The Gilded Crown

"{3.5/5}<br/><br/>CW: gore, death, some others<br/><br/>Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC! “The Gilded Crown” is available now.<br/><br/>What a strangely delightful book. I…have a lot of thoughts.<br/><br/>Hellevir has always known she had a gift— the ability to step into death and bring back the soul of the departed. But every exchange has a cost, and the more she walks with Death, the more Hellevir loses. The cost to raise a princess, though, may be more than she’s willing to pay.<br/><br/>I’m not going to lie, this book took me a while to get through. And by ‘a while,’ I mean that it took me about 4 days, which is roughly double what a book of this length would usually require. Somehow, despite the extra time, it never felt like it was dragging.<br/><br/>Full disclosure— I didn’t like the main character. Hellevir is naive, often willingly so. She’s full of rage and power, and yet she ends up coming across as spineless, especially early on in the story. Perhaps worst of all, for me, is that this combination manifests as a total inability to say no and stick to her guns. It’s a fitting set of characteristics for her situation, but that doesn’t make it any more likeable. Strangely enough, I found almost all of the characters in the story to have a similar problem. With the exception of maybe 2 side characters, pretty much everyone ended up being less than stellar human beings.<br/><br/>The real redeeming quality to this story, what made it so easy to read despite the slow pacing, was the magic. It’s a simple sort of magic there. A communion with the spirits of nature. While this isn’t a common gift in Hellevir’s world, the depiction of it and the interactions she has with the living beings around her was beautiful. It feels soft and warm and perfect, and I loved reading it. Even Hellevir’s interactions with death and the depictions of that world were amazing. <br/><br/>Regarding the actual story…not a lot actually happened. But also a lot happened. It’s definitely a very character-driven storyline; the whole point really becomes Hellevir’s growth and the changes as she interacts with the world. Fortunately, she does indeed grow and change, and combined with the magic it makes for an ultimately decent story. The ending to the book felt like both an ending and a beginning, which was fitting for both the character and for the series (as this is listed as book 1 in The Raven’s Trade series). There’s a lot of potential for an even more active and engaging story in future books, and I look forward to seeing how that plays out.<br/><br/>Overall, I liked this book a lot more than I would have thought had someone simply described it to me. I do think it’s one that most people will either love or hate, but it’s got a subtle sort of magic woven in those lines. <br/>"