So I hate, HATE spoilers. I love the feeling of being surprised by plot twists, so I even hate it when I've already guessed the big twist before getting there. I try really hard to avoid reading too many reviews or descriptions of books, and try even harder to avoid reading the summaries of later books in a series, as they inevitably give away major plot points.

So you can imagine my disappointment when, through a series of hints I gathered reading a couple of reviews, I already figured out a major plot twist in this story. I thought, because of it, the enjoyability of this book would be greatly diminished for me. While this might be true, I'm happy to report that I still really loved this book.

In many ways, it's significantly different from its predecessor, The Thief. The POV shifts from Gen alone in The Thief to the POV of all the major characters in The Queen of Attolia. I loved getting a glimpse into their minds (Gen in particular goes through a lot of inner turmoil), and yet still, her characters never give everything away. And then the overall subject matter has changed. While The Thief is basically a quest novel with 80% of the book spent in travel, this one is about 90% political intrigue. I have to admit that while I got confused or never got a really clear picture of everything happening in the wars (a map would have helped me), I still found this part really fascinating (and yay for clever queens!).


I'm very much looking forward to the next in the series.