Review – The Watermight Thief (The Fire Queen’s Apprentice, Book 1) by Jordan Rivet (5/5 Stars)
Reading Level: Young Adult
Genre: Fantasy
Length: 354 pages
Publisher: Independently published
Release Date: February 15, 2019
ASIN: B07MBZGTK7
Stand Alone or Series: 1st book in The Fire Queen’s Apprentice series
Source: Borrowed through Kindle Unlimited
Rating: 5/5 stars
“Welcome to Pendark, a city of murky canals, brutal gladiator fights, and sorcerers who feud over access to the silvery magical substance known as Watermight.
Tamri is a scrappy magic thief who’s trying to get her grandmother out of this festering swamp of a city. But when a quick score involving a dragon goes wrong, she’s shipped off to a distant mountaintop kingdom where the legendary Fire Queen is starting a school for magic wielders.
Tamri’s not just going there to learn. The King of Pendark suspects the Fire Queen is up to something more dangerous than training young wielders, and he orders Tamri to find out the truth. If she fails, neither she nor her grandmother will survive the school year.”
Series Info/Source: This is the first book in The Fire Queen’s Apprentice series. I didn’t realize that this is a companion series to the “Steel and Fire” series. After reading this book I would recommend reading that series first since the rulers in this book are characters from that series. I borrowed this book through Kindle Unlimited.
Story (5/5): Right from the first page this was an engaging story. The story follows Tamri, a magic thief who tries to steal a dragon and finds herself sent off to a far off magic school as a spy because of her actions. The story also follows Princess Selivia who is sent to Pendark (Tamri’s home) in an effort to ensure the truce between the two nations holds. I loved watching Tamri navigate her way through a foreign magic school and the dragons were awesome. I also really enjoyed Selivia’s adventures to hunt down her betrothed.
Characters (5/5): The characters were definitely a highlight of this book. I love Tamri and all her classmates and Selivia as well.
Setting (5/5): The kingdom and world as a whole is very well thought out and I really enjoyed reading about it. There is a lot of interesting magic and the fantasy world presented here is unique and really well filled out.
Writing Style (5/5): This book was very well written and easy to read. You switch POV between Tamri and Selivia, which worked perfectly for this story. I was very eager to read both of their stories and never found myself wanting to read one POV over the other. They also both had very distinct voices so I never got confused about who’s POV I was reading from. The world is built out very nicely and I loved the characters. The story had a lot of adventure (which I love) but also had a good blend of politics and action in it.
My Summary (5/5): Overall I was really impressed with this fantasy story and loved it a lot. Rivet’s writing is engaging, exciting, and easy to read. The story was an excellent balance of world-building, amazing characters, intriguing magic, action, adventure, and (of course) wonderful dragons. I am very excited to read the next book in this series “The Thunderbird Queen”.
