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sophieissapphhic's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
lighthearted
fast-paced
Sapphic Little Mermaid meets Pirates of the Caribbean? Bam, you’ve got A Song of Silver and Gold!
Content Warnings: magic healing trope, murder, sibling death, family death, parental abuse, death of children (on-page), vomiting (on-page), blood (on-page, graphic), alcohol consumption (on-page, graphic), alcohol-induced hangover, emotional abuse, refusing to eat, sexism, sexual assault, being drugged (the characters’ drinks were spiked), kidnapping, torture, confinement, sex scene (fade-to-black), death from childbirth (mention), broken bones, injury to eyes, mutilation (threatened), homophobia
For the past year, Princess Kaelyn of Avalon shortened her name to “Kae” and disguised herself as a man. After Kae’s brother was murdered in a siren attack, she sets out to avenge his death. Consequently, she puts together a crew and captains the Mar Daemon, a pirate vessel that hunts sirens. After a fatal siren attack on Avalon’s harbor, Kae resumes her authority as Captain Kae and sets out to destroy the sea demons once and for all.
Aqueara is a siren warrior of Meyrial, the underwater kingdom of sirens. When an attack on Avalon’s harbor goes terribly wrong and costs the life of her youngest cousin, she is exiled. However, a sea witch offers her cousin’s life in exchange for Captain Kae’s heart. Aqueara is given a human body and a month to carve out Captain Kae’s heart before her cousin can no longer be brought back.
When Aqueara joins Kae’s crew in an attempt to get close to her, her objective is complicated by her attraction to the pirate captain.
The plot of A Song of Silver and Gold doesn’t pick up until around a quarter into the book- but once it does, it was wonderful. The story feels light and fast-paced, filled with drinking, banter, and swashbuckling. While some aspects of the story feel unrealistic (perhaps intentionally so, to keep the story light), I appreciated that Aqueara and Kae had a genuine reason to hate each other.
At some points, the reader witnesses events through one character’s perspective. The next chapter, the other character would retell the same events in full. This only happened once or twice, but it was noticeable enough to disrupt the flow of the story.
Aqueara and Kae were good narrators, but Aqueara feels underdeveloped in comparison to Kae. I liked Aqueara as a character, but I wish her chapters were more fleshed out. In addition, I wish both of their character arcs were drawn out more. the characters changing their minds seemed to happen very suddenly. It makes more sense for Aqueara, who is surrounded by humans who hate sirens and is better able to put herself in their shoes, and therefore would most likely be quicker to stop hating humans. Kae’s beliefs changing, however, felt abrupt and forced.
Regardless, I loved both main characters and I’m excited to continue their story in the sequel to A Song of Silver and Gold. I also particularly enjoyed the side characters, especially Dalton.
This book provides easter eggs for fans of Pirates of the Caribbean and The Little Mermaid. They were subtle enough to not be overwhelming while still providing readers with a treat.
Finally, my biggest gripe with this book was the use of the magical healing trope. (Spoilers ahead! I don’t use character names.) It was used to heal a character after they died from their throat being slit; then it was used to heal a character’s broken leg. The first character dying was only for shock value. They were only dead for a few pages, and in my opinion, could easily be taken out. I think the other character’s broken leg could easily be changed- it doesn’t need to be healed. In both cases, the characters are restored to fully able and it’s like their injuries never happened.
Thank you to Hansen House Publishing, Melissa Karibian and BookFunnel for an advance review copy!
Content Warnings
Graphic: Injury/Injury detail, Sexual harassment, Violence, Misogyny, Sexism, Alcohol, Kidnapping, Child death, and Murder
Moderate: Homophobia and Blood
Minor: Drug use, Sexual content, and Vomit
nicdoeswords's review against another edition
adventurous
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.5
I received an e-ARC of this book as part of Hansen House Publishing's Influencer program.
This book is a sapphic Little Mermaid retelling with a mean streak. The To Kill a Kingdom comparison is apt—the arc is very similar across the story and the dynamic of the main couple has a similar "I want to kill you but wait you're actually really hot and maybe not a bad person, uh oh..." journey, which was fun to read.
What I enjoyed: the unabashed sapphic energy of this book, and classic tropes being reimagined and queered in a fantasy setting. Some of the particularly escapist and lush descriptions of locations (e.g. a market, or the interior of a pub). Kae's relationship with various crew members, particularly Ruff, for the first half of the book.
Most of the rest of it just didn't work for me (keeping in mind that this was an ARC, and it's a YA book! I'm an adult and not the intended audience!). The writing was simplistic in style and structure, rarely deviating from short or medium sentence length and often repeating phrases. This style then made many emotional moments and reveals feel rather hollow—the story's narrative tended much more towards telling rather than showing, particularly when it came to how our two characters feels about each other. For some, this would be a selling point, since this style does give some punchy quotes and cliffhanger moments at the ends of chapters, but those moments didn't feel earned to me.
