Queen of Attolia by Megan Whalen Turner, 2000
When Euginides, the queen’s thief, is captured spying inside the neighboring kingdom of Attolia, the queen orders his hand cut off and him returned almost dead and supposedly rendered harmless to his home country of Eddis. But Euginides, with the friendship of his family and queen, eventually finds ways to aid his country in the on-going war with Attolia and their third neighbor, Sounis. The book is full of wit and insight into human nature, love for the most unlikely companions and for one’s gods, political intrigue, and interpersonal bantering and positioning. Very engaging. The fantasy is minimal, supernatural manifestations happening within the context of faith in one’s gods. The book reads much more like an historical novel.
Some memory-jogging tags: Medes; Magus from Sounis; kidnapping; mountainous regions; political positioning; amputation; fantasy
MS Rating: Great
Storm Thief by Chris Wooding, 2006
Rail wants to find a better life for himself and Moa in Oroko; Moa wants to escape Oroko altogether and find a better life beyond the horizon; and Vago wants to find out who created him. When Rail and Moa steal a powerful Faded artifact and end up running for their lives from the obese thief boss and her gang, they hook up with Vago who protects them from the Revenants but attracts the attentions of the Protectorate’s Secret Police. This is an imaginatively conceived science fiction about an island state and its people who are at the mercy of overcrowded ghettos and ruthless secret police and indiscriminant probability storms and deadly energy ghosts and incomprehensible technology. It reminded me of a more sinister City of Embers.
Some memory-jogging tags: golem; mozgas; oppression.
MS Rating: Great
Case of the Missing Marquess by Nancy Springer, 2006
Enola Holmes, Sherlock’s much younger sister, wants to find her mother who went missing on her 14th birthday, and to avoid boarding school and the much hated corset that her brother Mycroft is insisting upon. She follows clues that her mom left through a book of coded messages, finds the money her mom left her hidden in her rooms, and, on the day she is to go to boarding school, runs away. Before reaching London, she stumbles upon a case of a missing 12-year-old boy and risks her own safety and freedom to restore his. The clues of the book are fun to follow and the historical details add interest.
Some memory-jogging tags: tree house and frilly collars; cut throats; poverty and despair; docks; seedy neighborhoods; disguises; corsets and whalebone collars; dossers or crawlers; ciphers
MS Rating: Great
When Euginides, the queen’s thief, is captured spying inside the neighboring kingdom of Attolia, the queen orders his hand cut off and him returned almost dead and supposedly rendered harmless to his home country of Eddis. But Euginides, with the friendship of his family and queen, eventually finds ways to aid his country in the on-going war with Attolia and their third neighbor, Sounis. The book is full of wit and insight into human nature, love for the most unlikely companions and for one’s gods, political intrigue, and interpersonal bantering and positioning. Very engaging. The fantasy is minimal, supernatural manifestations happening within the context of faith in one’s gods. The book reads much more like an historical novel.
Some memory-jogging tags: Medes; Magus from Sounis; kidnapping; mountainous regions; political positioning; amputation; fantasy
MS Rating: Great
Storm Thief by Chris Wooding, 2006
Rail wants to find a better life for himself and Moa in Oroko; Moa wants to escape Oroko altogether and find a better life beyond the horizon; and Vago wants to find out who created him. When Rail and Moa steal a powerful Faded artifact and end up running for their lives from the obese thief boss and her gang, they hook up with Vago who protects them from the Revenants but attracts the attentions of the Protectorate’s Secret Police. This is an imaginatively conceived science fiction about an island state and its people who are at the mercy of overcrowded ghettos and ruthless secret police and indiscriminant probability storms and deadly energy ghosts and incomprehensible technology. It reminded me of a more sinister City of Embers.
Some memory-jogging tags: golem; mozgas; oppression.
MS Rating: Great
Case of the Missing Marquess by Nancy Springer, 2006
Enola Holmes, Sherlock’s much younger sister, wants to find her mother who went missing on her 14th birthday, and to avoid boarding school and the much hated corset that her brother Mycroft is insisting upon. She follows clues that her mom left through a book of coded messages, finds the money her mom left her hidden in her rooms, and, on the day she is to go to boarding school, runs away. Before reaching London, she stumbles upon a case of a missing 12-year-old boy and risks her own safety and freedom to restore his. The clues of the book are fun to follow and the historical details add interest.
Some memory-jogging tags: tree house and frilly collars; cut throats; poverty and despair; docks; seedy neighborhoods; disguises; corsets and whalebone collars; dossers or crawlers; ciphers
MS Rating: Great
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