In the last city on Earth, death is just a step into the trees.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, who believes in fairytales that her 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 … 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 going to come down. The only question is what side you’ll be on when they do.
✭✭✭✭✭ It blurs the lines between so many sub-genres of SFF: dystopian, post-apocalyptic, quest fantasy, zombies, vampires, romance, mystery… I loved it. – A Cat, A Book and A Cup of Tea
✭✭✭✭✭ Jaffrey manages to put a compelling new twist on vampire myth. – Lozzy’s Things
✭✭✭✭✭ It is a fantastic read, rich with colourful and diverse characters, incredible imagery and powerful storytelling. – Crown of Ice and Roses
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The Gilded King is an immersive and unique dystopian novel that offers a new and fresh twist on vampires and zombies. The story is told from two different perspectives – Julia and Cam’s. I liked this aspect of the novel. Julia is a human living in the Blue, and Cam is a vampire who repeatedly travels into the Red. They are two characters from the same world whose paths don’t cross, so it’s like having two loosely intertwined stories.
The characters are well-layered and richly developed and include vampires, humans, zombies, and even a fiesty, fierce, and intelligent horse names Hades. I love Hades! Cam’s unpredictable horse has a great personality and adds some comedic relief during some otherwise tense scenes. Jaffrey skillfully creates characters (and animals) that I easily became invested in and wanted to learn more about.
Julia is one of my favorite characters. She is smart and strong, and she questions the world she lives in. She is not happy in the oppressive and restrictive world in which she lives, and she longs to escape the confine of the Blue. I love her fighting spirit and her desire to know and see more. I also like that she doesn’t cower from those with more power than her. This makes her a target at times, but she refuses to back down.
I also like that many enigmatic characters are shrouded in mystery. Throughout the story, it is unclear who can be trusted and who has nefarious ambitions. The only characters that feel reliable and trustworthy are Julia and Cam. I love when stories keep me guessing, especially when it comes to character motivations, and there are several surprising revelations in this regard.
I also really enjoyed the love stories! Julia and Lucas have such a wonderful connection, and I like how their story progressed. It’s pretty clear that they are drawn to each other, but both resist because of societal rules and their own fears. As they confront their reservations, they must decide if their love is true and worth fighting for. The scenes when Julia and Cam get to know each other, when Cam cooks for her and brings her into his private world are wonderful (and a bit swoon-tastic!)
Cam and Felix have a slow-building, angst-filled story, and I so wanted them to give in to their feelings!! Their relationship has so many obstacles, which makes me want to see them together even more! I love their chemistry and am curious to see if their bond will survive the events that unfolded towards the end of the book. Both relationships, Julia & Lucas and Cam & Felix) have their fill of secrets and lies, but the longing and desire are so palpable!
Another aspect of the story that I loved was the friendship between Julia and Claud. The women are very different and have almost opposing views on their society. However, they love and protect each other, and their loyalty and bond are unbreakable. I love how much they fight for each other and think there are great messages here about the power of friendship. Cam, who spends the entire book journeying in search of a missing friend, also shows how powerful the bonds of friendship are, as do the group of servant women led by Livia. Throughout the novel, Jaffrey highlights the positive impact friendships and found families have on one’s life.
The author also introduces some interesting and thought-provoking ideas about danger and risk-taking. Danger comes in many forms, and the characters in this story face many dangerous and potentially life-threatening situations. Just living in their world is dangerous. The safe world of the Blue is oppressive and inequitable and often leads to the demise of the less powerful. The world of the Red is unknown and filled with mystery and potential contamination. The characters spend time pondering which reality is worse – the unknown dangers of the Red or the known dangers of the Blue. It’s interesting to see how different characters view danger, the world around them, and the risks they are willing to take to achieve happiness.
The story is well-paced and has a lot of nail-biting action scenes. Political intrigue, threats to the Blue, attacks, journeys through the dangerous Red, kidnappings, rescue attempts, and more make for a suspenseful and intense read that I really enjoyed, and after that shocking ending, I can’t wait to find out what happens next! I think The Gilded King will appeal to readers who enjoy suspenseful dystopian novels with great supernatural elements and dynamic characters. Thanks so much to The Write Reads and Josie Jaffrey for a copy of the book in exchange for my honest review.
The Gilded King
By Josie Jaffrees
If I had known the world would be filled with Zombies, I would never have started reading it, and that would be shameful. It is a wonderfully twisted epic fantasy that makes me think of a King Arthur remake in a George RR Martin’s deadly and depraved universe.
