Thief by Megan Whalen Turner

Ms. Turner is part of that group of young adult authors who showed up a few years back and really energized books for teens. This is an action-packed fantasy about cocky thief, Gen, who ends up over his head when caught between the warring royalty of two provinces in a mystical land. Ms. Turner manages to get the moral across without being the least bit preachy and also manages to throw in a good number of twists and surprises along the way. The action is a tad more violent than you might expect, but the goriest of details are left to the imagination, and overall the tone is one of talking *to* the reader, not *down* to them. My one complaint is that this book has a slow start. I found I had to push myself a good 40 pages or so into it before it hooked me…but then it really hooked me. Refreshing to see a story where you can’t predict what will happen next. I also like the mystery aspect. It is truly hard at some points to figure out who is good and who is not. The book ends with quite a cliffhanger. “The Queen of Attolia” is the sequel and well worth the read. There has been another book out in the series for a while now, “The King of Attolia” which I haven’t had a chance to read. It, like everything else, will have to “go on the list”.