It is in your favor to do what I did not. I would have had a much easier time if I had just done even the quickest of rereads. I ddin’t have the time to reread book one, and as a result spent the first quarter of the book trying to remember all the key players in this universe. Hell, even if you have read the first book, but not recently, I urge you to go back and give it a reread before starting the second book. Ok, first off, if you haven’t read The Engineered Throne (book one in this series) you are really going to need to read it before you start The Painted Crown. Even if that help might end up hurting him and those he holds dear. When a new threat crops up, this time against the adopted nephew of Teverem’s, Istari is set to help the man however he must. But for some reason the young lord is able to see past the stigma of Istari’s familal connections, and to the man who is slowly drowning in pain and loneliness. For he lost family to Istari’s father’s plots.

By all rights Teverem should should loath Istari as the others do. That all changes when he runs into Teverem, a Tallideth lord.

It soon becomes clear that the best he can hope for is indifference, and to wait out the years he is to been held in this foriegn country. He had hoped that away from his father’s hate and judgement he could find a place of his own, but the people of Tallideth can only see the son of the man responsible for so much death and destruction. But, seeing as he wasn’t all that popular in the Belemere court either, that is hardly new. It would be an understatement to say that Istari is disliked in Tallideth. Now, the new King of Belemere–Istari’s brother–has sent Istari to Tallideth as a hostage and a promise that Belemere will keep its side of the peace barginned between them. Istari’s father, in his madness, had tried to assassinate the royal family of Tallideth and use the chaos it caused to win the long war between them, and almost succeeded. To secure a peace between Belemere and Tallideth, Prince Istari–the legal son of Belemere’s last King–is to be held hostage in Tallideth. He is kind and sweet and a sorely needed bright spot in Istari’s life-until Istari meets his family and learns of a dangerous family secret with unexpected ties to Istari’s past, a secret that could drag Tallideth and Belemere right back into war… Unexpected solace comes in the form of Lord Teverem, a sad, quiet lord who assumed the title when his brother was killed in the explosion for which Istari’s father is to blame. Now a hostage of peace in Tallideth, he is subjected to their hatred as well-even that of Regent Vellem, who once considered him a comrade in arms. Prince Istari has spent his life reviled: his parents wish he had never been born, the royal court of Belemere avoids him for fear of angering the king, and everyone else is kept away by his notorious reputation as a deadly sharpshooter.

The Engineered Throne by Megan Derr