(SOVEREIGN 1 )THE GILDED KING.

THE GILDED KING by JOSIE JAFFREY.

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 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.

- Back Cover Blurb

Julia's world is blue.

- First Sentence, Chapter 1

Cam had never known a creature so undignified in its sleep, all struggling limbs and drool.

- Memorable Moment, Page 76.

SOURCE ... Received with thanks from the author.

READ FOR A CHALLENGE? ... No.

MY THOUGHTS ... Well! That came as a surprise. Normally a reader who is firstly and fore-mostly caught up in people as opposed to places, the dystopian worlds the author has created had me mesmerised; the strict social hierarchy/control of the Blue complementing and contrasting with the perceived savagery of the Red beautifully.

Then there's the fact that, just when I thought I'd 'been there, done that, got the t-shirt' as far as 'vampire novels' go, along comes this novel in which we get to see a different kind of vampire in a story that isn't typical of vampire stories.

Intrigued?

So was I.

Character wise ...

There's a myriad of memorable individuals, among them, each giving their own perspective on events which are narrated in alternating chapters - something that doesn't always work but here, with one some how always relating to the other, its done seamlessly and to great effective - we have Julia and Cameron; she in the Blue, he in the Red. And  then there's Lucas as the love interest and, of course, Hades.

To quote Cameron, 'a bastard of a horse, albeit a clever one'. 

Who'd have thought it? Quite the double act, his relationship with Cameron lending a wonderful humorous bent to proceedings, I adored Hades.

Great story telling, fantastic world building, well drawn characters, a convincing post-apocalyptic. With so many things to recommend this book; the action, the intrigue, the misdirection, the representation of more than one kind of love ... and more, there was only one small niggle I had ......

Though a new series, this is a spin-off from the author's Solis Invicti books and whilst I'm OK with this (for goodness sake I have been known to join a series in the middle) I had considered that readers of the Solis Invicti series might just have a tad better understanding of certain things and thus a slight introduction might have been nice for those of us who haven't read that series.

But hey-ho, a fantastic start to what promises to be a great series, I'm certainly excited to get my hands on part 2.