Return of the Thief (Turner)
Oct. 16th, 2020 10:17 pm3+/5. Well, that was the end of an era. I was telling ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ase that this is possibly the very last series where I've bought the books in hardback right after publication. Partially because it has the distinction of Turner taking a very long time to finish but actually finishing (so on one hand I've still got YA Feels from reading the first books when I was... a YA, and also when I was still reading fantasy series, but on the other hand she actually finished!!) and partially because, well, I had already had five books on my shelf, I thought I should get the set (instead of getting an e-copy).
Anyway. I am really glad I read the previous five volumes before reading this one, because I think if I were approaching it as a book I would have been disappointed, but approaching it as Part 6 of a serial book made it work a lot better for me, I think. I think it has all the strengths and weaknesses of all the other books (with one fairly large weakness that didn't exist in the other books), and because I'd just read them all and had (in particular) the weaknesses in mind, I could enjoy the strengths more. I will say I probably liked it about as much as Conspiracy of Kings -- so, I did quite enjoy reading it, but it wasn't my favorite thing she's ever written either.
The major weakness of the entire sequence of books is that after Thief (which itself had some weakness because of the narrator being Gen) and Queen, Gen is no longer an interesting character. He's a trickster god. So, so, so. Trickster gods' plots are fun to read about, but they're not fun characters because there's no real tension to the character. They will win (unless they lose, in which case that's the story), and that's pretty much all there is to them. It's no surprise that my two favorite books in the series were the two where Gen has very little on-screen time and even less (or zero) POV time.
In this book, Gen & Co. had a lot of screen time, and this made the book rather less interesting than it would have been ( Spoilers. )
ase that this is possibly the very last series where I've bought the books in hardback right after publication. Partially because it has the distinction of Turner taking a very long time to finish but actually finishing (so on one hand I've still got YA Feels from reading the first books when I was... a YA, and also when I was still reading fantasy series, but on the other hand she actually finished!!) and partially because, well, I had already had five books on my shelf, I thought I should get the set (instead of getting an e-copy).Anyway. I am really glad I read the previous five volumes before reading this one, because I think if I were approaching it as a book I would have been disappointed, but approaching it as Part 6 of a serial book made it work a lot better for me, I think. I think it has all the strengths and weaknesses of all the other books (with one fairly large weakness that didn't exist in the other books), and because I'd just read them all and had (in particular) the weaknesses in mind, I could enjoy the strengths more. I will say I probably liked it about as much as Conspiracy of Kings -- so, I did quite enjoy reading it, but it wasn't my favorite thing she's ever written either.
The major weakness of the entire sequence of books is that after Thief (which itself had some weakness because of the narrator being Gen) and Queen, Gen is no longer an interesting character. He's a trickster god. So, so, so. Trickster gods' plots are fun to read about, but they're not fun characters because there's no real tension to the character. They will win (unless they lose, in which case that's the story), and that's pretty much all there is to them. It's no surprise that my two favorite books in the series were the two where Gen has very little on-screen time and even less (or zero) POV time.
In this book, Gen & Co. had a lot of screen time, and this made the book rather less interesting than it would have been ( Spoilers. )
