World of the Queen's Thief Collection

The Queen's Thief #1-5

by Megan Whalen Turner

Discover and rediscover the world of the Queen's Thief, from the acclaimed series launch The Thief to the thrilling, twenty-years-in-the-making conclusion, The Return of the Thief.

New York Times-bestselling author Megan Whalen Turner’s entrancing and award-winning Queen’s Thief novels bring to life the world of the epics and feature one of the most charismatic and incorrigible characters of fiction, Eugenides the thief. The Queen’s Thief novels are rich with political machinations and intrigue, battles lost and won, dangerous journeys, divine intervention, power, passion, revenge, and deception. Perfect for fans of Leigh Bardugo, Marie Lu, Patrick Rothfuss, and George R. R. Martin.

Discover and rediscover the world of the Queen's Thief in this digital collection that includes the first five novels in the series: The Thief, The Queen of Attolia, The King of Attolia, A Conspiracy of Kings, and Thick as Thieves. 

Bonus Content: two maps, a complete cast of characters, three original short stories (Knife Dance, Wineshop, Envoy), a Q&A with the author, and a peek at Megan Whalen Turner’s inspiration for the setting of the novels.

The Thief

When Eugenides the thief’s boasting lands him in prison and the king’s magus invites him on a quest to steal a legendary object, he is in no position to refuse.

The Queen of Attolia

Eugenides’s final excursion does not go as planned, and he is captured by the ruthless queen.

The King of Attolia

The fate of three nations hangs in the balance as Eugenides endures the pranks, insults, and intrigue of the Attolian court with dwindling patience

A Conspiracy of Kings

After an attempted assassination and kidnapping, Eugenides and the Queen of Eddis are left to wonder if Sophos, heir to the throne of Sounis, is alive, and if they will ever see him again.

Thick as Thieves

Kamet, a secretary and slave, has the ambition and the means to become one of the most powerful people in the Empire. But with a whispered warning the future he envisioned is wrenched away, and he is forced onto a very different path.

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction, Humor, Young Adult

979 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 16, 2017

About the author

Megan Whalen Turner is the author of short stories and novels for children, teenagers and adults. She has won the LA Times Book Award for Young Adult LIterature, a Boston Globe/ Horn Book Honor and a Newbery Honor. She won the Mythopoeic Award and was shortlisted twice for the Andre Norton Award.

Reviews

[coslyons · Rating 4 out of 5]

This series got better the further into it I got. Eugenides is really clever and I liked the outsider views on his schemes.

Side note: Costis and Kamet are in love and this is a fact

[Lata · Rating 4 out of 5]

2019 Mar 23: The Queen of Attolia: It would be easy to dislike the Queen of Attolia, if all we saw of her was the glimpse Megan Whalen Turner gave us in The Thief. Instead, we get this novel, which continues Eugenides exploits. Except, not quite. The Queen puts an end to Eugenides relatively care-free life when she has his right hand cut off. And yes, it didn't exactly make me warm up to her. But then Whalen Turner did something really interesting. Even while she takes us through Eugenides' painful recovery and search for a new direction, she takes us through the Queen's thoughts and feelings, and gives us the portrait of a complicated, mistrustful, difficult woman in a difficult, constrained and dangerous position, always having to balance her various somewhat unwilling supporters' desires and plots against what she wants to accomplish, which is to protect Attolia from surrounding, greater empires. I liked how Irene persistently used her people's early perceptions of her as a naive girl, against them. I really liked how Megan Whalen Turner gradually revealed just how brilliant, devious, lonely and frightened Irene really is, making her into a fascinating character. I also really liked getting to know Helen, the Queen of Eddis better, who is equally brilliant, but in a much better situation than Irene, as Helen is actually surrounded by people who like and support her willingly.
What I have read so far of this series is really good, and I can see why this series has such staunch fans. I know I am one now, and I plan to read the remainder of this series.

2018 Mar 15: The Thief: Wonderful start to a series. Gen (Eugenides) is a brilliant character.

[. · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the series of all time, and I still have one to go.

