A review by tiffyofthemonts
The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner
2.0
Quick thoughts...
I'm going to pretend that as far as The Queen's Thief series is concerned, reading The Thief is sort of like paying your dues to get to the next book, which is supposedly better and more compelling and yadda yadda.
Because reading this book was rough.
I'm not sure how much description I can stomach. I don't need to know where all the doors in a room are, relative to one another. I don't care that this trail is parallel to that trail but under this tree which is across from that bush. There is so much description of spatial positioning. It's so tedious! I was constantly rereading pages and pages at a time because I kept drifting off.
Nothing really happened in the first 200-something pages, right? Or did I miss something maybe? The magus and Pol and Sophos and Ambiades and Gen were all just walking and camping and making fun of each other and being buddies and then being mean to each other again?
The ending was interesting and clever, and I enjoyed reading all 15 pages of that. I wish the rest of the book hadn't been so obsessed with keeping the reader in the dark about Gen's motivations, background, etc. because after a while it was hard for me to care about anything that was happening in the story.
I'm not particularly keen on continuing the series because I felt the plot development and writing style were SO lacking... But I know the rest of the series has gotten rave reviews. So what's a girl to do?
I'm going to pretend that as far as The Queen's Thief series is concerned, reading The Thief is sort of like paying your dues to get to the next book, which is supposedly better and more compelling and yadda yadda.
Because reading this book was rough.
I'm not sure how much description I can stomach. I don't need to know where all the doors in a room are, relative to one another. I don't care that this trail is parallel to that trail but under this tree which is across from that bush. There is so much description of spatial positioning. It's so tedious! I was constantly rereading pages and pages at a time because I kept drifting off.
Nothing really happened in the first 200-something pages, right? Or did I miss something maybe? The magus and Pol and Sophos and Ambiades and Gen were all just walking and camping and making fun of each other and being buddies and then being mean to each other again?
The ending was interesting and clever, and I enjoyed reading all 15 pages of that. I wish the rest of the book hadn't been so obsessed with keeping the reader in the dark about Gen's motivations, background, etc. because after a while it was hard for me to care about anything that was happening in the story.
I'm not particularly keen on continuing the series because I felt the plot development and writing style were SO lacking... But I know the rest of the series has gotten rave reviews. So what's a girl to do?