"The Thief" by Megan Whalen Turner

[sqbr]

When this first arrived from the library I thought "Wait, Newberry Award Honor Book? Am I reading young adult fantasy? Crap.". But then it quickly grew on me. It flowed very nicely and I liked the characters and story (no female characters, but that made sense in context), and the Greece inspired worldbuilding was understated but effective. It felt like a real country, I can't think of any other fantasy I've read with a convincing Mediterranean climate(*). Also the protagonist Gen is quite dark and no big deal is made about it. But apart from the fact that I liked Gen more when I thought he was a teenager rather than an immature twenty something (EDIT: oh, ok, he is a teenager), there was one thing that I predicted early on and knew would retrospectively really annoy me if it happened, and it did.

SPOILERS!!

I was really taken with how three dimensional and relatable Gen was, rather than being some irritating cliche of a lower class character. And then I realised that he was probably going to turn out to be a king or something. And lo, he was the cousin of a Queen. And then he complained about how HORRIBLE it was being forced to act like an icky poor person :( This also explains the avoidance of lots of long boring exposition about his family and life etc, which I had thought was just nice subtle writing. I also didn't like that the student who was a poor second son was driven to betray them all through jealousy, unlike the kind sweet heir to the throne. It's making me feel very unenthusiastic about reading the other books in the series.

The previous pseudo period fantasy novel I read did a similar thing. I have some vague nebulous thought about British writers remembering that lower class people exist but presenting the good ones as fairly happy with their lot, while writers from the US are more likely to have a subconscious bias that anyone in the story worth paying attention to will have been upper class all along. I think the relative Australian-ness of the setting of "The Thief" didn't help with me feeling like the story had betrayed me, since here we have a long history of seeing thieves as heroes and kings as annoying oppressors to be thwarted and mocked. Maybe I should try reading more Australian fantasy, see if it pisses me off less. (Probably not. It's not like Australians aren't horribly classist too)

Also, this isn't about classism or whatever, but I think I was supposed to start liking the Magus at some point, and I didn't. It felt like she started with some morally complex characters with interesting relationships and smoothed it all out to everyone left alive at the end being good decent people who wanted the best for their countries and were all super close friends (On the plus side I guess that does make the Magus a sort of sympathetic lower class character). All in all it didn't end up being the book I thought it was at the beginning.

(*)Though this did mean that I kept imagining the mountains they crossed as the Darling Ranges

Comments

[twtd]

Huh, I didn't pick up on any Australian-ness in the setting at all, but that might just be a personal POV thing. Technically, the first book is classified as children's fiction, so it's not even YA, though the rest of the books certainly are. The rest of the books are also much more political and read in a way that is somehow similar enough that you can tell it's the same author, and yet is completely different. Personally, I think the sequels are some of the best written works of fiction that I've ever read, but I don't know anything about the class issues in them, as that's not something that catches my eye when I read for fun. They are, however, very much about kings and queens (and Gen whining. Gen never stops whining. You sorta wanna hit him in the face).

And leaving everyone alive at the end... is probably the only nice thing she's ever done to her characters (and there are points where they would disagree and say killing them would have been nicer). Okay, I can't really remember anything too terrible happening to the Magus, but I think he's the exception. You don't really start to like him until the next book, iirc.

The female characters show up a lot more in the sequels, too, as does the moral complexity. Everyone still wants the best for their countries (basically), but as they're from different countries, those desires don't line up and all sorts of spoilery Bad Things happen.

[sqbr]

It's not actually all that Australian, it just reminded me of the trip from Perth up to the hills since we have a similar climate and geography (except that there's a huge honking desert between us and the people who live on the nice green coast that gets all the rain)

Haha, ok, once I get over the Gen-in-my-head not having ever existed I will have to give the rest a go, though I can see me complaining that it's all too dark and looking like a hypocrite :)

It definitely felt like there just happened not to be any female characters rather than Turner not wanting to write them, I was about 3/4 of the way through the book before I even noticed and I liked the glimpses we saw at the end.

[twtd]

There are times when I feel like MWT has another hundred characters in this universe already in her head, and they're all out there, doing things and advancing her plot, but they just haven't needed to show up on the page yet. I think Thief was definitely a case where they were there, but weren't needed for the story yet. They do become far more involved in the story as it progresses, though I think there's still some of the realism that this isn't an egalitarian society where everyone is valued equally for their contributions.

As for dark, Queen of Attolia gets pretty dark pretty quickly, but I think that bit is the the most outright "gaaaaahhhh I can't believe she just... how can she get away with that?!?!?!?!" part of the series. And then Gen whines some more, but that's not really a spoiler because Gen whining is sorta his default response to everything on some level.

[esmenet]

The class issues, IIRC, do get better later on (as does everything else). I liked The Thief, but Queen of Attolia and King of Attolia are much, much better. (People tend to have mixed feelings on A Conspiracy of Kings.) If the uncomplicatedly upbeat ending of The Thief disappointed you, I can at least promise that it never, ever happens again.

Give Queen of Attolia a go, if you get the chance. It's a really wonderful book, with several extremely awesome ladies.

[sqbr]

From these comments I will definitely have to try out "The Queen of Attolia", but If the uncomplicatedly upbeat ending of The Thief disappointed you, I can at least promise that it never, ever happens again sounds ominous :D

[lizbee]

But Gen is a teenager here. He's at most 16, and maybe a bit younger.

The class thing never quite balances out, although the narrator of the third book is more middle-class, as I recall. The female characters, on the other hand, take greater prominence from the second book onwards.

[sqbr]

Oh, ok! The stuff about not having joined the army made me think he was older.

I was fairly sure I could expect at least one more female character in "The Queen of Attolia", but it's good to know there's more :)