Of Swords and Parasols

Though the entire series is billed as YA, only The Thief actually YA, IMO, and really mostly because the lead character is fairly young, and the plotline mostly an adventure with good twists. The other two books, while not inappropriate for teenagers, are much more adult and darker, and deal largely with politics and motivations and various interpersonal relationships.

The King of Attolia shifts the narrative focus away from the main characters of the first two books and shows them through the perspective of Costis, a young soldier who makes what should be a fatal misstep, but ends up in the middle of political schemes and dueling factions due to his new king’s whim.

Like all books in the series, this is best read knowing as little as possible about the plot (including reading the back cover copy). Spoilers include spoilers for “Eddis,” the short story in the paperback version, but not the hardcover.

( spoilers )

A thief who was jailed after stealing the king’s seal and bragging about it, Gen is sitting around in the prison of Sounis, waiting for a chance to escape, when he’s approached by the magus he originally stole the seal from for a job. If he will travel with the magus and three others to steal something-he isn’t told what for some time-his prison sentence will, at the least, be shortened. Knowing a good thing when he sees it, Gen agrees.

Much of the book is a Road Trip, with the five characters (all men…nothing resembling a female shows up until near the end, aside from a waitress in a bit part-they are cool when they do show up, though) discussing the history and mythology of their world, which is very like if ancient Greece had continued through to what seems to be about the Renaissance era, without the introduction of monotheism. In complete honesty, while the world and mythology are interesting and Gen an engaging narrator (though, to be really interesting, he needs more appealing characters to interact with than he has for most of the book) the book itself isn’t overly compelling until the last leg. Mostly, it’s setting up the promise of something really good, which it starts to deliver on in the end, and presumably will completely in the sequels.