Authors worth reading: Megan Whalen Turner (The Queen’s Thief)

Megan Whalen Turner is the author of the Queen’s Thief series, my newest fantasy discovery (hat tip to Rachel for the recommendation). Her books combine:

• Adventure;
• Humour;
• Vivid and memorable characters; and
• One of the better depictions I’ve seen of myth and the divine in fantasy worldbuilding.

In the best ways, they remind me of two of my other favourite authors, Dorothy Dunnett and Lois McMaster Bujold. And with the proviso that I’ve read relatively little fantasy in recent years, they’ve been my favourite fantasy reads since The Silmarillion back in 2022.

Now complete, the series comprises six novels, plus a collection of side stories. Driving the action is Eugenides (Gen to his friends), the titular Thief. Like Dunnett’s Lymond and Niccolo, and Bujold’s Miles Vorkosigan, Gen is a larger-than-life trickster. By turns, he is hilarious, aggravating, regal, kind, menacing, wily, audacious, and ingenious. The others around him are equally well-written, including two of my favourite queens in the genre, long-suffering guardsmen and courtiers, and some very lowly people who turn out to be much more significant than their supposed betters would think.

Book 1, The Thief, is both the only one solely from Gen’s perspective, and the weakest by far — it reads as though it were aimed at a much younger audience. From Book 2 (The Queen of Attolia) onwards, the series zooms out to include other perspectives and the broader political context. And from book 3 onwards, the perspectives shift again and we mostly see Gen from the outside — often a source of dramatic irony, as by that time the reader knows him better than the various narrators.

The books’ setting is inspired primarily by classical antiquity, which extends to their treatment of the divine. While this is generally a low-magic setting, gods and heroes appear in dreams and visions to advise mortals — this felt consistent with myths (and means the books satisfy my theory that great fantasy gets its power from myth, history, or both).

A final bonus is that these books are easy to read — perfect after a tiring or stressful day.

Overall, I love these books. and I’d recommend them to any genre fans. If they sound interesting, my advice is to stick with them past the first book! Give the series until the first few chapters of the second book. If you do like the first book, even better. And if you pick up the series, I hope you enjoy it as much as I have.

Links

Goodreads

The series on Amazon US / Australia — buy from these links to support this site

Interviews with the author: Readings, (spoiler warnings) Dear Author #1, Dear Author #2

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