
Turner is a master plotter. Her prose sings. Her landscape maerializes before my eyes like a movie, sometimes a grim black and white film, at other times a colorful, musical adventure. Reading her novel is like taking a deep breath and diving into the clearest water, expecting to find the bottom of the pool below, instead discovering the rich life of a sprawling reef.
Have I told you yet that I love this book?

I have always admired composers, their ability to hear separate threads of music, themes, instruments and turn them into one cohesive, melodic piece. Mozart, for example, surely was a genius. Or Bach. Beethoven. How were they able to hold all this music together to create their perfect concertos? I had not thought about novels the same way -- yet here, in Megan Whalen Turner's work, is a symphony of voices, characters, action, threads upon threads that somehow coalesce again and again into the most amazing, unexpected conclusions, shining a new light upon every written word.
Have I told you already that I love this book?

What I loved about the series: Eugenides' voice, the shifting landscape of his journey, the sea of olives, the dirtiness of prison, the arrogance of weak men, the beautiful yet cruel queen and the second, pants-wearing queen whose nose is broken. I loved the gods and their easy intervention in human life, the hidden temple, the isolation of Eddis, the friendliness of Sophos, the myths told by Eugenides and the mage. I loved the delicate, gentle love affair which slowly unfolds before the reader's eyes without ever being acknowledged. And above all, the figure of the Thief, sitting high above the city, shrouded in the darkness of the night.
Which books do you love whose story, characters, or landscape carry you far far and away like this?
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