(no subject)

[skygiants]

My experience of rereading the Queen's Thief series in preparation for the finale, Return of the Thief:

The Thief - I had forgotten how much I enjoy early Gen narration, this is really fun!
Queen of Attolia - Attolia's stonefacedly adversarial relationship with the gods is suddenly the most interesting part of the series for me
King of Attolia - I love Costis
Conspiracy of Kings - well, I'm glad to have reread this again for the thematic resonance and to remember plot threads that I'm fairly sure will come up again ... where is Costis
Thick as Thieves - friendship ended with Attolian royalty, Costis and Kamet are my best friends now


In retrospect there were advantages and disadvantages to rereading the whole series first ... the advantage is that I could look at, for ex., Conspiracy of Kings and go 'well, I bet Ion Nomenus is gonna show up again!' and then both care and feel smug when he did. The disadvantage is that my heart is still too full of Costis and Kamet to remember how to care about Attolian royalty again ...

In other news, my experience was a little colored by having accidentally seen a fic tagged 'Costis/Kamet,' 'Relius/Teleus,' and 'Canon Queer Character' before getting my copy of the book and thinking to myself "well, if it's the Relius/Teleus that's explicitly textual instead of the Costis/Kamet I am going to be really mad and I am also going to laugh extremely hard." I mean, full respect to Megan, it is top tier trolling to stare me straight in the face and hold up a sign that says "YES I ABSOLUTELY KNOW QUEER PEOPLE EXIST" and then flip it around to show that the back says "I STILL REFUSE TO UNAMBIGUOUSLY CONFIRM THESE ONES, JUST TO SPITE YOU PERSONALLY."

Anyway, as I glumly told genarti today, unfortunately the end result of this is I can still think of nothing but Costis and Kamet and therefore despite having previously had no plans to do so I am inevitably going to be requesting Return of the Thief: The Costis and Kamet Cut for Yuletide -
genarti: Ah, you are Back On Your Bullshit.
Me: Yes. I am Back On My Bullshit.

But not entirely on my bullshit! I really enjoyed the majority of this book; I truly loved Pheris and his various moral dilemmas and all the Erondites Family Drama. (As I have seen others say, I would definitely be interested to see some writing on the series in general and this book in particular through the disability in kidlit lens.) I am somewhat less interested in late-stage Eugenides blossoming into his full Lymondization. I did not particularly enjoy certain reveals along the lines of, like, like, Eugenides Was So Dangerous He Was Sentenced To Death By The Eddis Council Before The Thief Even Began! Have we not already been told how brilliant and lethal he is enough? Is it really necessary to retroactively stack the deck?

I also wish ... hmm. This is another way in which a reread was possibly a mistake, because I had truly forgotten Attolia's wary mistrust of the gods in Queen and I really miss it especially now that the gods have stopped sending Gen terse messages to stop whining and have started instead reliably showing up for him with personal lightning bolts. For the number of times that people warn each other not to offend the gods throughout these books, none of our protagonists truly ever do, do they? Every time someone makes a difficult and potentially blasphemous choice -- breaking a sacred truce, stealing from Eugenides' altar -- it turns out that the gods were totally fine with it, just this once, because it needed to be done. I do wish the help of the gods had come at a higher cost, that we hadn't quite been done struggling against them yet. But this is mostly me being on my bullshit again, when it comes to wrestling with the gods.

(Actually, a part of me thinks that it might have been more narratively satisfying if Eugenides had in fact died in the pass when the gods were done with him, in balance for the divine finger on his side of the scales through so much of the book and indeed the series. And obviously part of me doesn't, because then the rest of the book would have been everyone else being devastated, and I do love all the characters, I don't wish to see them endlessly sad for the rest of the book. But.)

...all of which I think is going to make me sound more critical of the book than I am actually; I devoured it in a day, I enjoyed doing so very much, and I think, as a book itself and as the conclusion to an incredibly rich series, it's effective! For a peak reading experience I really probably should have saved Thick As Thieves for after, though.

