by Declan, 13 years old

Summary:

In the first book of the Queen's Thief series we meet Gen who is a thief stuck in jail who claims that he can steal anything. Because of this he meets with the Magus of the country he is in and is forced to go on a quest to steal Hamiathe's gift for the king of Sounis so that he can use it to force the queen of Eddis to marry him. So Gen goes on an adventure with the Magus, a soldier, and two of the Magus’ apprentices to steal the gift. However he first has to climb through narrow passages between small towns before finally sneaking out to where the gift is hidden. It is hidden in a vault that is meant to only open once a year for a few nights before closing for the rest of the year. Gen every night journeys into it and maps more and more of it before being forced to leave by water coming in. On the last night with just a few minutes to spare he finds a hidden room behind a wall and is able to grab the gift from a shrine before barely escaping. However after that they must journey back and a whole lot happens…

What I liked and didn’t like:

I really liked how exciting the book was and it kept me captivated and excited. I was always super excited for what was going on and it kept me entertained the entire time. There wasn’t a spot that I was bored during the entire thing. It was also really fun because it had some really big fun plot twists. For example at the end of the book we find out that Gen is actually a Eddisian and the Queen’s thief and that he purposely lost the gift during a fight because he didn’t want his queen to be forced into a political marriage. However I didn’t like how short the book was and I think that the series in general was very disconnected. For example the first book was all about Gen stealing the gift and his journey, while the second book was about him at Eddis, having his hand cut off, and the wars between Eddis, Sounis, and Attolia. Additionally the books were only about 200 pages long so they were very short. Overall however, I would say that it is definitely worth reading.

Books it is similar to:

The book is similar to a lot of other adventure books such as Percy Jackson and Magnus Chase where a group of adventurers goes on a quest. In this book they obviously went to get the gift in Attolia. This makes it similar to those kinds of books so if you liked those books or enjoyed this one you should definitely check out the other ones. In the rest of the series it has a lot of Mediterranean, late dark age warfare from the perspective of a thief and then king, which is really interesting to read about and isn’t that similar to other book series.

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