The Gilded King Review
By: Lexi
The Gilded King separates the new world into two: The Blue and The Red. The Blue is the last city in the new world and it doesn’t seem to be doing that well. Julia, our orphaned main character, serves the nobility of the city. She was left on the steps of the Temple, her parents decided to take their chance and find out what is outside the wall in The Red. So Julia was left behind, believing she would never become an attendant because she was tainted by their betrayal.
Through a series of events out of her control Julia is given the position of attending a Royal by the name of Lucas.
Lucas is new to the royal family, he is young and he believes in the fairytales he reads in his time alone on the roof. Julia knows that there is no time for these stories in the Blue. Julia believes they are nothing more than what they offer, make believe. There is no reason to get lost in them because a royal would never fall in love with a human. Humans grow old and wither away, the royals are frozen and forever youthful. But Lucas believes in them and through their unusual relationship as Attendant and Master, he starts to make Julia a believer herself.
“It’s happened before, you know,” he said. “It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, people remember it. There’s a reason the fairytales exist.”
“And there’s a reason they call them fairytales,’ Julia said.”
This book is told through dual perspectives. So while Julia is with Lucas living in the Blue, we follow another journey just outside the border. In the Red, Cameron searches for a lost queen and ends up fighting a long-thought dead enemy on the rise. Inside the Blue everyone believes the red to be deserted, to be the place of punishment and death. They have no idea who wrong they are. Through Cameron’s journey we learn that the nobles are keeping the humans in the Blue through fear and isolation.
I haven’t read a dystopian novel in a fairly long time. This is the first time I’ve read a dystopian world mixed with the paranormal. It was refreshing, for the world to be different from our own but also run by vampires. Not our usual kind, though. With The Gilded King we come to understand a different vampire world than what we are used to. I thought I was over the vampire stories, but I learned I was wrong as I dissolved into this compelling and very original story.
Through the eyes of both Julia and Cameron we learn about this new world run by vampires and towards the end of the book these two collide. Both were very different kinds of stories, but both were equally important the where the plot is going. Sometimes when there are multiple points of view within book, I find myself wishing one side was given more pages than the other, as is the case with The Gilded King. I really enjoyed Julia adapting to being an attendant and her relationship with Lucas. I wish there had been more of them, more of their cute moments.
I wish their ending hadn’t been so abrupt!
I wouldn’t spoil too much, but I was given this book by the author to review. I give this a solid 4 out of 5 stars, if only because it took me a few chapters to fully understand and get lost in the world.
Not because of the writing, the writing was wonderful and I enjoyed it as well as the world. It took me a few chapters because I really didn’t care for Cameron’s side of the story. I wanted more of Julia’s character growth, because boy did she grow. I wanted more Claudia hiding her bruises from Julia and maybe even a few more conversations about her very weird relationship with Rufus. I enjoyed the world of the Blue because it as so different. A town full of disease free humans run by royal vampires.
I am definitely looking forward to the next book in this series. I’m crossing my fingers that hopefully Julia and Lucas have better communication and hopefully stick together. I don’t think my heart can take rooting for them for so long again.
This book has everything I didn’t know I needed. An awesome new world, a romance that is worth the slow burn, and vampires that aren’t sparkly or still in high school.
If you have the chance check this series out. You won’t be disappointed!
Raven C. Eckman 