The Gilded Crown

I received this book through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

I went into this book pretty blind, and this might be one of my top reads of the year. Excellent piece of literature, and the writing was stunning.

We follow in this book a young girl journey through life that are shaped by her interactions with death and those she chooses to help with her “gift”. She must find out who is trying to kill the princess she has sworn to raise from the dead, in order to be freed to live her life.

The premise in this book is so interesting and her relationship with death also intrigued me, her relationship with the princess was all the more interesting. Honestly just read the book you won't be disappointed.

Do not judge this book for its romantasy looking cover. It is not a romantasy by any means, thank goodness.

My favorite books of 2024 feature necromancy and/or traumatized (and kinda toxic) princesses. This definitely met that criteria and, while not as good as those other books, I really enjoyed it nevertheless. 

I really liked the “magic” in this universe, where people can talk to spirits of various kinds and a small number of people can flit across the veil of death. I like how to bring people back from the dead requires bits and pieces of yourself, except in Hellevir's case, Death himself is looking for specific gifts (which is totally setting him up for some shenanigans in the future (especially if he is the Antlered King of lore)).

The major characters are decent. Surprisingly deep. Her family is complex, the Peers are your standard evil religious group seeking bigger and “better” things. The Queen is the mustache-twirlingly evil monarch character we've all become accustomed to.

Sullivain is...tedious. Their relationship/romance(ish) is very toxic and feels a little forced. Every single time she shows even a little bit of improvement she immediately backtracks and somehow gets worse than before. There are snippets of a decent person under her iron demeanor, but they are squashed time and time again. She has potential but she has a lot to atone for. Time will tell...

Death is really cool. I liked his whole thing. I'm immensely grateful that this isn't a romantasy because he would've been the inevitable love interest and I would've hated that so much.

I did laugh a little at the Odin impersonation Hellevir's got going on at the end of the book (eyepatch and raven). And she's ending the book with plans to wander. I swear to goodness if she gets a second raven I'm rioting.

It definitely feels like this whole book is a setup for a series. But I'm definitely gonna check out the sequel though. I want to see where it goes.

I received an ARC thanks to Netgalley and Harper Voyager.  The opinions expressed are my own.

Hellevir discovers at a young age that she can enter Death and resurrect the recently dead. As a young woman, she is asked to raise the Queen's granddaughter and heir. When she does so, she finds herself caught up in political intrigue and conspiracy when all she wants is a quiet life. Things develop from there....

It started a bit slow, which is not unexpected for a first book in a series that has to do a fair bit of heavy lifting in establishing characters and world building. It definitely picked up pace as it went. 

It explores interesting (to me, at least) themes around power dynamics and religion.  There are definite parallels drawn with the spread of Christianity (in the form of the Roman Catholic Church) across Europe in the Middle Ages. 

While it is described as a romance, this isn't really very developed in this book. It is obvious who the romantic interest is meant to be, but given the circumstances (the aforementioned power dynamics being a big part) I think this is a good thing. 

The world is what I consider “generic Medieval European, although the cultural nods were a bit all over the place (Hellevir and her family read Scandinavian-ish, her mentor's name sounds French, the capital is pretty generic but with nods to Venice, etc), which I found distracting in a way that pulled me out of the story.  I think it would work better if the author stuck to on culture or avoided real world cultural references entirely.  But this is a fairly minor quibble for me.

Overall a good debut and a good story and I look forward to the next book

I'm having a hard time deciding exactly how to review this book, because the prose is lovely and I enjoyed the worldbuilding and some of the characters. Ultimately, I think there were two major factors preventing me from liking it as much as I might have:

1. The plot being driven by the dreaded Idiot Ball. Not once but twice, terrible, pivotal hardships happened because a major character just blurted out huge, dangerous secrets without first checking if there was anyone around to overhear. In one case the character actually knew there was someone hostile nearby and still had a loud discussion about the dangerous subject!

2. The love interest. You know back in the peak Bad Boy days of YA romance, when there was a plethora of male love interests who were the absolute worst but got a pass because they were Conflicted and Tormented and Hot? The love interest in this story is pretty much that, but a girl. She is, in my humble opinion, one of the least interesting kinds of asshole: a cowardly one who does horrific things because there lies the path of least resistance. I wanted to drop-kick her into the sun.

That's not to say there's nothing redeemable in this book! I genuinely enjoyed some of it, and there's a nonzero chance I'll grit my teeth and at least start the next book just to see where it goes. If you don't mind love interests who do heinous things but it's okay because they're Sad and Beautiful, and if you're willing to overlook the plot sometimes being driven by sheer stupidity, you might love this book.

(I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.)