The Boy Hero Grows Up: The Thief, The Queen of Attolia, and The King of Attolia

One of the most well used and beloved story lines of Young Adult fiction is the coming of age novel. It is this great tradition into which Megan Whalen Turner's novel The Thief arises. I almost wonder what I can say about this book, both because it won the Newbery Metal, and because I came across it when I was the age for which it was intended.

I first picked up The Thief and its sequel The Queen of Attolia from the school library when I was in seventh grade, and then promptly fell sick with a week and a half long flu in which I didn't have enough energy to shamble over to my bookcase to get a new book, so I read them five times in a row, and they're still good after that. That takes a pretty amazing book.

The Thief is about a teenaged boy thief named Gen, who is languishing in the king of Sounis' prison for stealing the royal seal and showing it off in a wineshop to win a bet. The Magus, the king's adviser, drags him out to use his skills for a mysterious quest for an unknown object. He clashes with the Magus, the Magus' two apprentices, and Pol, a soldier as they travel through countryside reminiscent of Byzantine Greece, eventually coming to something like mutual respect after Gen successfully steals the lost symbol of royal authority of the neighboring country Eddis, an immortality granting stone called Hamiathes' Gift.

Turner uses point of view in all three of her novels about Gen (she published the third after I discovered the first two) to great effect. Every character in these books has something to hide, and she uses Gen's perspective to provide both classic and reverse dramatic irony without the reader either annoyed at the other characters' ignorance or feeling cheated.

Unlike most fantasy, Turner's books about Gen don't have magic. As such, they are on the opposite end of the spectrum from Urban Fantasy. They have an alternate universe, but no traditional magic. They have gods, though, scary humanish gods that force the truth of their presence onto the unfortunates they meet. Gen, who must steal an artifact of theirs from their own temple, finds his own world view deeply changed when they begin to answer his prayers quite literally. "No, they don't believe that, Sophos. It's just their religion," he says flippantly at the beginning of the book.

Once my fever went down, I went hunting through The Thief and the Queen of Attolia line by line to see if there really were clues to the surprise endings! Sadly, these endings mean I don't want to ( give too much away. )

Each of Turner's books is a powerful, character driven novel, unexpectedly moving in their depth.  I have read the covers off of my copies, and hope that my writing style is as influenced by them as I think it is.