The King of Attolia

[purplecat]

So finally I get to the King of Attolia. ladyofastolat and bunn are right. This is better than the Queen of Attolia. Although it is still written in the third person there is a much tighter focus on one main viewpoint character, a guard called Costis, and the book benefits from this. I still think the Thief is the best of the three. The King of Attolia engages much better than the Queen of Attolia but it has some structural problems avoided in the first book.


Although they didn't detract much from my enjoyment I felt there were three problems with this book. Firstly, we know more than Costis. In the first two books we didn't know more than the viewpoint. This turns what might be a great twist for a new reader to the series into merely a patient wait for Costis to discover what we already know and while this journey is entertaining enough I couldn't help occasionally getting a little irritated with Costis as he slowly figured things out. Secondly the main story - the "con" as it were - is revealed and essentially tidied up about two thirds of the way through leaving the last third to limp a bit to the actual conclusion of the book - where the King consolidates his power. Lastly, this is the first book in the series that clearly signals a sequel is on the way - the developing politics between Sounis and Eddis are mentioned but not resolved.

All that said I read this book in about 24 hours, supper on Friday suffered somewhat as a result, and its not often books are allowed to creep out of book-reading time in this fashion. It's well-written, gripping and page-turning. Perhaps, best of all, although it follows the same characters as The Thief it doesn't try to tell the same story.

Comments

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

Spoilers in comment:

You always seem to be one step ahead of me with these books. I was actually slightly taken in by Costis' account of things. I mean, of course I wasn't entirely taken in by everything, since I know the characters well enough by now, but I did think it was quite possible that Eugenides had finally met a situation that he couldn't control, and that he was genuinely a bit out of his depth.

I also rather like knowing a bit more than the narrator. I love unreliable narrators, who confidently tell us what they're seeing and what it means, when all along we feel smug knowing the truth.

[purplecat]

I hadn't guessed all of it by a long shot. But there were obvious points of cover-up: we know Gen can fight (though not perhaps how well); we know Gen and Irene are in love; and I was pretty certain that Gen wouldn't actually sleep through an important meeting but also pretty certain that it was right up his street to pretend to. So the guessing game was really a question of how much was being concealed and why (I did contemplate that it might be intended as an indefinite charade - simply a mechanism for Gen to avoid responsibility though that didn't feel quite right). I must admit it came as a bit of a surprise to discover that he was in control of the situation to quite the extent that he was since he'd never been portrayed as a political maneuverer before but I had no doubts at all that he was up to something.

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

My problems came from not having read Queen of Attolia for some four or five years. I loved The Thief, and reread it quite a bit, but I was so disappointed with QoA that I never re-read it. Thus when I was reading KoA, I couldn't remember if it had been established that Gen could fight now he'd lost his hand. I couldn't remember the exact circumstances behind his marriage, though I do remember being surprised by it at the time and finding it a bit odd, and not being at all sure it would work.

I fell in love with the series all over again while reading KoA, though.