Eddis, Attolia, Sounis

What are yours? Here are just a few that stuck out to me.

The first is during Gen's interview with Attolia. This is even more interesting to me if, as Gen suggests later, she suspected all along who he really was:

“He suggests, however, that your loyalty to your own country is not strong.”

I winced. “I have no particular loyalty to the king of Sounis, Your Majesty."

I love the whole conversation Eugenides the God comes to Gen in his fever. Eugenides seems remarkably human, given how different divine nature is supposed to be--I wonder how much of that is from being raised by the woodcutter and his wife:

The god beside me was silent, and the silence stretched out from my bedside through the castle and, it seemed, throughout the world as I remembered that Lyopidus had burned and died while Eugenides had not.

And finally, when Gen presents the Gift to Eddis, there's this delightful moment. I find it interesting that the magus is more consternated at discovering how all his plans have been foiled than properly angry--it seems like he and Gen are actually on better terms when they're openly serving different masters than when Gen's pretending to work for him:

"I glanced back briefly at the magus and was delighted to see his mouth open in astonishment. 'Gen,' he said under his breath, 'you viper.' "

Edited Date: 9/24/16 08:59 pm (UTC)

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I find it fascinating to reread the last section after having read The Queen of Attolia and The King of Attolia, in particular. We know the captain of the guard who captures Gen and his companions was Teleus, and we know the Attolians were paying Ambiades as a spy--I can only imagine that was Relius' work, and I wonder how that came about.

What other parts of The Thief are even more interesting in the context of the later books?

I also don't think I'd ever have expected the rest of the series to pan out the way it does, after just reading the first book. Do you remember what you were hoping for or expecting the first time you finished The Thief?

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All right, when did you work it out? I honestly don't remember, I read this so long ago. I don't think I suspected at all until right at the end. I like to think I'd spot it sooner if I was reading the book for the first time now, since I'm a much savvier reader now than I was in middle school, but maybe that's optimistic on my part!

The clues do come fast and thick. Gen mentions retying his braid, and later he even mentions his relief that the magus didn't notice the bump at the back of his head; he knows far more than he ought to about Attolia's stronghold; and of course he produces that bridge across the Aracthus at just the right time.

It's interesting that Pol found out so much earlier. I do regret Pol's death--he was such a great character, and I wonder what he'd have made of later developments in the series.

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Eddis and Attolia might be my two favorite characters in the entire series, but we see so little of them in this book, and they come so late! I recommended the series to a friend recently, and I know she loves female characters--I had to tell her to trust and wait, because they'd only get an introduction in the first book, but we'd see much more of them later.

Here are the two introductions we get in The Thief. What strikes you about each of them, particularly in light of the everything we learn in later books?

First, Attolia:

Standing over me, between the magus and the captain of the guard, was the queen of Attolia.

She smiled at my surprise. Standing in the light, surrounded by the dark beyond the reach of the lanterns, she seemed lit by the aura of the gods. Her hair was black and held away from her face by an imitation of the woven gold band of Hephestia. Her robe was draped like a peplos, made from embroidered red velvet. She was as tall as the magus, and she was more beautiful than any woman I have ever seen. Everything about her brought to mind the old religion, and I knew that the resemblance was deliberate, intended to remind her subjects that as Hephestia ruled uncontested among the gods, this woman ruled Attolia. Too bad that I had seen the Great Goddess and knew how far the Attolian queen fell short of her mark.

And then Eddis:

By far the least attractive of the women stood up.

She had black hair, like Attolia, and her gown was red velvet, but there all similarities between her and the lowland queen ended. The queen of Eddis tended to stand like a soldier. The ruffles on her shoulders made her arms seem long enough to reach to her knees. Her nose had been broken and had reknitted crooked; her hair was cut short like a man’s and curled so much over her simple silver crown that the crown itself was nearly invisible.

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The Thief is the perfect example of an unreliable narrator, and I wonder if MWT chose first-person in part because of the fun and challenge of having this sort of twist ending while telling the whole story from the perspective of the only character who knows the truth.

In The Queen of Attolia, though, she manages yet another twist ending, this time giving us the third-person perspective of several different characters.

I find her approach to point of view through the whole series absolutely fascinating. How does Gen's narrative voice work for you?

At the very end, we find out he's setting the whole story down because Eddis asked him to. (He even considers sending the magus a copy. I wonder if that ever happened....) This reminds me very strongly, of course, of Sophos telling Eddis his own story in A Conspiracy of Kings.

This also makes me wonder what MWT has up her sleeve for the next book! Which character's perspective would you be most interested in getting for later volumes? Would you prefer first person or third?

Edited Date: 9/24/16 09:00 pm (UTC)

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heiros-acumen.livejournal.com

Maybe it's obvious from my user-picture thingy(I only use livejournal for Sounis so I don't know much of the terminology), but my favorite line from when he's talking to Attolia is when her dress scratches him. I feel like it means so much, though I haven't decided exactly what. Maybe it's a metaphor for his feelings about her; he finds her incredibly beautiful but some of that beauty is mixed with sharpness and pain.

