The Gilded King by Josie Jaffery | BBNYA Book Tour Review

Hello everyone! Today is my stop on the BBYNA (Book Blogger Novel of the Year Award) book tour for one of 2020’s finalists: The Gilded King by Josie Jaffery.

Now here is some information about BBNYA:

I received this book to read and review as part of the BBNYA 2020 competition and/or the BBNYA tours organised by the @The_WriteReads tours team. All opinions are my own, unbiased and honest.

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 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)!

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Rating: 3 out of 5.

My rating: 3/5 stars 🌟🌟🌟

Book title: The Gilded King

Author: Josie Jaffery

Genre: Science Fiction (post-apocalyptic), Fantasy/Paranormal, Adult

Pages: 293 (digital/Kindle edition)

Trigger warnings: blood, violence, death, cannibalism, blood drinking, some mild sexual themes & innuendos, war, kind of tyrannical government, abuse, child death

Blurb:

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.

My Review

The Gilded King is a great first book in Josie Jaffery’s Sovereign series. Set in a futuristic dystopia with only one city still standing and a dangerous and infectious world beyond it’s borders. Vampires, or Silvers as they call themselves, are hidden in plain sight as nobles that never age. The human are brought up to life to serve them and allow them to drink their blood. Keeping them alive and keeping the human from leaving the city.

Julia’s world was blue. Blue was everything. Blue was safe. Blue was home. How she longed to see red.

This story is told mainly from the perspectives of Julia, a human, and Cameron, a Silver. Julia is trapped within the Blue, she’s expected to live and die there in servitude to the nobility. Cameron, as a Silver, can travel outside of the Blue and into the Red. At first there stories appear to only be connected by happenstance, but they are like two sides to one coin.

I liked both of these two characters a lot. And I liked getting to see this world through both of their eyes. They both see it very different but they both see the Blue to be like a cage.

She was not a girl who dreamed in jewel tones and kisses. She was not weak. She didn’t need to covet the constructs of the Nobles.

And one day she would leave this place behind, just like her parents had done.

There was a lot of description and world building, I felt like I was pretty immersed in this world.

I thought that this was a really good book. It was a bit slow to begin with and took a while to get going, but once the world and characters were established the story began to pick up more and more speed.

I think my favourite characters were Lucas, Cameron and Julia. They are all very different characters but I liked that none of them truly fit in this post-apocalyptic world.

All of the characters in this book felt really complex and three dimensional.

Overall, I thought that this was a really good first book in the series. I had some issue with the pacing at the start and was sometimes frustrated by the lack of information. But I really liked the characters and the plot was filled with mystery and intrigue that kept me hooked.

I rated this book 3/5 stars as I enjoyed reading this book but I’m not sure if I’m going to continue with the rest of the series. Even though I really love paranormal stories I’m not a big fan of post-apocalyptic or dystopia ones. I also struggled to get into this story as well. For me the pacing was just a bit too slow for the first hundred or so pages. I found that i wanted things to move at a fast pace than they did. I think this book probably just wasn’t for me really.

I would recommend reading it if you like vampire, paranormal, post-apocalyptic, dystopian, fantasy stories with intricate world building and plot, with complex and likable characters.

About the Author: Josie Jaffery

Josie is the author of nine self-published novels plus short stories. She is currently working on a range of fantasy and historical fiction projects (both adult and YA), for which she is seeking representation. Ultimately, she hopes to be a hybrid author, both traditionally- and self-published.

After finishing her degree in Literae Humaniores (Classics) at the University of Oxford, Josie wasn’t sure what to do with her life.

She slogged through a brief stint working for an investment bank in London during the 2008 credit crunch, then converted to law and qualified as a solicitor specialising in intellectual property. She worked at a law firm for five years before moving to a UK-based international publisher in 2016. Whilst she loved law, in the end she didn’t love it quite as much as writing, which she now does almost full time.

Josie lives in Oxford with her husband and two cats (Sparky and Gussie), who graciously permit human cohabitation in return for regular feeding and cuddles. The resulting cat fluff makes it difficult for Josie to wear black, which is largely why she gave up being a goth. Although the cats are definitely worth it, she still misses her old wardrobe.

Josie’s Links: Website | Patreon | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads | Instagram | YouTube | Pinterest