There is no time wasted between this book and the previous one, The Thief Queen’s Daughter; it starts directly after the group returns to the inn, which means they have to leave it again to hide from the Thief Queen.

I really like that with each book, we get more of the mythology for this world Haydon has created. We learn more about elves and dwarves in this book, which is really nice. It was interesting to see prejudices that have been somewhat present but not fully explored in previous books. I liked that a lot of these were based on nonsense, as prejudices often are, and the feud between the dwarves and elves was about something that they completely misunderstood, which was typical, but also perfect.

The best part is that Ven’s mermaid friend finally follows him on one of his adventures. I loved her reactions to normal land-dweller things, and it was fun to see the world from her eyes. I’m glad we got to see more of her character since she was so strongly featured in the first book.

I do think this book isn’t quite as interesting as the others. It was still a very good book, but it didn’t quite have the fun and spark that the others had. There’s not as much action and the conflict is more between the characters rather than what is actually happening in the book. Though the stakes are high and there are plenty of encounters and such, it just wasn’t as intricately plotted as the other novels were. There were also some plot points that had so much time spent on them and ultimately went nowhere, so hopefully that pans out in future books. With that said, though, it’s still quite enjoyable and I liked that we got to see the characters’ friendships tested.

Overall, this series is still going strong. I’m looking forward to reading the next book!

Also posted on Purple People Readers. ( )

Ven now has to go out of town because the queen of thieves is haunting Ven and his friends. Ven surprisingly brings a friend that is a mermaid. When she gives her cap to a human she turns human. They head out. The king gave them a task while gone. Their task was to find out why the dragon is burning the Nain houses. When they get to the Nain town they ask what’s happening and why. The nains didn’t know. Ven decide to go into the dragon’s lair. Once he is inside he sees bookshelves with books. (This dragon is the mean dragon that killed the good dragon) Ven discovers that the mean dragon doesn’t live. The dragon is the good dragon. The dragon was burning the houses because they were doing mean things. Once ven got very thing gets under control they got back to their village.

I like this book because it was exciting and enjoyable. I still don’t like the third person. It still makes me think that someone is retelling a story to a kid. This book is good for young adult and for people who like fantasy. I really liked. It was a page turner. I was found in my bed reading. ( )