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Summary
Summary
Discover and rediscover the world of the Queen's Thief, from the acclaimed novel The Thief to the thrilling, twenty-years-in-the-making conclusion, The Return of the Thief. The epic novels set in the world of the Queen's Thief can be read in any order.
New York Times-bestselling author Megan Whalen Turner's entrancing and award-winning Queen's Thief novels bring to life the world of the epics and feature one of the most charismatic and incorrigible characters of fiction, Eugenides the thief. Megan Whalen Turner's Queen's Thief novels are rich with political machinations and intrigue, battles lost and won, dangerous journeys, divine intervention, power, passion, revenge, and deception. Perfect for fans of Leigh Bardugo, Marie Lu, Patrick Rothfuss, and George R. R. Martin.
The brilliant thief Eugenides has visited the Queen of Attolia's palace one too many times, leaving small tokens and then departing unseen. When his final excursion does not go as planned, he is captured by the ruthless queen. The Queen's Thief novels have been praised by writers, critics, reviewers, and fans and have been honored with glowing reviews, "best of" citations, and numerous awards, including the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, a Newbery Honor, the Andre Norton Award shortlist, and the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award.
This edition of The Queen of Attolia includes "Knife Dance," an exclusive story about Eugenides by Megan Whalen Turner, an introduction to the characters from the world of the Queen's Thief, a map of the world of the Queen's Thief, and an exclusive teaser to Thick as Thieves.
A Booklist Top 10 Fantasy Books for Youth
ALA Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults
A New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age
Parent's Choice Gold Award
A Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books Blue Ribbon Book
"The Queen's Thief books awe and inspire me. They have the feel of a secret, discovered history of real but forgotten lands. The plot-craft is peerless, the revelations stunning, and the characters flawed, cunning, heartbreaking, exceptional. Megan Whalen Turner's books have a permanent spot on my favorites shelf, with space waiting for more books to come."--Laini Taylor, New York Times-bestselling author of the Daughter of Smoke and Bone novels and Strange the Dreamer
"Unforgettable characters, plot twists that will make your head spin, a world rendered in elegant detail--you will fall in love with every page of these stories. Megan Whalen Turner writes vivid, immersive, heartbreaking fantasy that will leave you desperate to return to Attolia again and again."--Leigh Bardugo, #1 New York Times--bestselling author of Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom
"Megan Whalen Turner proves to be one of the brightest creative talents. With each book, she continues to add new levels and new luster to her sparkling imagination."--Lloyd Alexander, Newbery Medalist and National Book Award-winning author of The Chronicles of Prydain
"Readers will be spellbound."--Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Turner's storytelling is so sure that readers will want to go along with her--and discover whatever it is that Eugenides will do next."--Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"[An] intense read . . . thoroughly involving and wholly satisfying on all fronts."--The Horn Book (starred review)
Reviews (3)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 6-10-In this sequel (HarperTeen, 2000) to The Thief (Greenwillow, 1996), Megan Whalen Turner continues the saga of the Queen's Thief, Eugenides (Gen), and his impact on his homeland, Eddis, as well as the neighboring countries, Sounis and Attolia. When Gen is discovered in the Attolian palace, the Queen cuts off his right hand as punishment. Sent back to Eddis reeling from his torture, Gen becomes a changed man. No longer able to perform the feats that allowed him the title of Queen's Thief, he become depressed. Meanwhile, Eddis has declared war on Attolia and the two countries are also embroiled in a conflict with Sounis. The gods, the Queen of Eddis, the Magus from Sounis, and his father, the Minister of War, all contrive to draw Gen out into the world again. Gen devises plans to steal the time his Queen needs to find peace for the kingdom and for Eugenides. The tale is full of plot twists and excellent characterizations, and Jeff Woodman excels at narrating the action sequences and dialogue. The slower paced sections that focus on war strategy become monotonous and boring. However, those who persevere will be captivated. For large audiobook collections.-Jessica Miller, New Britain Public Library, New Britain, CT (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
This spellbinder of a sequel to the Newbery Honor-winning The Thief is every bit as devilishly well plotted and grandly conceived. As it opens, Eugenides the thief has fallen into the clutches of the queen of Attolia, who still seethes from his besting of her (relayed in The Thief). Unwilling to execute him, lest she start a war with the queen of Eddis (Eugenides's cousin and ruler), she orders his hand cut off. The drama is high, and the action grows only more engrossing. As Eugenides tries to reconcile himself to the amputation, war breaks out, involving Attolia, Eddis and Sounis, tiny countries modeled on ancient Greece and other Mediterranean nations. For the most part, Turner eschews battle scenes, although she executes these with flair. Instead, she emphasizes strategy, with brilliant, ever-deceptive Eugenides a match for Odysseus in his wiliness and daring, perpetually catching readers by surprise. When, fairly late in the novel, Eugenides decides that he must wed the fearsome queen of Attolia in order to achieve a more lasting peace--and that he loves her--it requires a certain leap of faith to accept that his terror of her coexists with desire. But Turner's storytelling is so sure that readers will want to go along with her--and discover whatever it is that Eugenides will do next. Ages 10-up. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Library Journal Review
