist]

This was AMAZING AND POSSIBLY PSYCHIC timing on your part because I just finished The Thief! I will totally have to go on to the next ones now, since you like them so much. I reallyreally liked Gen, but I kind of liked him better when we thought he was [spoiler], and so finding out [spoiler] aaaalmost seemed disappointing to me? Not a lot, but enough that I came online instead of jumping straight to the next one. And now I'm glad I did, because POST! Also it sounds like future books do similar reveal-y things, which intrigues me!

Also, seriously, just from book 1 this series shows how daft it is to have a world where Everyone Agrees What The Myths Are omg.

[raven]

Oh, hurray! Great timing! Without being too spoilery about what happens to Gen next, I'll just say that the very first chapter of the next book does something different in terms of how he approaches the world. I think you might find it interesting.

(Also, that said, the next books do not have nearly as much Gen vs. the magus as I wanted, though there is some. :P)

[shadowfireflame.livejournal.com]

Oh my God, I recently devoured this series as well and adored it, just loved it to pieces. Yay, another fan!!! (I talked about it a little here (http://shadowfireflame.livejournal.com/62532.html), if you're interested.) It's impossible to review because even the freakin' title is a semi-spoiler, lol!

The funny thing was that I discovered it on a Goodreads group thread where I was looking for protagonists similar to Lymond in Dorothy Dunnett's The Lymond Chronicles, and Gen was quite similar. So now I'm going through and looking for more. So far Diana Wynne Jones and Elizabeth Wein have hit the same pleasure centers for me. But please do post about it if you come across any others like this you enjoy. :)

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

You know, I've been told many times I'd enjoy the Lymond books, but just haven't been able to get into them. I must give them another try one of these days. I note you've got Locke Lamora on your list - I heartily recommend those books! They're another twist on the trope and such a good one.

[shadowfireflame.livejournal.com]

Oh, excellent! I'm on the holds list for the first Locke Lamora book; can't wait! In the meantime, I adored Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones.

Lymond's writing style can take a white to get into, but in my opinion it's totally worth the effort.

[annikah.livejournal.com]

Someone else who has read the Queen's Thief books! Huzzah! Aren't they wonderful?? And I have the same problem with trying to explain them to others. Basically I just end up handing the first one to someone, gushing how it's so amazing but I can't tell them why. I even got a UK copy of the second book so that the darn *cover* doesn't give anything away. (The titles can also be spoilery - agh.)

What's also amazing is how well these books stand up to rereading. I've reread them about half a dozen times over the past several years, and that still astounds me. I pick up new things every time I read them.

Megan Whalen Turner has said the series will be six books total, but she takes around 4-6 years to write each book. With any luck Book 5 will come out this year or next year, but she's very secretive about when the next book will come out. All to better build anticipation among her fans, I suspect. ;)

Now I want to reread them! Luckily I'm almost finished with the book I'm reading...

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Aha, amazing, I had no idea the fourth book wasn't the last, thank you for that! I shall look forward to the next ones, whenever they appear. :)

[littlered2.livejournal.com]

I love the Queen's Thief books! (Actually, you have reminded me - I have the fourth, and keep meaning to read it, but then reading other books instead. I should rectify this.) I think the second is my favourite. I didn't warm to the third as much as I expected - I had heard people talk about how it was amazing and brilliant and there was a huge twist at the end, and then I read it and thought, "wait, so the twist is that Gen is a cunning bastard, didn't we know that already?".

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Aha, yes. I read a review which commented that the first book spoils you for the third - because if you haven't read The Thief, you've no idea Eugenides isn't just as Costis perceives him - but the third book spoils you for the first, so really you can read them in either order! Which amused me. :)

[sfruof.livejournal.com]

I adored those books as a child. I think I must have been around age ten when I first read The Thief. I have this really vivid memory of taking a class trip to the library and checking out the book for my, oh 20 minutes of reading time just because I could not wait to go home and finish reading my personal copy. I've read the second book but not the others - I'll definitely have to go back and read all of them now. So great to hear you enjoyed the books as well!

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

They're so great, and I do wish I'd read them younger! I hope you enjoy them on the re-read.

[yiskah.livejournal.com]

I am so weak in the fact of your recommendations that I caved on my no-Amazon-ebooks-in-2014 resolution and bought all four books.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Oh, dear, I wish I were more sorry. <3

[ladyfalcon.livejournal.com]

The first book of The Queen's Thief was so integral to my childhood. I definitely read it >10 times, at a time when the first book was all there was. Then, about 6 years ago, long long after I had kind of stopped thinking about it, a friend of mine were off to the beach for the weekend, and we stopped in the town library on our way out and stocked up on probably 20 books of kid's and YA literature to read on the beach, as you do. I honestly nearly died when I realized there was MORE to read about my beloved world. I burned myself crispy reading through all of them one after the other, and you're right, they just keep twisting further with every book and are so unexpected. Honestly, you've brought it to mind again so I'm thinking it's time for another re-read!

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Aww, that's so nice! I think I might have been the same if I'd read them younger - they certainly have that wonderfully addictive worldbuilding I loved as a wee fangirl.