I received this book to read and review as part of the BBNYA 2020 competition and/or the BBNYA tours organized by the @The_WriteReads tours team. All opinions are my own, unbiased and honest.
The Gilded King: Synopsis
In the Blue, the world’s last city, all is not well.
Julia is stuck within its walls. She serves the nobility from a distance until she meets Lucas, a boy who believes in fairytales that Julia’s world can’t accommodate. The Blue is her prison, not her castle, and she’d escape into the trees if she didn’t know that contamination and death awaited humanity outside.
But not everyone in the Blue is human, and not everyone can be contained.
Beyond the city’s boundaries, in the wild forests of the Red, Cameron has precious little humanity left to lose. As he searches for a lost queen, he finds an enemy rising that he thought long dead. An enemy that the humans have forgotten how to fight.
One way or another, the walls of the Blue are coming down. The only question is what side you’ll be on when they do.
The Gilded King: Author spotlight -Josie Jaffrey
I have always written stories, but it wasn’t until I started the first book in the Solis Invicti series in 2014 that I really became obsessed with writing. I love to read, particularly where the escapism of the story is enhanced with an element of fantasy or science fiction. For me, writing is simply an extension of that journey, but I get to decide what happens next (though it’s amazing how often the characters seem to decide for themselves what I’m going to write!).
I love to hear from readers, so please do get in touch through my website or via Twitter.
Thank you for reading!
The Gilded King: Review
You already know the synopsis, so I’ll dive right into my review. The Gilded King is a fun and unique competitor in the fantasy genre. It had all the tenants of a good fantasy: romance, world-building, fantastical creatures, action, politics, etc. Execution on a few of these components hit particularly well for me. I’m a fan of books with underpinnings of critique and can bridge the real into the fiction. The Gilded King tries, and in some ways, nails this. This book deals with harsh topics — explicitly and tacitly, through class differences, slavery, oppression, and political manipulation. However, some of these threads were not fully actualized; I’ll be looking forward to their development in the successive books.
This story has a lot of interweaving perspectives and storylines vying for attention. At times the switch between the POVs of Julia and Cam felt a little disjointed and the pacing was somewhat inconsistent, with the end being more engaging. Yet, surprisingly and refreshingly, the nuanced and little actions or statements you might consider off-handed or insignificant result in crucial clues for later actions. This type of planning and plotting was enjoyable to experience for the shock and awe of missing clues along with the characters. It also made me focus more on the slower chapters or the sections that I felt were a bit of a slog. The plot also tactfully side-stepped the trap of predictability. Josie Jaffrey's plot twists and resolutions, some of which had the aforementioned shock of missed clues, were creative.
Although the characters were difficult to relate to personally, I did enjoy Lucas and liked the romances and friendships that developed. Some might think the relationships developed too quickly — perhaps, that’s indicative of YA, but I didn’t mind it. Where it did struggle was some of the redundant dialogue and callowness of the characters but, while frustrating to read at time, makes sense for the age of the characters.
This book is definitely YA. It didn’t spend ample amounts of time creating long and drawn-out historical or world-building explanations, and it had an air of youngness to it. But, that’s ok. Not every story needs to be wholly profound and deeply complex. This book is still good and incorporated important social critique. I will likely read the next two books to see how it progresses.
About BBNYA
BBNYA is a yearly competition where book bloggers from all over the world read and score books written by indie authors.
If you are an author and wish to learn more about the 2021 BBNYA competition, you can visit the official website (https://www.bbnya.com/) or our Twitter account, @BBNYA_Official. If you would like to sign-up and enter your book, you can find the BBNYA 2021 AUTHOR SIGN UP FORM HERE. Please make sure to carefully read our terms and conditions before entering.
If you are a book blogger or reviewer, you can apply to be part of BBNYA 2021 by filling out this form (also remember to read the terms and conditions before signing up)!
BBNYA is brought to you in association with the Folio Society (If you love beautiful books you NEED to check out their website!) And the book blogger support group TheWriteReads.
Comments