Book Review
Title: The Gilded King (Sovereign Book 1) by Josie Jaffery
Genre: Paranormal, Romance
Rating: 4.5 Stars
The opening to The Gilded King as we introduced to Julia who lives in the city named Blue. Here, vampires are considered Nobles while everyone else is of a lesser rank including Attendants, like Julia’s best friend Claudia and Servers like Julia. We learn early on that leaving Blue and facing the Forest of Red is considered treason and Julia’s parents abandoned her when they entered the forest of Red which surrounded Blue but it is filled with horrible monsters. When Julia is informed she is going to be become an Attendant because there is essentially an emergency opening she considers leaving Blue as she saw what Rufus did to Claudia but she can’t bring herself to do it yet. We are also introduced to Cameron, who is a vampire, he is a Silver or a Noble and a member of the Solis Invicti, the elite warriors that are there to protect Blue. However, through him we learn that the vampires are in danger of going extinct because of a vaccine meaning the humans in Blue are the only ones uncontaminated and the number of vampires is dwindling every year. Cameron won’t stay in Blue long as he is looking for someone called Emmy in Red and he won’t stop until he finds her and the Empress supports this decision and pretty soon he is heading off into the wild again.
We continue following the dual perspective of Cameron and Julia, Julia is made the Attendant of Lucas, who among the Noble is seen as bottom of the barrel possibly because there is something wrong with him. However, the more time Julia spends with him she comes to see that he is caring and nice to her whereas Nobles like Rufus are cruel and vicious. While Lucas doesn’t reject her he hasn’t accepted her either until Rufus takes an interest in her then he has no choice but to mark her as his otherwise Rufus won’t leave her alone. However, he doesn’t drink from her instead he takes a lock of her hair as the ritual dictates and kisses her leaving his scent on her. He does test her blood and finds it clean and their relationship as Master and Attendant is now solidified but Julia can’t find it in herself to be angry or upset about the arrangement because it has kept her out of Rufus’ hands for now. Meanwhile with Cameron, he is travelling looking for Emmy and we learn that the Weeper virus wiped out a lot of humans until the Weeper vaccine was created but the vaccine had the side effect for rendering any vampire that drank from them mortal. This start a war known as the Revelation as humans used this knowledge to kill a lot of vampires and the vampires in turn killed any human that knew about the true power of the vaccine. However, this has left them in a dangerous position as the blood of any Attendant must be tested as Nobles can only drink from the unvaccinated while maintaining the secret about why they do this. Things in the Blue aren’t going well either as an Attendant was murdered and his friend Marcus is blamed as the murderer but something about the whole situation doesn’t sit right with Julia as she believes that Marcus didn’t do it despite not knowing the boy at all. So far, The Gilded King is turning out to be an interesting start to the series and I am excited to see where it goes especially the dynamic between Julia and Lucas.
Now that Lucas has taken Julia as his Attendant, they begin forming a friendship with each other, learning about each other. As part of this process, Julia confides in him that her best friend is the Attendant of Rufus and he understands her pain given what he has told her and what she has seen of Rufus. In return he takes her to the Temple, a place forbidden to her, where she meets Alba, Lucas’ former Attendant and the woman that raised him. There he tells her the story of the Nobles and silvering, silvering is a process a Noble goes through when they fall in love, usually this is with another Noble and there isn’t an issue as they are hard to kill. However, sometimes a Nobel with silver for a human and this becomes dangerous as when their love is killed they die too and humans are much weaker and much more vulnerable than the Nobles. He tells her the tale of Solomon, the Great King and God among the Nobles and how he silvered for a human who was locked away for her protection but he didn’t know the location. He fought many battles to defeat his enemies so they could be together and eventually he began turning gold, to reflect the mutual love between them. As time passed he became a statue and became still as his love was human and must have eventually died, he did to but the Nobles look to Solomon’s story as both a fairy tale and a warning. It means that while it can happen, Nobles and humans aren’t meant to love each other because eventually the human will die resulting in the death of the Noble and this might be some foreshadowing for the relationship between Julia and Lucas. Back with Cameron, he realises that some vampires are terrorising the forest and kidnapping and killing many humans in a wasteful way and he can’t figure out why. However, he does get some clues from a wandering tribe of people that tell him that the vampires a few decades before came and took all their sons even the new-borns, possibly to feed off but it is more likely they were trying to make more vampires as their numbers are going down over time and he ends up encountering one of them but as he hasn’t feed recently he is at a disadvantage in this fight.
