ARC Book Review: Midnight Thief by Livia Blackburne

Title: Midnight Thief
Author: Livia Blackburne
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Release Date: July 8th, 2014
Rating: 2/5

Cover Impressions:  This cover is just stunning.  It is the real reason that I picked it up in the first place.  I can't wait to see if the next one follows the same theme. 

Review:
Kyra has gained a reputation as a girl who can get into any building.  Stealing coin from the richer part of town keeps her from starving but not much else.  When the leader of the assassin's guild offers her a job that will allow her to take care of those she cares about, Kyra agrees.  Before long, the desire to prove herself leads her deeper and deeper into the guild's secrets and, when Kyra refuses to play by their rules, she learns it is not so easy, or safe, to go back to her old life.  

Midnight Thief has a rather generic feel.  Despite the fantastic cover, there isn't much content to make this stand out from other mildly fantastical novels.  Kyra is an orphan girl, trying to make it in a cruel and difficult world, who is chosen by a super secret society because she is oh-so-special.  The worldbuilding doesn't get really interesting until over halfway through the novel.  Once it does, things pick up, but by that point I had mostly lost interest. 

The characters, for their part, are rather bland.  Kyra doesn't have a great deal of personality to build the plot around.  Tristam was equally uninteresting and I felt no chemistry between the two main characters.  The romantic angle felt forced and, in the end, didn't really amount to much.  There were some side characters who showed promise, like Flick and Martin, but they didn't enough play to have that pan out.

Overall, the biggest downfall for me was the fact that there were a lot of threads - the corruption of the governement, the tactics of the assassin's guild, and the barbarian attacks - which caused the plot to be spread a little thing.  As a result, none of them had any forward movement or sense of momentum.  I realize that this is the first of a series, but I was still hoping for a little more headway in the whole "our government is corrupt and our people are miserable" storyline.

With a stronger second half, I was able to give a little more credit to this novel, but it was mostly a case of too little, too late.  

Teaching/Parental Notes:

Age:  13 and up
Sex: None
Violence: Death by: Poisoning, Knife
Inappropriate Language: None
Substance Use/Abuse: None