The Gilded King
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- £2.49
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- £2.49
Publisher Description
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 going to come down. The only question is what side you’ll be on when they do.
Customer Reviews
Great dystopian fantasy!
“In the Blue, the world’s last city, all is not well”
Having never read anything by Josie Jaffrey before, I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect. Once I read the synopsis I knew I wanted to give this book a try and I wasn’t disappointed.
The Gilded King is the first book in the Sovereign series and tells the story of Julia, a human attendant trapped in the Blue and Cam, a vampire member of the Solis Invicti, desperately trying to locate his friend in the Red.
Julia’s life changes unexpectedly when she is made attendant to a young Noble called Lucas. Julia dreads having to serve a cruel master like her best friend, Claudia. However Lucas is not what she expects. Shunned by the rest of the Nobles, he lives a quiet, simple life on his rooftop, growing vegetables and cooking his own meals. Soon their relationship develops into friendship but they both know that anything more would be impossible however they can’t help but be drawn to each other.
Cam is a member of the Solis Invicti, protectors of the Nobles that live in the Blue. However Cam spends very little time in the Blue itself. Instead he is determined to find Emmy, a friend lost in the Red. After years and years of searching the rest of the Solis Invicti have given up hope of finding Emmy but Cam refuses to give up. When he hears of a possible lead, he soon finds himself back in the Red where he comes across a terrifying discovery - weepers are back and someone is deliberately creating them!
This story was very well written and as it is told from two POVs (Julia’s and Cam’s) we get to see what’s happening in both the Red and the Blue. The story gives a slightly different take on the dystopian genre with the addition of the fantasy element and the world building is good whilst not detracting from the story telling. The main characters are well developed and likeable, the “villains” are well rounded and sufficiently horrible for them to be disliked from the beginning.
With plenty of action and subtle romance, The Gilded King is a great start to the series and has definitely made me want to read the rest of Josie’s books. I particularly liked the cliffhanger ending and never would have guessed that twist!!
If you are a fan of vampires, intrigue and a little forbidden romance this one is definitely for you!
4 stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Thank you to Josie Jaffrey for providing a copy. All opinions are my own and provided willingly.