The fight isn’t much of one at all as it seems Cameron has fallen into a bait trap laid out by a human named Felix who has been living in the Red for years. Felix helps Cameron get back on his feet and offers to help him find the place he is looking for, the place Emmy might be and Cameron surprisingly accepts the help. Along the way the pair get to know each other and Felix is looking for someone too, his lover, Otho. They go through many encounters together tracking the other vampires and they realise the dead bodies and blood wasn’t wasteful but they were using it to distract and trap the Weepers to avoid them getting to the uncontaminated humans they have been moving around. They eventually reach their destination but before they can do anything, they are set upon by Weepers and with no way around Cameron uses Felix’s blood since he has been vaccinated to kill them but one of them was Otho, the man Felix has been looking for. Back with Julia, the friendship between her and Lucas is deepening and might turn into something more but we are drawn away from this as one of this year’s female Candidate is looking for a sponsor among the Nobles and she is targeting Lucas and Rufus. In order to know more about them she talks with both Julia and Claudia and Lucas seems to be the obvious choice but we don’t know what being a sponsor means yet. Claudia also confides in Julia that she has heard rumours through the visitors Rufus gets that there are humans in the Red and they decide to for Claudia to spy on Rufus the way she has been and if it is true that humans can survive in the Red then they will leave the Blue together once and for all.
After the final death of Otho, Felix continues to travel with Cameron tracking the vampires. They discover they are trying to create more vampires from humans in a place called Charlestown. Charlestown has a significant meaning for Cameron as Charles was the name of the vampire that kidnapped Emmy and he is desperate to find her now. They also learn that there are traitors among the Invicti which we have seen through Julia’s perspective although she is unaware of what it means right now but I have a feeling this is going to cause some waves through the Blue very soon. Meanwhile, Lucas has sponsored Marcella and the dynamic between him and Julia has changed but during the Nomination he is outranked by Rufus for his claim over Marcella as he has already put a claim on Julia by giving her his earring and Marcella is giving to Rufus to sponsor but before things can go much further, a vampire speeds through the square leaving a message written in the blood of the Empress’ people telling them not to make a new vampires. I am not sure what Lucas’ claim on Julia means right now, I don’t know whether it is because he intends to make her into a vampire like himself or it could be to do with the unusual dynamic between them especially when Lucas is feeding off of her as she finds it to be a delightful sensation rather than the extremely painful one that Claudia experiences when Rufus feeds from her but I am excited to see what Jaffery sets up for the next book in the final 100 pages of this one.
We don’t learn much more about the bond between Lucas and Julia in this section of the novel but we can see a relationship between them is definitely on the card in the next book, fingers crossed. However, it is through Cameron’s perspective that we get the most information, we learn that Charlestown is trying to make more vampires and failing, only creating more Weepers and turning the vampires they do have back into humans making them useless. Cameron manages to free one former vampire that he knew Chloe despite her being involved in the betrayal of Emmy as she has her own son who is a vampire but is turned into a human in order to save his life. Chloe explains that Charles was trying to create vampires and failing for her used Emmy’s blood as she has Primus blood in her veins although we don’t know the significance of that yet and it didn’t work but she didn’t turn back into a human when he tried that either. Charles cutting his loses took Emmy and was trying to create more vampires the old fashioned way by getting Emmy to fall in love with him but he must be unaware or unable to accept that her bond with Sol has already been cemented and the only thing that can break it is death. With less than 50 pages remaining I am almost certain that this novel is going to end on a major cliff hanger but I will definitely be picking up the rest of the books in this series as soon as I can because it is an interesting combination of both the vampire and zombie genres with some really interesting twists of perspective through in and I can’t wait to see what Jaffery has in store for the climax of this novel.
The climax of The Gilded King was amazing as it brings in many elements that were teased throughout this novel and I have theories about Lucas and how he is connected to Solomon. However, the relationship between Cameron and Felix is something I am eager to see more of especially given the fact he has betrayed Cameron once and might do it again. Overall, I found The Gilded King to be a fast paced and action packed read that I devoured in a single sitting and I will definitely be continuing this series in the near future. Highly recommended.
Buy it here:
Paperback/Hardcover: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
Kindle Edition: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
I received this copy for review consideration from the author.
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