My partner started reading this book series to me, we started with The Thief and recently finished The Queen of Attolia (with a pretty big gap, we forgot about it a little in the middle there). It was a pretty interesting continuation of the world set up in the first book, as well as the journey that our protagonist is on.
The book starts with Eugenides, who we know as the Thief of Eddis from the first book, getting captured in Attolia. He meets the Queen again, and she keeps him in captivity. To send a message back to the Queen of Eddis, Attolia has his hand cut off. Jen returns to Eddis depressed and having a hard time recovering. After a while, he starts to return to his old self, and he suggests going to kidnap the Queen of Attolia to resolve the war that has sprung up between their countries.
Meanwhile, the Queen of Attolia is hosting the Mede, an advisor from a larger country. She knows that he is after her hand in marriage, but she's stringing him along for now. She's familiar with backstabbing advisors and court drama. Jen successfully gets the Queen of Attolia to come with him, and he proposes his plan then. He'll let her live, if she'll marry him and end the war. Attolia is skeptical but angrily agrees. Jen tells her that he loves her and has for years. That's really why he did all this.
They are stopped by the Mede's forces and head back to Attolia. The Queen there sets a trap for the Mede and ousts him for good with the help of Eddis. The book ends with her agreeing to marry Jen and them saying that they both love each other.
The decision to maim your protagonist in the second book is a pretty bold choice, but I kind of like it. Jen can't just have successes as a thief, and now he has to adapt in pretty significant ways. He can still steal things, sure, but he ends up becoming a king instead as well. It forces the story to change with him.
The love story felt a little forced for sure, I'm not totally convinced that Jen has loved the Queen of Attolia his whole life. But he never mentions it in the narration until his confession so there's some plausibility there. It is weird but there is a lot of effort put into the ending to make their decision to get married also seem realistic and not a convenient change of heart. Attolia barely talks to Jen for a while and insists that he's lying until the Queen of Eddis talks to her. And then she finally talks to Jen about it and how she cut off his hand and all that. Then it finally gets resolved.
There appears to be some larger arcs with the Mede going on, and that'll be interesting to see how they develop. But the next book is my partner's favorite, so I'm excited to finally get to that!
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