The Thief (The Queen's Thief #1) and The Queen of Attolia (#2) by Megan Whalen Turmer

Amy  

young adult, fantasy

The Thief is released from prison in order to aid the king’s magus in a quest for an ancient treasure.

The skeleton of this novel was good but the bloated fat was too much for me. The meat of the novel only accounted for about 20% of the pages.  This book is written in painstaking detail. Honestly, I could completely zone out of the audiobook for long segments of time and missed nothing. The bulk of the novel was describing the actual journey—details like what they ate, where they stayed, how they cleaned, when they slept, etc. etc.  It was, seriously, too much. Sure, it was nice to get to know the characters well, but I did not feel this level of detail was required. It wasn’t that the detail was boring. It was just neverendingly tedious.  I kept waiting for something to actually happen! It finally got interesting right in the middle.  Then, we went back to more journey details before a good ending.

Megan Whalen Turner is also guilty of inserting too many lengthy folk tales/myths into the narrative. They were only barely related to the main characters’ storyline so I didn’t appreciate these breaks in what little momentum existed. I think this novel is geared more towards the middle grades and was too slow for me. 

Truthfully, I would have abandoned it at about the 1/3 mark if not for Steve West’s narration since I love listening to his voice. He gets an A+, of course.  But I’m not even sure I’d be willing to listen to Steve read the rest of the novels in the series if they’re all this bogged down.

Amy  

I was not inclined to read The Queen of Attolia since I didn't love the first novel in the series all that much. But I was encouraged by others to give the second one a chance.

Yes, it was better. There was more to the story and there was less infuriating detail about nothing important. But there was still quite a bit of infuriating unnecessary detail. Thankfully, there was only one tangential myth and it was an intriguing story. But, again, it did nothing to move the story forward nor did it have much to do with the storyline.

The title of the novel gave away the one potentially fun surprise that the novel had going for it. What a shame.

Of course, the best part was the narration by Steve West, my favorite audiobook narrator. He shined as always. I just wish I really cared enough about this story to keep listening to more novels in the series. Alas, I do not.