Reviews

The Thief Queen's Daughter by Elizabeth Haydon, Jason Chan

elizajaquays's review

5.0

The storyline of this book was much more engaging than in the first. Maybe it was because the main cast of characters was already familiar, or maybe it's because I like stories about thieves more.

I love how this series tucks neatly into the world of Rhapsody, I'm looking forward to the next book!

elevetha's review

2.0

The sequel to "The Floating Island." Slightly better but again, boring and I didn't really care about what happened at all. It was bland and lacking character development, a good story, motivation to keep reading, and much more. I have officially given up on this series.

bibliocat4's review

4.0

2nd book in the series (The Lost Journals of Ven Polypheme); The story is told from the journals of Ven, a Nain from a family of shipbuilders. In the first book Ven is lost at sea and rescued by a merrow, meets a sea captain and is sent to live with the sea captain's wife in a haunted inn. This book takes Ven and his friends from the first book and sends them into the gated market place to discover the secret of the glowing stone, given to Ven by the king. I will be looking out for the 3rd book!

madmadammim's review

5.0

Something...something about how these books are written, about these books in general, is just incredible. I finished this book and couldn't help but love it. (I don't know why, but it really made me think about just how much an author can do) It was amazing! Definitely worth the read.

alyssaarch's review

4.0

The Thief Queen’s Daughter follows the adventures of Ven Polypheme and his friends, picking right up from where The Floating Island left off. This type of fantasy adventure story is what made me fall in love with fantasy in the first place. Thieves, danger, adventure friendship: this book has everything I love about a good fantasy. I’m beginning to absolutely fall in love with all the characters. The King is lovely and I can’t wait to read more about him and his quest for knowledge; Ven and his friends are absolutely fantastic. We learn a lot more about Ida, which I very much appreciated, and we get to learn a whole lot more about The Gated City, which was so much fun.

This isn’t quite as magical as the first book, but it’s still quite good. We see a lot less of magic and fantastical things and a lot more of pure adventure and thrills. With that, we also get a lot more character development. I still love the format of having this series be a “discovered journal” found on archaeological digs, and the illustrations perfectly complement the story. It looks like there’s some stuff being set up for an over-arching narrative that will reach through all the books in the series: the mysterious albatross is still in this book, for example, and seems to be watching Ven. I’m excited to see how that comes into play.

Overall, this is a wonderful middle grade fantasy that I’m so glad I picked up. The characters are great and the adventure is so, so much fun. Haydon is proving that she’s a master of the genre in both adult and middle grade. I’m excited to read the third book in this series.

Also posted on Purple People Readers.