The King of Atolia

The King of Attolia by Megan Whalen Turner


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Okay, this book. It snuck up on me with all its cleverness and wit and romance while I wasn't paying attention, and suddenly I’m having a full-body moment of squee flail, like you do. Which would have been fine if I hadn’t been moving very fast on a treadmill at the time. Things got a bit hairy for a second there.

This book is like – and I’m just going to say ‘no really’ preemptively here – this book is kind of like Dorothy Dunnett’s Lymond Chronicles if they were little young adult fantasies. No really! It’s the quality of ruthlessness to self that they prize in their hero, who will use his history, his known character flaws, his disability in service to his political ends. They’re not particularly alike in any other respect, but there’s some fundamental accord there.

Anyway. I think the best word for this book is indulgent. But in the good way where you’re grinning the whole time, and maybe wriggling a bit, and it’s not actually so much about suspending disbelief anymore as meeting the books halfway because this you will indulge. This pushed my buttons so hard with its outsider POV on a beloved character, and its story of personal reconciliation to political power (I, uh, have a thing for that as I’m sure absolutely no one has noticed *cough*), and its continuing attention to the aftermath of violence.

Ah.

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