Reviewed by Chris
TITLE: The Water Thief
AUTHOR: Jane Kindred
PUBLISHER: Samhain Publishing
LENGTH: 374 pages
RELEASE DATE: March 15, 2016
BLURB:
It takes a con to expose a con. But this con could strip their secrets bare.
Framed for his twin sister’s murder, Sebastian Swift has been kept drugged in a mental institution since age thirteen, aware of only one horrible fact—every night in his dreams, he drowns.
After a freak storm frees him, Sebastian learns the truth. His guardian, Emrys, has been siphoning off his inherited magical power over the waters of Cantre’r Gwaelod—one gruesome vial at a time. And the man’s bastard son, Macsen, has been raised in his place. Determined to find his twin’s killer, Sebastian assumes her identity.
Macsen Finch isn’t about to give up his guise as the young earl—and not just because of the fortune. His cousin’s return from the dead threatens Macsen’s own efforts to undermine his father’s evil plan. Yet he can’t deny his inexplicable attraction to the imposter.
Acting on their mutual desire puts them both at the mercy of a madman’s wrath. To stop Emrys from stealing his power, Sebastian will have to learn how to use it—and whom he can trust.
Warning: May contain copious exchange of fluids, men in corsets, and dirty dancing. Apply liberally before bedtime.
REVIEW:
So. Here’s the thing. I have tried (several times) to come up with a way to review this book that doesn’t involve a lot of spoilers. It didn’t work. There is too much about this story that to talk about it would require me to give a lot of the plot twists away. So, here’s what I am going to do. I’m going to give a quick summary and then I’ll do a really quick, no-spoiler review. Then if you want to know more (and don’t mind spoilers) you can keep reading. If you’d prefer not knowing exact details, you can just stop reading after that point. Ok?
I’m not exactly sure how to classify this story. It starts out a fantasy where Sebastian Swift–accused of killing his twin sister and trapped in a mental institution as a result–must find a way to master his magic, fool his uncle and his cousin that he is in fact his murdered sister, and retake his place as ruler of his small island country. But things get a bit tricky. His magic is being stolen from him. His cousin finds out that he is in fact not August. His uncle has no intention of giving up the control he has so cruelly orchestrated. As far as plans go, Sebastian’s seems doomed to failure.
Despite the fact that I found the magic and the initial world building to be incredibly fascinating, I had a hard time with this book. From nearly the beginning I was uncomfortable with some of the sexual situations that Sebastian was placed in–and how specifically it was treated as no big deal because the dudes turned out to be a good guys so it was fine that Sebastian was at times threatened, coerced, and/or bullied into sex with several characters. I also found the weird 1st/3rd person pov switches to be an odd choice–though I will admit it made it much easier to tell when we switched povs.
But mostly I had a hard time getting over the fact that Sebastian doesn’t seem to do much in this story. By the end of the story it felt like Sebastian was only there to be tortured, raped, and used as a sex-toy for his various sexual partners. I honestly don’t know if there was any major character growth on his part. He seemed to embrace the roll of pawn and never really acted on his own behalf–except for maybe that one time he used his magic to save his life and even that felt accidental. This above all left me feeling completely unsatisfied by the ending.
[Spoilers Ahead]
The truth is that I found most characters in this book to be annoying, if not complete twats, at best. And this includes a majority of the “good guys.” Macsen, who is pretending to be Sebastian under the orders of his father, has the best characters development, but that doesn’t disqualify the fact that he is extremely homophobic for a large majority of the book. Or, probably more importantly, had no issue basically telling Sebastian that he could either do what Macsen wants, or Macsen was going to sexually assault him.
(And please do remember, Macsen is supposed to be a good guy)
Also, a “good guy”? Sven. Who “rescues” Sebastian, after Sebastian’s escape from the insane asylum. If by rescue you mean force a man who has been admittedly raped and tortured for years by demanding sexual favors in return for not throwing him back out to be re-captured. How generous. And that it is shrugged off as an ok thing to do, just because Sven wasn’t as rough as the men who raped him in the “hospital,” was flabbergasting. And that isn’t even going into the fact that Sven knew exactly who Sebastian was, way before Sebastian told him, and continued to use him throughout the whole book on the say-so of Sebastian’s sister.
Sebastian sister, who is (along with not being dead) a massive bitch. Oh, I’m pretty sure I was supposed to feel sorry for her, or empathize or something, but honestly I hated her by the end of the story probably more than her and Sebastian’s uncle. And he was the fucking villain. She knew exactly what was going on and still not only kept Sebastian in the dark (for shit’s and giggles, I guess) but then tried to kill Sebastian with some lame-ass “for the greater good” excuse. Which was pretty fucking lame. Especially, and oh my god you have to be kidding me, Sebastian seems to just forgive her like nothing had happened. What the fuck?
Although, if Sebastian is nothing more than pawn with convenient holes to fuck, so why should he act in any way towards his own self interest?
Leaving aside the sexual aspects of this story (because honestly there was not a single one that didn’t make me slightly ill), I was less than impressed on how the author used the feminine roll as something that was subservient to the wills of the men. Sebastian (especially after he started cross-dressing) was treated like a possession by nearly every single male in this book. His aunt–who clearly had some hand in all this scheming at some point–became nothing more than a prop. Even August–who was presented as some type of leader–totally just rolled over when her lover decided that killing Sebastian was the only way to handle things. The fact that she didn’t even bother to try to find any alternatives, just blindly followed her lord’s…excuse me, lover’s word as gospel was a bit weird for what type of character the book was trying to paint her as. Abigail–the only person in this whole fucking book that I liked–was even eventually relegated to the role of “faithful servant” in the end. It seemed a bit odd that in a story where almost every female character was originally presented as strong or independent, eventually all of them fell under the rule, care, or stewardship of a man.
To be frank, there is a lot about this book that just didn’t add up. And the further the story got the more confusing it became. By rights, by the time I got to the end, the actions made in the beginning of the book, before I found out about Sven and August and all the other crap that was happening, should have made sense both in and out of context. But they didn’t. I don’t get why Sven acted like he did when he was under orders to protect Sebastian. I don’t get why Macsen never seemed to change his attitude towards Sebastian, even though it becomes clear he knew a lot more than he was letting on. I am unsure why transporting a character into what must have felt like at least several centuries in the future didn’t seem to phase them at all–or how they knew what the fuck a car was. And I really don’t get how I was meant to buy that frankly absurd and ridiculous scene near the end where Sebastian and David confronted Macsen in “disguise” and Macsen had no clue who he was talking to. This isn’t Superman. Just because you throw on glasses or change your hair does not suddenly transform you into another person. Asking me to buy that, after all the other shit that I had to put up with, was just insulting.
There are only so many times I can handle things being hand-waved away before I stop caring about the characters and the story. I greatly disliked the way sexual assault was just shrugged off in this book. I found it annoying that the events at the end made the beginning make less sense, than more. In the end, I could not bring myself to care what happened to these characters other than the promise that I’d never have to meet them again.
RATING: 
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