Now I finally understand why everyone seems to like this book so much more than the first. You see, The Thief is a wonderful little book filled with excellent writing, an interesting protagonist, an exciting fantasy world and a great big twist near the end. The Queen of Attolia had all of this, but it just had more of everything. It was everything I loved about the first book... on steroids.

Every character and every sentence - damn it, every word even! - is important, serves it's own purpose and is never wasted. This is a characteristic in books that is rare but oh so wonderful when you manage to find it.

Being told in 3rd person, unlike book one which was from Eugenides POV, allows the reader to see the bigger picture and to better understand the world that forms the backdrop of this series and the political relationships between Attolia, Eddis and Sounis. But, oddly, at the same time I felt like we also got to know Eugenides far better than in The Thief, and I loved him all the more in this second installment. He's such a perfectly imperfect character, he's flawed, he's brave without being ridiculously self-sacrificing, he's a little devil and yet you can't do anything but be on his side. Whatever happens to him in the next book has suddenly become very important to me.

And it's not just Eugenides... I mean, how easy would it have been for the author to make the Queen of Attolia nothing more than a villain sat on a foreign throne? But that's not the story Megan Whalen Turner is trying to tell. Like I said, Turner doesn't waste characters and her use of 3rd person in this novel lets us readers see the real queen behind that stone mask of cruelty. Of all the qualities I like characters to have, complexity is quite possibly my favourite.

But I think the book was really sold to me when Turner managed to successfully pull off a romance that surprised me, pleased me and just generally worked without being soppy or cheesy. A young adult novel with romance that doesn't make me cringe? Genius.