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Once again, we get a change in format with the third book of the “Queen’s Thief” series. This time, we get an all-new main character, and… almost all the story is told from the viewpoint of Costis. Costis is a much simpler and straightforward person than Eugenides… but spends the entire novel dealing with him, and the disruption the new King of Attolia has caused in the royal court.

Thanks to the new point of view, coming into the series new shouldn’t be a big problem, though events of the previous book get repeated mention. And in some ways it might be better, as much of the book revolves around Costis’ (and everyone else’s) perceptions of Eugenides, and if you’ve read the previous books, you know Gen well enough to make some very good predictions about what’s really going on.

However, there’s some brief scenes, even very early on, that get out of Costis’ viewpoint, and feel a bit discordant to the book as a whole, and would probably be very discordant for a new reader.

Overall, I’m not sure if I like this book or Queen of Attolia better, they’re both very good, and fairly different in scope and feel. There are things in motion around the edges of this story that have me sure that the next one will expand its scope to match Queen of Attolia more, and I will certainly like that. Both books are notably deeper and better than The Thief, so if you’ve read that and are on the fence, I definitely recommend continuing with the series.