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The Watermight Thief by Jordan Rivet.
The Amazon description is as follows:
Tamri is a scrappy magic thief in the brutal canal city of Pendark, where sorcerers feud over a powerful liquid magic known as Watermight. She just wants to steal enough Watermight to take care of her grandmother and escape the city one day.
But when a big score involving a dragon goes wrong, the king of Pendark ships Tamri off to a distant mountaintop kingdom, where the legendary Fire Queen is starting a school for magic wielders.
The king suspects the Fire Queen is plotting against him, and he orders Tamri to find out the truth. If she fails, her beloved grandmother will pay the price. But Tamri will learn more than she bargained for from the legendary wielder—if she survives the encounter.
Now, I had read a previous series by Rivet, and this series always popped up on my ‘books you might like’ tab on Amazon. The cover caught my eye multiple times as well, and I finally decided to take a chance (though not that big of a chance) and bought this series.
I just gotta say, I love Rivet’s style, because I’ve read soooo many fantasy series, and this one felt like a breath of fresh air. I think it has to do a lot with bloated language and pretentious names in a lot of other series similar to this, but her writing is very straight forward and to the point, just giving us enough setting and information without being overly descriptive. And the names. They are easy to pronounce when you read them at a glance. It’s not Lord Slivandsiers in the capital of Hredian or something that your brain wants to almost try and translate, and it has to stop the flow of the story just so you can guess how to say a name. Needless to say, it’s a little frustrating.
Back to the book. This is a solid story, in my opinion, and some of the ideas in it are really cool. The minor dragons in this series are used to transport the magical substance, Watermight, in their bellies. It’s the only way, otherwise the magic seeps out of barrels and loses it’s potency. And I really liked that angle on the dragons, or that fact that the other dragons are producing the other magics in the world.
The pacing was fairly good and kept my attention and made me want to keep reading. Since Tamri (I always want to pronounce it Tamari in my head…) Since Tamri is an unwilling spy, and some of the Fire Queen’s people suspect that, the tension between Tamri and Heath, the cheif dragon rider, is fun to read.
I would say that this series is between, but leans closer to a hard magic system, and they use these magic elements as whips and knives, giving this a sort of Last Airbender vibe a bit. There are some rules, but it’s not incredibly set in stone, letting the reader imagine what can happen with the magic.
I’m going to touch on book 2 and 3 as well, since I’m judging this as a whole series. The next two books continue down a satisfying path, each book having a new set of goals, most of which get resolved before we launch into the next book. I would say the whole thing escalates nicely and does work together as a whole story and it doesn’t feel disjointed at all. The stakes get higher and higher with each book, but, as is with most trilogies, my own included. Guilty. The first book could be a standalone, whereas the second and third HAVE to be read together so your ending can be satisfied, which is fine.
But I think the pacing was nice throughout, enough action and enough breaks to have a nice roller coaster and not a straight up drop tower. The prose was descriptive, but not flowery, and super easy to race through without having to stop reading, and say ‘what did I just read?’ I like those books. My only complaint is the characters lacked a little depth for me. I, personally, like to get a little deeper into the character’s psyche and know their internal thoughts and fears to connect with them a little better. But I’m also told that some people don’t want to get deep in their character’s heads. Personal Preference.
Other than that, the whole series was done very well, and it was easy to get through. And I wanted to finish it. Something I’ve been have trouble doing with other series. Lately, I’ve been reading book 1. Maybe half of book 2, before I start to lose interest. Maybe I’m getting pickier as I get older. Nevertheless, It’s getting harder to find stories that keep my undivided attention all the way to the end. And this one accomplished that. Thank you Jordan Rivet. I appreciate your stories.
Check out her book. The Watermight Thief