I absolutely think she guesses who he is. Otherwise why would she care so much about getting him back. Gen says later at the make-shift bridge scene that he thinks she would have let the Magus and Sophos go but she wanted him. But that always makes me question why she was so careless as to leave him in the unguarded hospital type bed with all this thief tools. Did she really suspect who he was and then make it so easy for him to escape?

Edited Date: 9/25/16 02:25 am (UTC)

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heiros-acumen.livejournal.com

How do we know that the captain of her guard then was Teleus? She changed her guards often and a lot of time passes in QoA.

Because if it was Teleus, (and even if it wasn't) there's a lot that doesn't really make sense to me about KoA. Why does everyone, especially the guards, in KoA think Gen is a lousy swordsman when they know about/may have even seen his fight in The Thief?

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heiros-acumen.livejournal.com

Here's hoping one of the next books is narrated or at least focused on Eddis or Attolia. As awesome and nuanced as Attolia is, Eddis still seems like more of a blank slate to me, so she might benefit more from a first person narration. At the end of KoK, Eddis has that sudden angry outburst at Sounis in the Attolian library, and I felt like that was out of nowhere. She has been so calm and sweet the whole series. I think she must have hidden depths that need to be explored.

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I may be wrong, but I think in QoA though Attolia changes the generals in her army often, she only mentions the two, consecutive, Captains of her Guard: the initial one who shot the Baron demanding her hand, thus securing her the throne, and then Teleus. Therefore, if by Captain of the Guard Sophos didn’t just mean the captain in charge of that group of guards, it must have been Teleus.
BUT, this doesn’t at all mean he would have expected Gen to be a great swordsman:
1. He didn’t know he was looking at the Thief of Eddis. He’s looking from the top of a cliff at a dirty vagabond, whose own companions don’t expect him to be good with a sword. That he turns out to be so is a surprise, but there’s nothing at that point to connect the dirty vagabond with the Thief of Eddis.
2. Attolia goes on to suspect who Gen is, but there’s no evidence Teleus does. They know they have the Magus of Sounis, they may know they have the heir of Sounis, they may or may not think they have Hamiathes’ Gift, but Gen remains nothing more than the injured vagabond.
3. How great a display of swordsmanship was it? Sophos was impressed, but Gen doesn’t think too much of it. Sophos was fairly impressed with Ambiades' skill with a sword, of which Gen was scathing. And, bear in mind, the ultimate aim of a sword fight is to win (see the end of KoA!), but here Gen ends up spitted on the end of a sword. Were it not for the gods, he would have died.
4. With the Magus saying ‘he can’t do anything with a sword,’ it would be easy to put it all down to adrenaline, sheer luck and the advantage of surprise.
5. No-one, but no-one, was going talk about that whole episode. They had captured the Magus of Sounis, the heir of Sounis, what they learn afterwards was the Thief of Eddis, and Hamiathes’ Gift. Under the Queen’s personal supervision, they lost all of them, out of the chief stronghold in Attolia! Those who wished to keep their heads would have distinctly remembered forgetting it!!
6. And there’s always the matter of The Other Hand. Gen goes to great lengths to make it seem as if he’s not great with a sword in his remaining, originally non-sword, hand...

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As far as I can remember, all through these last chapters, I could see /something/ was wrong. Gen does, after all, become pretty open with the remarks. But as I was reading these chapters at two o'clock in the morning, I didn't stop to figure it out. I simply galloped on!
I can remember the email I posted at about three in the morning to the friend who'd urged the whole series on me. It simply said: "Gen, you viper" :D

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Ah, I'm glad you brought up that dress quotation, because that always kind of bothered me. It seems *so* important, but I just cannot figure out what it's supposed to mean. I like your conjecture though.

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I read the books in order, but Queen of Attolia was the first book I found, so I had already read QoA's synopsis before I jumped back to The Thief to start the series. So I sort of knew it was going to grow into a more politically-centred story. Actually, I think I was surprised to find that TT was mostly adventure, knowing that the next book in the series wasn't.

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As much as I love Sophos (and I really did enjoy ACoK, even more than QoA on average, though QoA sometimes sneaks up on me and makes me fall in love with the series all over again), I really really want to see more of Gen from his own perspective, doesn't matter if it's third or first. I think I would really like a Sophos + Gen + Costis mix. If MWT decides to write from the POV of a female character, I'd be most interested in seeing Irene's.

I think I just really miss Gen's snark.

What I really enjoy about QT is that each subsequent book plays around with perspective, but the story is still really about Gen. Plenty of other series will switch POVs, and the story will be about the focal character instead, and the main characters from previous books would only appear as side characters who don't do much in terms of plot. I love that we have this continuity in QT that still somehow manages to expand the set of characters and the world-building.

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I didn't work it out until it was revealed! And even then, I was so shocked about Gen stealing the gift a second time, I completely missed the revelation that he was Eugenides! Lol. I really had thought that the 'bump' near the base of his head was an injury he got during the fight, that's why he didn't want anyone touching him there.

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Someone pointed out a while ago that MWT doesn't fail to mention Pol in every subsequent book, as if she regretted having had to kill him off and didn't want him forgotten. I'm not sure that we would, certainly neither Gen nor Sophos ever will, nor his old friend the Magus. But a book from the PoV of one of his two children would be interesting, wouldn't it?

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