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Title: The Thief's Daughter (Kingfountain Series #2)

Author: Jeff Wheeler

Publisher: 47North
Published Date: May 31st,2016
Rating: 4.5 Stars
Synopsis: Owen Kiskaddon first came to the court of the formidable King Severn as a prisoner, winning favor with the stormy monarch by masquerading as a boy truly blessed by the Fountain. Nine years hence, the once-fearful Owen has grown into a confident young man, mentored in battle and politics by Duke Horwath and deeply in love with his childhood friend, the duke’s granddaughter. But the blissful future Owen and Elysabeth Mortimer anticipate seems doomed by the king’s machinations.

A pretender to Severn’s throne has vowed to seize the crown of Kingfountain. But Severn means to combat the threat by using Elysabeth as bait to snare the imposter—and forcing Owen, as a pawn in the dangerous charade, to choose between duty and devotion. With poisoners and spies circling ominously, and war looming on the horizon, Owen must make painful sacrifices to beat back the advancing shadows of death and disaster. Will Owen’s conflicted heart follow the king’s path or risk everything for his love?

Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this ebook in from NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Brilliant book that really captured my attention, the only thing that I may regret is not reading the first one of this series before this one. Anyways, I absolutely thought that the way the story was written, it felt like a woolen rug being weaved together. This here really explored such common phrases: "loyalty is what binds us all" and "history repeats itself", and what true betrayal means and looks like on the devastating circumstances that are happening all around him and kingdom. It added another layer of what risks you would take for your King, and how far you can go to retain the love that you've kept your whole life.

The magic was a creative process, for the reader and the author I'm sure. It's similar in the fact that the fountain-beings possess specific and special sorts of magical skills, but then they get that source of the magic from a central fountain. In this book, the magic system was subtle, but very complex so I appreciated when Owen taught and explained this reasoning and practice to Etayne.

The relationship between Owen and Evie was just darling heartbreaking and it felt so natural while reading this. I know that many people stereotype romance, saying that it's cliche and too sappy, but in this book it was truly unique in the way that it just fit for this to gradually develop. So even if you're not a fan of romance here, there are no inappropriate scenes included within this book, so don't be scared off by that.

The only thing that made me give this amazing book a four star, or more accurately a 4.5 star(but that's just not possible to mark out sometimes) review is that the characters and their alliances really got muddled in my head at some points of the book, and I didn't really feel fear when I was supposed to; probably to the fact that Owen with great pride was over-confident that King Severn was unbeatable, instead of showing some humanly doubts. Sometimes I wanted to feel the physical fear and curl up into fetal position in my head, but this book just didn't give me that feeling when it should have. Overall though, I do recommend reading this book, after reading the first book of this Kingfountain series(The Queen's Poisoner), because although there is quite a big time leap here, it really gives some of Owen's backstory. Plus, if you're interested, there's an epilogue and I'm a delightful sucker for those (in a positive way)!