[Betsy · Rating 5 out of 5]

(copied from my review of Thick as Thieves) So, so, so. I made myself pause a few weeks in between each book in the Queen's Thief series, because they made me even more antisocial and unproductive than my usual and because I was helplessly burning through each one in a couple of nights and felt I should savor the experience.

And an experience it is - this series is a RIDE. At first, you will have no clue what you are doing (though, if you are reading this review, you'll at least know better than I did at the beginning going "oh, fun heist YAs, incorrigible thief character, lightweight shenanigans," ha ha, ha), and then as you get more experienced you will very much enjoy getting a little wise and having "oh, you little ARSEHOLE" moments interspersed with your wide-eyed anticipation of what's next. Both states of being are incredible.

Oh, right, and also, to go with that sheer emotional ride, you will also get politics, relationships, and philosophical explorations of man's shaping of his destiny and vice-versa, all in a world gorgeously fleshed out all the way to its mythology and poetry, for multiple cultures, with a larger world obvious even beyond that. YEAH, THEY'RE GREAT.

(Quick caveat to a new reader: the first book is fairly different than the others, and honestly, I only picked up the second a year later because the internet loved them so much I wanted to see what I missed. Also, the second will start out kinda dark, and for the most part stay quite intense, but the others are less so and it's worth it.)


Finally, my only complaints, and THESE AREN'T REALLY FOR THE NEW READER AND SHOULD NOT STOP YOU FROM READING THE BOOKS, are: a) the series is getting pretty male-heavy. The female characters we have are INCREDIBLE, but that doesn't change the fact there are only a few of them and they have never quite been the full protagonists. And, b) I admit, part of me feels kind of betrayed by Thick as Thieves in particular, which blatantly comes THIS CLOSE to a queer relationship and leaves it as ~destined friends~ - rather inexplicably, in my opinion, in the year 2017. Still great!! but I won't lie, that part kind of hurts.

[Amy!]

This is the collected Kindle version I read. My reviews are under each individual book: The Thief, The Queen of Attolia, The King of Attolia, A Conspiracy of Kings, Thick as Thieves.

[Ann · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazingly well done

Reminds me of one of my favorite characters,Francis Lymond of the Lymond chronicles by Dorothy Dunnet. High praise from me.

[Amanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't bother writing reviews for the individual books as I read them, because I felt I really didn't have a lot to say about any individual book. Overall, I thought they made for enjoyable light reading but wasn't as impressed as I expected to be, based on the recommendations I'd received for the series. I think maybe if I'd read them when I was much younger, I might have felt differently and connected with some of the characters more. There were a lot of good elements to the worldbuilding (especially the pantheon of old gods), but overall the writing just didn't click for me. And I don't think it was just the strange, omniscient POV-switching from character to character to character in some of the books (especially the earlier ones), sometimes within the same scene. There was something that just fell flat for me in the characterization of most of the cast, though I can't pinpoint it. That, and the focus on the Mede Empire as antagonists in later books felt lazy/tropey, and a little racist to be honest. Fantasy-Middle-East (or perhaps fantasy-Persian-Empire would be a more accurate comparison?) being the faceless, numerically-dominant, brown bad guys isn't a great look.

I think the first book, The Thief, was a nice, self-contained story for all ages. It was solid, and the narrative was driven and kept me reading even though I hadn't connected with the characters themselves much and guessed most of the twists and reveals well before they happened. I read it mostly in two sessions because it was engrossing.

The second book, The Queen of Attolia, was the most enjoyable to me, personally. It had the best characterization over all, I think, and the most interesting arcs. I also enjoyed parts of
The King of Attolia, but I felt like the books started to fall off in interest as they began to focus more heavily on supporting characters.

Though I usually love large ensemble casts of characters, I felt like nobody got enough interesting development in this case. It also wasn't helped by never giving us enough of the few women included after the second book. When you have a cast that is 90% or more men, but two really solid female characters, it might help to see more from those two? I feel like having one of the books told from Eddis' perspective would have instantly earned the series an extra star from me. I definitely lost interest more and more as the books strayed further and further from the initial cast. While the geopolitical plotlines continued to progress, I was just less invested in them because I wasn't invested enough in the characters they were impacting.