Comments

[sovay]

But this is mostly me being on my bullshit again, when it comes to wrestling with the gods.

I regret to inform you that your bullshit is officially called "Judaism."

[skygiants]

That's it! That's the one!

[sophia_sol]

Ohhhhhhh you have crystallised for me why I was not happy with the presence of the gods in this book!!

I mean also yes Kamet and Costis forever, and I loved Pheris, and I also want that disability meta. But the relationship with the gods was too uncomplicated!

(Although actually I lovvve that this book did not say anything about the nature of Costis and Kamet's relationship other than that they're very important to each other, because I'm actually super into the idea that their life-bonded partnership is platonic (probably this is my unremovable aro-ace goggles but I'm here for it!))

[skygiants]

Yeah! Even when Irene almost died, it's like -- the transactional simplicity of the response ('this god wants this set of nice earrings! and we're done, good job') doesn't have any of the surprise or the knife-edge of moments like the reveal that the gods told Irene where to find Gen, or even 'Go to bed.' All of the uncertainty came through ambiguous prophecies, instead, which is a really different vibe.

(It's actually very weird to me to feel so strongly about Kamet and Costis because usually I love & am happy to roll with significant relationships as ambiguous or platonic, it's really rare that my brain sticks on something and insists that This Is Romance! But I am extremely glad you love it and that you get to keep the interpretation that works best for you; ambiguity absolutely has its upsides. :D)

[sophia_sol]

Yeah I get you, I am also usually fine to roll with significant relationships being anywhere from platonic to ambiguous to explicitly romantic and/or sexual, but have some pairs of characters where I have FIRM opinions. With Mako and Raleigh from Pacific Rim, for example, I cannot bring myself to even read fics that ship them, and with Mike and Psmith from the Psmith books I am baffled that anyone wouldn't ship them because they so obviously belong in a romantic relationship with each other, whereas with Kamet and Costis I'm just delighted to read literally anything that people choose to write about them, even if I prefer it to remain ambiguous in canon!

[cahn]

(Although actually I lovvve that this book did not say anything about the nature of Costis and Kamet's relationship other than that they're very important to each other, because I'm actually super into the idea that their life-bonded partnership is platonic (probably this is my unremovable aro-ace goggles but I'm here for it!))

yesssss I am totally here for this :D <3

(I totally also get having a firm opinion it should be more romantic, though!)

[kadharonon]

GOD, yes, I am almost tempted to write Costis/Kamet and M/M pairings are decidedly not my thing but they are just SO GOOD.

...I'm also tempted to write Gen and Irene fucking on a couch. because they definitely had sex on that couch.

There are things I'm glad it didn't really touch on; like, I realized that, oh no, we were going to see Irene have her miscarriage based on the timeline, but it wound up being not a big deal.

The gods extra meddling was... yeah. That was a thing. I guess I'll buy it from the perspective that some chunk of it is their own survival; are they going to become memories as the peninsula is overrun by Medes and the mountain inevitably erupts? Or are they going to survive by making it clear that you do not fuck with these people?

I, too, did a recent re-read of the whole series, and I hadn't read them all in such a long time, so I was struck by things like just how inconsistent Gen is as a narrator in The Thief, and the fact that he leaves Irene earrings, the same thing he offers his god, and just how much I love that scene where she comes in wearing the earrings but it isn't actually SHOWN for pages and pages. And, of course, everything about Costis, and then everything about Costis and Kamet.

[skygiants]

Same, tbh; it's rare for me too but they're SO good!

Yeah, I was glad for the light touch around the miscarriage, and some of the rough moments from earlier books. But if you have the gods play their hand too strongly here in the name of self-defense, that also starts to raise so many other questions, like what is going on with the Mede gods, then? Why were Immakuk and Ennikar involved in getting Kamet and Costis safely to Attolia? Whose gods get to throw lightning bolts, and whose don't?

