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

[attackfish]

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.

Gen, or Eugenides isn't in the king of Sounis' prison by accident. He is the first cousin of the queen of Eddis and the official Thief of Eddis who came to Sounis after the king of Sounis implied that the Gift was in his possession. When it transpired that the Gift was not in the king's possession, he disguised himself and provoked the king into arresting him in hopes that the Magus would take him along as a brilliant but anonymous thief, and thereby lead him to the stone. He comes out of it triumphantly, bringing not only the Gift, but the Magus and one of his apprentices (who turns out to be the king of Sounis' nephew and heir) to his queen, thereby ensuring that she does not have to enter into a disastrous marriage to the king of Sounis to keep her throne.

In The Queen of Attolia, Turner switches from first person narration to third person. If in The Thief, Eugenides became a boy hero, in Queen, he becomes an adult hero. The story begins with him creeping through the Attolian royal palace, spying on, and taunting the young, ruthless Queen until she catches him and sends him back to Eddis minus his right hand, and so he believes, his skills as a thief. When he emerges from his scholarly solitude to find his small mountain country at war with both Attolia and Sounis, he kidnaps the Magus, whom he is sure is planning the Sounis strategy, and finds himself in the position of once again being a hero, but as he tells his queen,"I don't feel like a hero, I feel like an idiot."

Then Eugenides plans to do what the king of Sounis failed to do and force a queen into marrying him. He kidnaps the queen of Attolia to prevent her from marrying the ambassador from the Mede Empire, whose army could then gobble up both Eddis and Sounis, who then kidnaps him. Nonetheless, she's far too canny to marry the Mede anyway, and marries Eugenides so that she can end the war with Eddis and ally with Eddis to force the Mede out.

In The King of Attolia, the point of view shifts again to that of an Attolian royal guard named Costis, who is made a pawn in Eugenides' games. In this final installment, he must prove himself in and to the hostile Attolian court and become a King with a capitol K.

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.

Comments

[hpstrangelove.livejournal.com]

Wow, it's so great to see someone else who likes these books. I only found them last year, thru an Amazon rec based on my other purchases. I first got them from the library, and liked them so much I had to have copies for myself.

Then I sent them as gifts to my 12 year old niece in Chicago.

Her 46 year old mother loved them too.

BTW - I was 48 when I read them. I have found so many wonderful books that were aimed for the YA market.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

I love Young Adult books; I'm writing one! Especially in the fantasy genre, they tend to be better written and less cliched than adult novels. After I switched to adult novels for a while, Eugenides reminded me why I love fantasy.

Yay, they need more readers!

There are others of us out there. There's even a LJ community devoted to them! http://community.livejournal.com/sounis/

On a different topic (and a shameless pimp), I posted the first chapter of my new fanfiction, Children of Mars on the first.

[hpstrangelove.livejournal.com]

Thanks for pointing out the comm! I had no idea, but I should have.

I have your fic bookmarked; my bday is this week and all my family are coming in to visit, plus I'm trying to do the NaNo thing. I alway have liked your fics though, so although I may take a while to comment, I will eventually get there. I've made it over half way through No Difference; I carry around the remaining chapters, printed, hoping to find time to read! I loved that fic (but I guess you know that by now.)

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

*blushes fiercely* there are hard copies of my fanfiction somewhere? I'm incredibly flattered you wasted paper on me.

I'm a NaNoNotAChance kind of person, because November is midterm crunch time, but I know what you mean. I'm barely keeping up reading the fanfiction I started months ago.