Chapter Book Thursday: A Conspiracy of Kings, by Megan Whelan Turner

We are spent. We have finished reading Turner's series (so far - please don't let this be the last one!). We highly recommend that everyone read these books (if there is anyone left in the world besides us who didn't discover them long ago), We do NOT recommend you read them back-to-back in one giant marathon - for the simple reason that you will be useless to anyone else, as we were. You may TRY to stop reading and, say, cook a meal for your family, but your mind will be so entrenched in Attolia/Eddis/Sounis and the various political intrigues, that you will see conspiracies everywhere, probably giving your toddler a little more credit for planning and sneakiness than you should (then again, maybe not).

For long-time fans of the series, this one should not disappoint. The first chapter immediately answers a burning question from the last and gives readers a huge sigh of relief. If parts of the ending are less than surprising, it is because we have grown accustomed to Turner's characters being smarter than us, and thus getting themselves out of jams we would stay hopelessly mired in.

So, Ms. Turner...is the next one ready yet??!!

Retro Tuesday: Attolia series continued

         
Continuing the vein of last week's Retro Tuesday, we can't believe we missed this series. Have we had our collective heads under a rock? Well, we are water turtles, so we may have been doing just that. At any rate, we are very glad to have found it now, and sad that we are only 100 or so pages away from finishing the last of the series, A Conspiracy of Kings.
 
When we posted last week, we had just started reading The Queen of Attolia, and we mentioned how very different in tone it was.  The first few chapters were pretty horrific, and we missed the humor of The Thief. Fortunately, as most readers will know, the humor did return, without losing the seriousness of the storyline. What amazed us was (slight spoiler) how we could hate someone so thoroughly at the start of the book, and love and root for her at the end. Of course, Eugenides might wonder the same thing. Excellent, excellent books, and we are now torn between wanting to devour the latest, and wanting to stretch it out to make it last!

Retro Tuesday: The Thief, by Megan Whelan Turner

Publisher's description:

"The king's scholar, the magus, believes he knows the site of an ancient treasure. To attain it for his king, he needs a skillful thief, and he selects Gen from the king's prison. The magus is interested only in the thief's abilities. What Gen is interested in is anyone's guess. Their journey toward the treasure is both dangerous and difficult, lightened only imperceptibly by the tales they tell of the old gods and goddesses."

We have no idea how we missed this one for so long - a Newbery Award winner, and the type of historical fantasy we like. While the characters' journey may be, as the publisher's description states, "dangerous and difficult", the story itself is lighthearted and fast-paced, with a suprise ending that truly took us by surprise as well as leaving us chortling with glee (and yes, turtles do chortle with glee - as well as write really long, run-on sentences at times.)
 
We are now halfway through The Queen of Attolia, the second book of the series, and it came as quite a shock. It is just as good as the first book, but much darker - we haven't chortled once. We received an ARC of the fourth book from the publisher, and now we are playing catch-up before we get to it. Our goal is to be able to review that one Thursday or Friday, so stay tuned!