Honestly, one thing that struck me when re-reading the Thief was the fact that with all the times Gen mentions earrings and the use of the first-person voice that conveniently elides pronouns, I would have spent most of the book convinced that Gen was not a boy if I was reading it for the first time now.

The earring scene in Queen of Attolia is honestly one of those that gets more phenomenal every time I read it.

[ambyr]

I know at least one person who went into The Thief knowing there was A Big Reveal and spent the entire book convinced that the reveal would be that Gen was female. I doubt they're the only one.

[kadharonon]

I'd argue that for Immakuk and Ennikar it was about survival, in a slightly different sense; saving a single devotee who is actively spreading knowledge of who they are by translating their works, and putting him where he can reach the most people who have never heard of them.

The Hephaestean gods would probably have survived a Mede invasion, but they'd become less, like it seemed Immakuk and Ennikar had; just a small part of a tapestry of different depreciated religious beliefs, maybe seen on the stage in 200 years, maybe a broken shrine here or there, but no real devotees.

But this is just me muddledly trying to come up with some justification for deus ex machina that was maybe... not the best plot usage.

[skygiants]

Oh man, I had not thought of Immakuk and Ennikar's interference as being about Kamet's role in translating/carrying on their story and I really love that take! My "where are the Mede gods or the new Peninsula gods if the old Hephestian gods are throwing lightning bolts?" question stands but I retract my complaint about Immakuk and Ennikar because that's actually phenomenal, they are welcome to carry on supporting their favorite roleplayers.

[kadharonon]

"This is our number one fanboy and if we want to interfere divinely in his life we will."

[lirazel]

I! Love! This!

[cahn]

okay yes, this is my new headcanon! :D

[lirazel]

I am a stranger who must inform you that I would read both Costis/Kamet and couch fucking from you! (I feel like Gen and Irene's sexual relationship must be fascinating and though I get why we don't really see much of it, I still want it!)

[minutia_r]

I was especially troubled by the bit where Gen took stuff from Eugenides the God's altar and he was like, "It'll be fine, probably, we're bros", and then... it was fine? Like, what's even the point of putting that in then?

[skygiants]

I was also somewhat surprised this didn't have repercussions -- there's a fine line between trust in your god and hubristic expectations of your god and I did keep expecting that to be crossed at some point.

[kate_nepveu]

Hah, I thought my reaction to the gods was because I hadn't reread the series beforehand and so I was misremembering something. I'm glad to know that in fact it was atypical and transactional and deus ex in the bad way.

I also hope for comments through a disability lens! Nothing jumped out at me as capital-P-Problematic regarding Pheris on my first read, but I'm extremely aware that I'm still unlearning ableist thinking.

[skygiants]

I think part of it is that the gods show up throughout this book in ways that are more traditional and formal -- ambiguous prophecies delivered through an oracle, offerings made and received, highly visible miracles -- as opposed to the surprising and terrifying casualness of the ways that they've interacted with Gen in the past and thinking about it more that may well be deliberate, a reflection of Eugenides stepping fully into the role of annux, but I still .... don't like it .....

Yeah, I personally loved Pheris and Pheris as protagonist and found his journey really gripping but am very much looking forward to the thoughts of people more qualified to comment than me!

[jjhunter]

Ah, see, I've been wondering if Pheris was, perhaps, being a stealth unreliable narrator in this book - or if the gods from his point of view were acting in more traditional and formal ways, but he did not get to see or hear of everything.

I really want fic filling in the holes because I expect there were repercussions for stealing from Eugenides' altar, or at least an attempt at consent sought beforehand.

And there's definitely something resonant that canon is very lightly touching on with Gen dedicating earrings to Eugenides, and earrings to Irene, and receiving earrings from the family of that one sweet young woman - and those resonant earrings of trust, love, whimsy, and respect being what the goddess of the hearth and home was wisting for when Irene lost her baby and fought to live herself.

