Title: The Queen of Attolia
Author: Megan Whalen Turner
Year: 2000
Publisher: Eos - Harper Collins
Reviewer: Katherine Ray

This book arrived at our fair library, and the person who processes
books in kicked it over to our Star Chamber to say, "Is this fantasy
or just fiction?"  We read through a pile of synopses and couldn't
tell either, but I decided it sounded interesting and determined to
read it to find out.  It is mostly neither fantasitcal nor science
fictional, aside from the fictional setting, and the gods who meddle
in the affairs of man.  The author claims she made her landscape to
look like the Mediterranean, but I didn't see it that way really.

I enjoyed the book.  The main character is a trickster.  He's like
Locke Lamora if Locke Lamora weren't a criminal and was in a romance
story instead of an epic, or whatever you'd call that seven book saga.
He also begins in a really stinking rotten place, and ends in a better
one, which I like in my books.

It is the second book in a series of four that I'm aware of.  The
first (chronologically) is "The Thief," the third is "The King of
Attolia" which I also enjoyed, although there was a big reveal at the
end, and I didn't quite believe it, and the fourth is "A Conspiracy of
Kings."  The library now has all four, though they aren't yet on the
shelves as of this writing (March 2010).