I continue to be stunned by the Queen’s Thief series, which is so good at writing politics that you care, on a deep personal level, about maneuvering between ambassadors and kings. It helps that the character at the center of this book, Sophos of Sounis, has a sweet, open-hearted, earnest nature that somehow makes him uniquely suited to face kidnapping, war, and imperial conquest. Love the interactions between the kings and queens, and how they balance their inner lives with the fact that every action they take will be evaluated for political impact. The language is deceptively simple; the plot is extremely layered and compelling.