We don't get to see what Irene was praying for, if anything. Having Gen occupied with a focus of Something He Could Do may have been the real gift.

[rymenhild]

The gods had specific goals for Gen and Attolia and Eddis and Sounis, though, and the events of this book were about achieving those goals. Get the Medes out of the region. Make a unified space where the peoples could protect each other, and have land there where the people of Eddis could go before the volcano exploded. And then stop before becoming the next Mede. The gods of Eddis spent all this time pushing Gen to this specific war, and now that he's there, they're helping.

Also, gods help those who help themselves. I am sure that Gen laid some fuses in the right place so all Eugenides had to do was drop a spark.

[skygiants]

The gods' actions make perfect sense on a functional plot level, it's just like ... it makes too much sense, almost? So they're just less interesting to me than they have been in previous books, which were a lot more concerned with how distinctly unnerving and double-edged it is to be the recipient of the gods' specific and unfathomable attentions.

[bookblather]

I'm only halfway through the book so I'm avoiding all the comments and the actual entry, but I really needed to tell someone who would understand that "Tell them I died" is a HUGE MOOD.

[bookblather]

ok I read it and I have so many feelings gsnkjdngkjsng EVERYONE DIED

[bookblather]

AND THE BIT WHERE SHE SAID KAMET COULDN'T BE DEAD BECAUSE THEY'D HAVE TO GO THROUGH COSTIS FIRST

[skygiants]

oh that MURDERED me. Kamet isn't dead but I AM!

[bookblather]

RIGHT JUST KILL ME WHERE I STAND PLEASE I AM LE DEAD

[skygiants]

MANY PEOPLE DIED

but also everyone who was ever a narrator or could be called a main character lived which I really and truly didn't expect, to be honest ....

sorry about the Minister of War though. :( and Sejanus. :( and Ion Nomenus. :( and like 3/4 of Gen's attendants. :( RIP.

[bookblather]

I really did not expect to be mourning for Sejanus! And yet.

Did bawl over the Minister of War though. And actually that entire scene, Irene just sleepwalking through it until Pheris woke up.

[skygiants]

I think I was sadder about Sejanus than anyone else, which is an effective trick on MWT's part! I was sad about Sejanus in King of Attolia too, to be fair.

[etirabys]

Oh man, I had the exact same complaint – come on, you can't put in "if you dishonor the gods he'll let you drop" AND "Eugenides stole jewelry back from the altar to pay for the boats" and not... let him drop. Just a little bit!!! Drop him just a little bit! The story needed it!

I also hated the Eddisian council decision retcon – I know it's not a retcon exactly but I'm mad about it so I'll call in a retcon – it was so unnecessary! It truly did not add anything!!!

(I still loved the book, I'm just – my brain feels like my skull is full of sea foam and MWT shook it firmly for several hours, and the most distinct thoughts right now are complaints)

For that matter I'm still weirded out by the volcano prophecy bit – it dangles weirdly in the story.

I feel bad about yelling about this book I really enjoyed and happily spent half of today devouring, so: while I thought her monarch quartet scenes got too goofy at several points, the part where Eugenides scales the wall in a rage and joke-threatens to pull Sounis out of the window was perfect. Also, while I'm going to waffle for a while about her choice of narrator (I feel like her previous ones did a better job of being in the story proper as well as conveying it – I suppose not Costis, but I started my rereads at book 4 to prep for book 6 and don't remember clearly), he really does feel like the perfect fit in some ways. And there's nothing more precious than a curious child in a premodern society learning about the Fibonacci sequence.

[skygiants]

JUST DROP HIM! AT LEAST A LITTLE!! The gods have never shown any hesitation at murdering their darlings before!

ha, yeah, skull of sea foam is exactly the mood. Easy to fish out the sources of vague dissatisfaction, harder to put into words the overall sense of accomplishment! I'm happy in a distant way for all the pleasant fanservice for everyone who sedoretus the monarch quartet, but I did also really enjoy the wall-scaling; but honestly mostly I was here for Pheris' slow journey from 'underappreciated, untrusting and untrusted' to 'trusted and more importantly appropriately intellectually stimulated' and that was so satisfying to read!