The world-building is superb. There is one city we know of: Blue, the utopia built for Vampire aliens, not humans. Humans are the have-nots. While Julia has accepted her lot as a cleaner, her best friend Claudia fantasizes about finding her dark prince. Claudia’s dreams are crushed with reality, but Julia slowly finds the fairy tale prince that Claudia wanted.
Meanwhile, outside the Blue, termed Red, Cameron searches for Sleeping Beauty, his Queen. He reminds me so much of Lancelot searching for the golden chalice in a world teaming with monsters. He also finds a companion who is equally adept at navigating the wilderness, and although I guessed his secret, I absolutely fell in love with his grit. Although I prefer to read from a female POV, first person, I was so entranced with Cameron and his love that speed-read through Julia’s slow-growing romance and intrigue. What can I say? This was a surprise in itself.
The dual POVs weave a twisted tale that doesn’t really meld in Book 1. The two only cross briefly, and I immediately bought the second book. But I couldn’t start it yet. The zombies kept me up at night thinking about how they were used as weapons!
I don’t know when this epic was created, but there are similarities to our modern crisis: in this case, the vampires created a vaccine against the zombies, but the cure is deadly to vampires. The utopia is in crisis; humans and vampires are in crisis. A king is dead; the society is disrupted. Can civilization be saved?
I discovered this through a Christmas promotion, what a Merry Xmas read it was (Shudder. I don’t know why I enjoyed such a gruesome story so much.)
DISCLAIMER: THIS BOOK WAS KINDLY SENT TO ME BY THE AUTHOR IN EXCHANGE FOR AN HONEST REVIEW.
I’ll start this review by saying this is not your typical vampire story.
The story is told in two different points of view: we have Julia, a Servant from Blue who becomes an Attendant to Lucas, a very, very different vampire from what she was expecting, and Cam, from Red, who goes, once again, on an adventure looking for someone he lost a while ago.
Both characters lead different lifes, have different goals but they’re both strong, relatable, fierce and inspiring and even though they’re so different, Josie does an amazing job in intertwining and overlapping their stories, blowing us away (and also breaking our hearts) throughout the book.
Another thing I absolutely loved was the fact that there were LGBT characters, it’s been a while since I’ve read a book with a gay character on it so this was a pleasant surprise.
This is the frist book in the Sovereign series and it sets the bar really high for the rest of the series. I have no doubt that the author will surpass all of my expectations with The Silver Queen.
I didn’t read the Solis Invicti series (Sovereign is a spin-off) so it took me a little while to get used to the world and to feel connected to the story and understand a few things but other than that, this was a delightful read and I can’t wait to find out what happens next.
To Josie, thank you so much for this amazing oportunity. I cannot do your book justice and I keep recommending it to everyone hahahah!
Book source ~ Tour. My review is voluntary and honest.
The Blue is the last city in the world where the Nobles can feed on uncontaminated humans. If a human goes out into the Red then they can never return to the Blue without running the risk of contaminating everyone. If the Nobles drink from a contaminated human then they lose their immortality. So they need to be sure no one wants to venture out into the Red willingly. Stories of how horrible it is out in the Red have grown with each decade that passes until the citizens of the Blue have no desire to brave it. But as with every long peace, there comes discontent.
This story is told mainly from two POVs. Julia who is a young woman low on the pecking order as a server who ends up becoming an Attendant to a Noble. An Attendant is someone who feeds the Noble. And by feed, I mean blood. Nobles are vampires who go by the name Silver in the Blue or Izcacus out in the Red.
The other POV is Cameron who is a Silver and part of the dwindling Solis Invicti, the elite military bodyguards for the ruling person/family. He has spent tons of years, like 100s I think, out in the Red looking for someone called Emmy. Most of the book there’s no explanation about her, only that Cam is going nuts searching for her and most everyone else has given her up for dead. Since there’s virtually no backstory for Emmy (I think she might be the old Queen?) I find myself not caring about her- whether she’s alive or dead or if Cam even finds her.
While this story is a different kind of vampire story and should have been enthralling, the lack of oomph makes it only so-so for me. Julia is wishy-washy, her friend Claudia is at times a too silly nitwit, but at others she pulls up her big girl panties and becomes someone I could get behind. Cam is just a moron. Sorry, but that’s how I feel. For a being over a 1,000 years old he does some really stupid shit. In addition, I read the 1st half of the book in a constant state of confusion. I had no idea what was going on, so the world building lacks for me. Maybe others are getting something out of this that I missed, but I’m not really interested in continuing with the series.