Eugenides ("Gen") is a royal thief in the service of his cousin, the Queen of Eddis. Since his youth, he has felt something close to obsession for the powerful queen of the neighboring kingdom, Attolia. This sequel to the Newbery Honor book The Thief (1997) takes the story of the kingdoms of Eddis, Sounis, and Attolia in an unexpected direction. In the opening scene, the Queen of Attolia exacts a high price from Gen, whom she has caught sneaking around her palace. She has her royal guard cut off his hand. Admittedly, the title of the third book in the series, The King of Attolia (ISBN 978-0-06-083577-4. 2006), offers a clue to this story's conclusion. For fans of Mr. & Mrs. Smith (starring Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, 2005). Why It Is for Us: These political rivals are strong on the outside and damaged within. Gen's continued pursuit of a woman who would punish him in such a way is more than a little twisted. Is he after her heart or her throne? Does it matter so long as we get to watch? [The hardcover was published in 2000.] (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
Queen of Attolia, The EPB Chapter One He was asleep, but woke at the sound of the key turning in the lock. The storage room held winter linens, and no one should have been interested in it in the middle of summer, and certainly not in the middle of the night. By the time the door was open, he had slipped through a square hole in the stones of the wall and soundlessly closed the metal door that covered it. He was in the narrow tunnel that connected a stoking room to the hypocaust of a minor audience chamber down the corridor. The door he'd crawled through was intended to allow smoke into the storage room to fumigate the linens. Moving quietly, he inched down the tunnel to the open space of the hypocaust. Squat pillars held the stone floor above him. There wasn't room to sit up, so he lay on his back and listened to the thumping noises, like drumbeats, as people hurried across the floor of the audience chamber over his head. They could only be looking for him, but he wasn't particularly worried. He'd hidden before in the spaces under the floors of the palace. His ancestors had used the tunnels of the hypocausts to hide in since the invaders had built them to heat their new buildings hundreds of years earlier. Noises traveled down the long, narrow tunnel from the stoking room: shuffling thumps and a crackle that he strained his ears to hear. A fire was being lit in the furnace chamber. Soon the warm air and, of more concern to him, the smoke would be fanned into the hypocaust to warm the audience room above and drive the quarry out. Silently, in the pitch-dark, he moved between the brick pillars to a wall and then along it to a flue in the wall with an opening slightly larger than the others. Even with the enlarged opening, it was not an easy task to fit himself into the narrow vent, and while he maneuvered, the warm, smoky air blew around him. He remembered how easily he had slipped into the flue the first time he'd tried it. His grandfather, who'd brought him to the palace, had grown too old and too big for most of the passages and had had to stay at an inn in the town while his grandson explored on his own, finding everything just as he'd heard it described. Once inside the flue, he wedged his fingers into cracks and braced himself with his feet to climb until the space turned at an angle to join the chimney above the audience room. When he reached the chimney, he cursed silently, though what he found was no more than he should have expected. There was a fire in the hearth below. Fortunately they hadn't already had a roaring blaze going when they chased him out of the linen room. They must have just lighted the fire, but the air in the chimney was smoky and quickly growing hot. With no other choice, the thief climbed into the chimney and moved up it as quickly as he could, relying on the sound of the fire to cover the sounds his soft boots made on the ridged bricks of the walls. The chimney was much wider than the flue, and the ridged bricks were intended to be climbed easily by sweepers. He went on until he reached an intersection where several chimneys came together into a much larger one that rose to the roof of the palace. The chimney was warm and filled with smoke, but instead of climbing it, he turned to another opening and climbed down. He guessed that the queen had soldiers posted on the roof of the palace to watch the openings of the chimneys. He breathed shallowly and slowly, stifling a need to cough. Any sound might betray him. As he dropped lower in the chimney he'd chosen, the smoke grew thicker, his eyes watered, and he missed a handhold and slid down with a thump to a ledge below. He sucked in a lungful of smoke and then covered his mouth with both hands while his face turned red and the blood pounded in his ears. The breath trickled out between his fingers and he breathed in again more cautiously, but his throat burned and his head swam. His breath came and went in huffs of suppressed coughs. He was on a ledge where the chimney divided into smaller flues that led down to several different rooms. He closed his eyes and listened for sounds, but there was no shouting, only the muted crackling of the fire somewhere below. He poked his head into one chimney after another, debating with himself before choosing one he hoped led to the stateroom of some foreign ambassador too prestigious to be disturbed in the middle of the night by soldiers wanting to light an unnecessary fire in his hearth. The chimney he chose descended from the main one in a long, shallow slope. Once he was away from the main chimney, the air was free of smoke and he stopped to draw grateful breaths until his head cleared. When he reached the turn where the chimney dropped straight to the hearth below, he paused and settled himself to wait. There was no sign of a fire laid underneath him, so there was no immediate need to get down, and he thought it best to be sure there was no one waiting for him in the room below. After a long silence he heard the creak of a bed as if its occupant had shifted in his sleep. Queen of Attolia, The EPB . Copyright © by Megan Turner . Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold. Excerpted from The Queen of Attolia by Megan Whalen Turner All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.