All in all, a moderately entertaining series that make good beach reads but didn't live up to the (probably too high) expectations I had.

[Aphrael · Rating 3 out of 5]

At first I thought it was just an adventure story but the later books really do add more depth. It's easy to wish the characters well, they're lovely and smart and compassionate and fairly moral. Some of the interactions between characters had me spellbound. The books are weakest when they don't let you in to preserve a twist that comes later. It's weird to have the main character being the narrator but also leaving out important information about his identity or motives, it made for some boring bits and made it hard to know the characters sometimes. The payoff was great but there was a lot of setup to get through sometimes. Either way I definitely enjoyed the books.

[Amy L. · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are a lot of books I never make it through. There are a lot of books I've read books and can't remember a thing about.

This series is one of the few that I have read and reread multiple (4?) times.
My kids and I discovered it when they were in grade school. The entire family enjoys the unforgettable characters and detailed plotting of each book. We know them so well that laugh at many inside jokes together ("Poor Costas!" "Go to sleep, Eugenides!").

We have just one plea for Ms. Turner as she writes the last book of the series: Don't screw it up.
Take your time to get it right. We'll wait.

Many thanks.

[Grace Oxley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Please please please read this series. It is phenomenal. The characters are enticing and complex, the narration utterly unreliable, and the twists surprising despite heavy foreshadowing. If you consider yourself a history nerd, you will probably be as enthralled as I was pinning certain aspects of the not actually historical countries together with their real world counterparts. Most books have a single narrator, and the forced perspective is critical to the way the story is told, but Turner shines in telling complex stories in sparse dialogue and implications of background events of secondary characters. May you be as utterly devoted to these characters as they are to each other.

[Adelia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great series! I like the way the books could almost be standalone, focusing on different characters and their personal storylines, but continuously show the relationships between all of the countries with their shifting alliances and tensions. I am not usually one for books heavy with political plots, so the way personal stories are woven into the 'grand scheme of things' is really wonderful. Megan Whalen Turner keeps secrets from the reader and constantly misdirects, and I cannot wait for book 6!!

[Laura Fidler · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such an awesome book series! I couldn't put them down. As a huge fan of ancient Greek history, I loved all the sudo-historicism of the region/customs/art/food/and even language. Eugenides is one of the best-written, most compelling characters I have read in a long time, and the way each book is splayed out like a spider's web around him is fascinating. Thick as Thieves was, admittedly, the slowest of the reads for me, as Kamet was not my favorite character, but I pulled through in order to get back to Eugenides, and in the end, it was all worth it.

[Desiree · Rating 4 out of 5]

A little slow to begin but as the series progresses you really fall in love with Eugenes and how you think you know he character but he always has a new trick up his sleeve. By the 4th book, the series starts to slow down again. If I could do it over again, I would suggest reading the books with more space between one and he other. Not a series for binge reading. Loved the gods theme and similarities with Greek gods.

[Jenny H. · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favorite series in the world. Megan Whalen Turner is a master writer. Although the series is an unusual flavor of YA she creates some of the most beautoful, honest and fantasticaly gripping stories unlike anything else out there. If you are looking for a story that is unique and without cliches look no further.

[Delie Dell Chua · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the third time i read this! Decided to reread it before reading the 6th and last book. Eugenides, Eddis and Sophos are my favorite characters. I hope that it will have a graphic novel and a movie series some day.

[Mariel Boone · Rating 5 out of 5]

I reread these at least every year, and I am not a frequent repeater. I LOVE these books!

[Regina · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved the books, but the „King of Attolia“ is probably my favorite

[Emilee Ostrander · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everyone I know who has read this series is addicted by the end of the first book, but the next books are even better!

[Marti Dolata · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must have.

[Leaf · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quick review- 0w0

The Thief - 8.5/10?
The Queen of Attolia - 8/10
The King of Attolia - 1000/10 just perFect
A Conspiracy of Kings - 7.5/10
Thick as Thieves - 2/10

[Julia Biciunas · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have loved these since I was in Jr high and they honestly only get better on the rereading.