[lirazel]

Oh man, I had the exact same complaint – come on, you can't put in "if you dishonor the gods he'll let you drop" AND "Eugenides stole jewelry back from the altar to pay for the boats" and not... let him drop. Just a little bit!!! Drop him just a little bit! The story needed it!

This is such a good way of putting it.

[melita66]

I really need to reread it. I didn't really connect until about halfway through. I also only got halfway through KoA before starting RotT so I definitely missed some references.

Some parts made me roll my eyes like the council condemning Gen before The Thief. So did they ever rescind the order? He brought back Hamiathes gift so all is well now?

I was unhappy with the let's-beat-on-Gen thing by the Eddisians. Did Helen ever have to go through this? Ugh. Just ugh. I have a similar scene in Porco Rosso, but otherwise love that movie.

There's been some discussion on the disability representation/issues on a Queen's Thief Discord server. I'm probably giving y'all the wrong link but: https://discord.com/channels/616403451949088789/616403452465250313

I'm sorry but I don't remember where the thread was.

[skygiants]

I reread all the books beforehand and I am still sure I missed some references ... it is a really impressively layered series, especially given that apparently she didn't intend on it being a series until after The Thief won its first award. (Which possibly is also why the council condemning Gen in particular felt so retcon-y -- one of the few things that really did not feel to me like it had been planned all along, but like it was an extra cherry stuffed into the cake and Too Much of one at that.)

[lirazel]

well, if it's the Relius/Teleus that's explicitly textual instead of the Costis/Kamet I am going to be really mad and I am also going to laugh extremely hard." I mean, full respect to Megan, it is top tier trolling to stare me straight in the face and hold up a sign that says "YES I ABSOLUTELY KNOW QUEER PEOPLE EXIST" and then flip it around to show that the back says "I STILL REFUSE TO UNAMBIGUOUSLY CONFIRM THESE ONES, JUST TO SPITE YOU PERSONALLY."

I KNOW.

I do wish the help of the gods had come at a higher cost, that we hadn't quite been done struggling against them yet.

Agreed. I liked where we ended with the gods, but I wish that there had been a bit more struggling (and at least one god offense!) before reaching that ending.

(Actually, a part of me thinks that it might have been more narratively satisfying if Eugenides had in fact died in the pass when the gods were done with him, in balance for the divine finger on his side of the scales through so much of the book and indeed the series. And obviously part of me doesn't, because then the rest of the book would have been everyone else being devastated, and I do love all the characters, I don't wish to see them endlessly sad for the rest of the book. But.)

This is well taken. I remind myself that this is, ultimately, a YA series and that's a huge part of why she didn't go there.

...all of which I think is going to make me sound more critical of the book than I am actually

I had the same reaction! I enjoyed it! I thought it was good! But somehow the things I'm thinking about the most are the weaknesses in the book, which I did not anticipate.

[skygiants]

Yeah, it's almost hard to remember sometimes that it is a YA series because the writing is so elegant and the themes generally so clear-eyed, and usually carried through to their natural conclusion, consequences and all -- just not quite all the way this time, I think.

But yeah, I had fun reading it, I was glad to be reading it, it didn't make me feel badly about the series overall! It's just also sort of easy to take a step back from and critique.

[cahn]

I had truly forgotten Attolia's wary mistrust of the gods in Queen and I really miss it especially now that the gods have stopped sending Gen terse messages to stop whining and have started instead reliably showing up for him with personal lightning bolts.

*nods* That reveal about Attolia and the gods in Queen was so good and this book isn't really... like that, is it?

But this is mostly me being on my bullshit again, when it comes to wrestling with the gods.

