A Conspiracy of Kings by Megan Whalen Turner

[lightreads]

A Conspiracy of Kings by Megan Whalen Turner

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


So feel free to jump in and tell me if I get any of this wrong, but I think the way this works is I read a book for pleasure and then I talk about it. It’s the “for pleasure” that’s really throwing me.

I read this book two months and the bar exam ago, and I don’t actually have a lot to say about it. Young adult fantasy politics series that makes me flail and emit high-pitched noises. These are books that are not nearly as young as they pretend to be. They are about violence and disability and taking responsibility for your actions and getting hurt and getting better. And being clever and awesome and causing trouble.

This book is not as awesome as the last two. Nothing really wrong with it, though the romance is a bit, “and they entered the arc two-by-two,” if you know what I mean. I think my problem is that this is a transitional book, moving several key pieces across the board. Fine, but I realized why I have been mentally categorizing this series as I have: like Francis Crawford of Lymond, Miles Vorkosigan, and Peter Wimsey, the intense personal charisma of the series protagonist overwhelms everything else, so even when other characters are awesome, they only really exist to me in their relationship to him. And this book was only a little bit about that.

Next book, please and thank you. And the one after that, since you’re up.

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Comments

[readerjane]

Glad you've time for reviewing again!

You know about Cryoburn, right?

[lightreads]

Yup! Someone sent me an arc two weeks ago, and I had to hold off until I had part of my life back. I cracked it this morning, and first few pages are very promising.

[cahn]

Yup. I love it because I love her books, but yeah, transitional and therefore not as cool as the previous two. So looking forward to the next ones though!

I did like (though others had problems with it) this idea that rulers sometimes have to do things that are really quite morally gray and may seriously go against their own moral codes. It's been a theme since Thief but is leaned on even more heavily here.

(btw, forget if I said this before, but this is charlie_ego, using your shiny DW invite code! (I don't really like my LJ name but cahn was taken there.))