Queens Thief series Book Covers

This is a project I've been meaning to do for YEARS. Book covers for my favorite book series. I'm going to reminisce about my experience of the books too,  because this is my blog and I can.

I first started reading the series in late 2006, my senior year of highschool. I was getting large stacks of books from the library for a couple weeks at a time and working my way though the stack before returning for a new stack. I was somewhat active in an online book community called Readerville, where a book called The Thief was suggested. I picked it up on my next library trip.

So I checked out The Thief and liked it Ok... well, mostly. To be completely honest, the ending made me angry. To avoid spoilers I won't say why, but I felt at the time there was inadequate foreshadowing. Silly me--I have since re-read it more times than I know, and the book is positively dripping with foreshadowing of the sneakiest sort. Needless to say, its a book I enjoyed more upon re-reading, since I then got to be in on the joke--especially the ending.

It was a few weeks before I got back to the library and checked out the Queen of Attolia. I have clearer memories of reading this book--its a hard one to forget. The first few chapters can be tough to get through. I remember, however, reading a particular scene in the middle of a book where things start to take a more positive turn. Not having expected this from how the book had been going up to that point, I laughed out loud.

This is a problem because I was reading it while in the audience of a choir concert. Oops.

It was a concert where several highschool choirs all come together and took turns performing for each other... I had to be there, but I didn't think quietly reading would be a problem. My bad. My choir teacher came by to jokingly but clearly tell me to NOT laugh any more. 😅

Not long after my family went on a road trip, and I finished the book on the road. Oddly, I don't have a clear memory of how I felt reading the later part of that book, though I remember reading while driving. I know I liked it.
And then I lost it.
I have never before or since lost a library book.
I was SO upset with myself.

I decided to myself that, as penance, I would not be allowed to check out the next book in the series until I found the book.

I never found it.

Months later, I knew it was gone for good and I finally checked out the next book.

The King of Attolia.

AND MY LIFE CHANGED FOREVER.

I was absolutely and completely besotted, twitterpated, ENAMORED with this book.

After I first finished reading it, I was still so in love with the book and caught up in it's world and characters that I wasn't ready to move on. It was July at this point, so I had no school or homework to distract me. So, I did the only logical thing to be done at that point.

I read the book 5 times in a week.

I loved the book SO MUCH it drove me CRAZY that I didn't know anyone that I could TALK TO about HOW GOOD IT WAS.

Enter the internet, and the Sounis lovejournal community.

Y'all are the best.

We discussed every little piece of these books, and other books we loved. Howl's Moving Castle, To Say Nothing of the Dog, the Vorkosigan Saga, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, the Temeraire Series and many others were also favorites of many other Sounisians (as we called ourselves). I was able to meet a few Sounisians in person, and go with them to meet MWT in person more than once.

I got a job in the bookstore, and was therefore able to snag an ARC of the next book before it released, and then share it with the Sounis friends who lived near me.

Oh, Sophos.

BUT WHERE WAS COSTIS. ("Younger version of Teleus? No sense of humor?" "The same.")

Costis was off being awesome, as Kamet was able to tell us a few years later. It was worth the wait.

I was Very Pregnant, working on buying our first home and (of course) moving while also chasing down an 18 month old around the time this book came out, so I wasn't participating as much in the fandom as I had been when I was merely a very busy college student. (I thought I knew what Very Busy was before becoming a parent. I laugh at my past self.) I recently made time to listen to it again as an audiobook and found it even more delightful.

They say you need to put in your portfolio what you want people to hire you for. So, for years I wanted to make covers for the most awesome books ever, because I want to be hired to make covers for the most awesome books ever. So here they are. Want to hire me?

I do plan to make one more in the very near future. I can't wait. It's gonna be purple 😉

And I just have to say, the dedication of Return of the Thief still gets me teary-eyed when I think about it.

If you've read the books... which cover is your favorite?

If you haven't... what are you still doing here???