Can I just say that I really like this line <3

[skygiants]

There are a few moments in the earlier books that just hit this balance of, like -- they're terrifying and numinous by very dint of being so unexpectedly forthcoming, which is a really incredible thing to pull off. The gods serve a plot function in this book, and things play out as they want, but they're only terrifying in very expected ways ...

lol thank you <3

[aamcnamara]

Yeah. YEAH. The gods were way more present in an active way in this book and I didn't think that they could do that! Or wanted to do that, maybe?

I'm happy for them that they repelled the Mede and also that they saved Eddis from the volcano. (I don't know if I believe that all the Eddisians will be like "ooh good farmland, time to move!" though. Eddisians seem pretty big on the whole Being From Eddis thing.)

I did NOT see Teleus/Relius coming, I think because I was picturing Teleus as like 35 and Relius as like 65? Which obviously real people sometimes have those relationships, just. Huh. Okay.

War stories are generally not my thing so I was, overall, less into this book than I wanted to be. And while I liked that the answer was "to win a war you need a Thief, not a king," it also aggrandized Gen in ways that probably will be very bad for him, or would have been if his dad hadn't died. Poor war minister dad. :(

...this was kind of like getting the Iliad with Odysseus as the hero. Except afterward he doesn't get ten years of wandering, he goes home and hugs his babies. (Do not get me wrong: I am excited for Eugenia to grow up and be the terror of the court.) That may be where my vague sense of imbalance is coming from. Those the gods love, in Greek epic, do not prosper long. They use you for what they need, and even if you live through it, you're not getting a happily ever after.

[skygiants]

I had been picturing Teleus and Relius as around the same age, but I definitely envisioned their dynamic as a triangle with their loyalty to Attolia at the point of it ... I do want to reread KoA at some point with this knowledge now, though! (it IS very funny to think that they're just being incredibly romantic off-page throughout KoA and Costis is a Very Nice Young Man who does Not Want to Think About His Boss that way.)

Huh. Yeah, you're not wrong, about the Iliad and the Odyssey. I think we're meant to feel like the cost for Gen is having to be king at all, but we've had all of KoA to watch him suffer through being king and I don't ... feel that bad about it ...

Though I suppose this is admittedly my double standards, too, because a big part of the plot of KoA is "let's stop Irene from becoming the worst version of herself" and a big part of the plot of RotT is "let's stop Gen from becoming the worst version of himself" but I care so much more about the former than the latter.

[sovay]

I do want to reread KoA at some point with this knowledge now, though!

I just re-read The King of Attolia and the scene in the dungeon with Relius and Eugenides and Teleus plays even more intensely with this knowledge, and it was already a fairly intense scene to begin with. Also Teleus carries Relius out of the cell in his arms and the text consistently refers to Relius as his "friend," which, look, I grew up on Mary Renault (and classical Greek), I shouldn't have missed that.

[starlady]

I stayed up until 5am finishing the book and came back to this entry to finally read it. I feel like…I don't really disagree with any of your points, except maybe about how the themes necessitate Gen dying at the end. But what my reread of the series really showed me is that gods aren't putting their hand on the scale for Gen out of idle amusement; they're his allies, because his cause is an existential threat for them too. It seems clear that if the Mede wins the gods of the Little Peninsula will be gone in a generation as well. So their interventions in this book made sense to me on that level.

And the other thing I would say is that in my view the hinge of the whole series really is the first chapter of The Queen of Attolia, when the gods tell Atttolia to nail boards at head height in the wood so that she can catch Eugenides. They don't hesitate to be ruthless when they need to be; Gen even says in this book that he'd have been a totally different man if he hadn't lost his hand, but the gods needed him to be the man he became after he did, and so they didn't hesitate. So the fact that he survives when quite a lot of other people die says to me that it wasn't actually necessary. Thanks to Pheris, he doesn't overreach; he doesn't go too far into self-indulgence either.

I would say the actually authorially indulgent thing is Relius surviving, tbh. And I too appreciated the authorial trolling of Teleus/Relius while refusing to confirm or deny Costis/Kamet, because lol.