Midnight Thief
Livia Blackburne’s Midnight Thief is the first book in the Midnight Thiefseries. Kyra grew up on the streets of Forge, a city with a medieval system of knights and noblemen. In the center of the city is a walled Palace showing the divide between the wealthy nobles and the poor. Growing up off the street as a gutter rat, Kyra learned to do anything for money, which lead her to the life of a thief. With her amazing climbing skills and uncanny ability creep into and out of places quietly, Kyra soon became a master of thievery. One day, her skills attract the attention of the leader of the Assassins Guild. Enticed by money and a desire to prove herself, she allows herself to become part of the guild and quickly discovers that she is in for more than she bargained for. At the same time, Tristam, a young knight, is tasked with finding and destroying the elusive and dangerous Demon Riders, a group of people that ride aggressive wildcats and attack villages.
Both Kyra and Tristam take turns narrating the story. As you can probably guess, I’ll be summarizing both of them. As a child, Kyra was a hungry orphan until some kind people took her in. They allowed her to grow into a masterful thief and instill a dislike of nobles aid by her poor childhood. Despite her illegal occupation, she has a strong set of morals that she isn’t willing to violate. Her morals mean more to her than her alliances, leading her to betray many of them. This isn’t helped by the fact that she is willing to do anything to help those she befriends. Tristam lives a very different life than Kyra. She grew up as a gutter rat while he was a noble. His remarkable behavior and abilities allowed him to quickly become a Palace Knight. Sadly, he suffers from being a classic Mary-Sue protagonist. Like many protagonist, he has a strong sense of honor that can put him at odds with his wiser superiors and he falls in love with the first girl he meets despite her questionable loyalties. Nothing made him unique among protagonist and that’s disappointing due to his central role in the plot. Midnight Thief was an average book. The pacing was well done. It started of enticing and interesting and grew more complicated with each chapter. The book was also well written, but contains many flaws. The plot was predictable and only had one or two unexpected twists. The world building was lacking. It offered little description of the way the world worked and left you to fill in the details. Unfortunatly, I could not get into this book. This could have been a case of reading the wrong book at the wrong time, especially when you consider that the book’s plot was interesting. There was plenty of action and the plot moved, but the book was emotionally boring. This could have been because of the predictable plot or because of the characters. Many characters lacked depth, making them really hard to empathize with or care about. I give this 376 page book 3.5 stars. |
Midnight ThiefThis world follows a familiar high fantasy trope. The world is divided into the rich and the poor. The rich can become knights and rise in ranks while the poor are forced into the slums. In this world, there is also a mysterious race of beings known as the Demon Riders.
More books in the SeriesComing Soon
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