Overall, if you enjoy enemies to lovers and many of the sub-trope trappings therein (knife to throat, pinned during a sparring match, there was only one bed, reluctant allies), I do think you'll enjoy this! That's not my favorite getting together trope because I often feel that the romance can be shallow, which felt like the case here, but I do think my inability to get swept up in the tropes hurt my reading experience as a result.
I did find our main characters fun! I liked the Kae POV chapters more than the Aqeara ones for the most part, because I felt Kae had a clearer and punchier voice, but I enjoyed them both, and Aqeara fumbling through her lies about where she's from made me laugh at times. The moments of sexual tension, especially early on, were interesting and exciting to see played out in queerer ways than I've really felt I've gotten to see in original fiction, which I always appreciate.
One last note I want to make is that as a non-binary reviewer I tend to be pretty sensitive to tropes traditionally used to harm the trans community. This was definitely not ill-intentioned, but there was a moment in here that felt bad to read, and I wanted to mention it. Spoilered because I'm going to talk about the event itself, though it's in the first quarter of the book:Kae disguises herself as a young man in order to captain a ship of men (it's kind of a Mulan thing, going undercover to be respected). One of her crew members learned of this early on. As Kae recounts it, he caught her changing and she had to "come clean" about her lie. Later, another crew member finds out and Kae apologizes profusely to him and other crew members. The ultimate moral of the story as the narrative presents it is that in masquerading as a man she did harm to the crew, with no accounting for a) the fact that she's right that they wouldn't have respected her if she'd told the truth off the bat, and b) the "caught while changing" trope is traditionally used to "prove" that trans people are lying about who they are and that your sex assigned at birth is the Truth about your identity . It was a quick moment early on, and like I said I don't think the author meant badly by it, but it pinged as uncomfortable to me and I wanted to mention it.
Overall, this book wasn't really for me but I do think there are readers who would thoroughly enjoy the ride! The cliffhanger at the end did have my eyes bulging, and I imagine it's leading to a very interesting setup for book 2!
This book is a sapphic Little Mermaid retelling with a mean streak. The To Kill a Kingdom comparison is apt—the arc is very similar across the story and the dynamic of the main couple has a similar "I want to kill you but wait you're actually really hot and maybe not a bad person, uh oh..." journey, which was fun to read.
What I enjoyed: the unabashed sapphic energy of this book, and classic tropes being reimagined and queered in a fantasy setting. Some of the particularly escapist and lush descriptions of locations (e.g. a market, or the interior of a pub). Kae's relationship with various crew members, particularly Ruff, for the first half of the book.
Most of the rest of it just didn't work for me (keeping in mind that this was an ARC, and it's a YA book! I'm an adult and not the intended audience!). The writing was simplistic in style and structure, rarely deviating from short or medium sentence length and often repeating phrases. This style then made many emotional moments and reveals feel rather hollow—the story's narrative tended much more towards telling rather than showing, particularly when it came to how our two characters feels about each other. For some, this would be a selling point, since this style does give some punchy quotes and cliffhanger moments at the ends of chapters, but those moments didn't feel earned to me.
Overall, if you enjoy enemies to lovers and many of the sub-trope trappings therein (knife to throat, pinned during a sparring match, there was only one bed, reluctant allies), I do think you'll enjoy this! That's not my favorite getting together trope because I often feel that the romance can be shallow, which felt like the case here, but I do think my inability to get swept up in the tropes hurt my reading experience as a result.
I did find our main characters fun! I liked the Kae POV chapters more than the Aqeara ones for the most part, because I felt Kae had a clearer and punchier voice, but I enjoyed them both, and Aqeara fumbling through her lies about where she's from made me laugh at times. The moments of sexual tension, especially early on, were interesting and exciting to see played out in queerer ways than I've really felt I've gotten to see in original fiction, which I always appreciate.
One last note I want to make is that as a non-binary reviewer I tend to be pretty sensitive to tropes traditionally used to harm the trans community. This was definitely not ill-intentioned, but there was a moment in here that felt bad to read, and I wanted to mention it. Spoilered because I'm going to talk about the event itself, though it's in the first quarter of the book:
Overall, this book wasn't really for me but I do think there are readers who would thoroughly enjoy the ride! The cliffhanger at the end did have my eyes bulging, and I imagine it's leading to a very interesting setup for book 2!
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexism and Violence
Moderate: Death and Homophobia
Minor: Child death
Racism allegory
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