A review by corabookworm
The Gilded Crown by Marianne Gordon

dark emotional mysterious tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

ARC provided by Netgalley and Harper Voyager in exchange for an honest review.

The Gilded Crown is an enchanting high-fantasy book about a girl who is forced into the twisted world of politics when the Queen finds out she can raise the dead and forces her to resurrect the murdered Princess. Now, Hellevir must keep the Princess alive and find the assassin before the cost of dealing with Death grows too high.

I loved this book! The magic system, setting, and animal companions made it feel almost like a dark fairy tale, and the writing was excellent. The characters were complex and had complicated relationships with one another, and there was a big focus on family and friendships. The plot was by far the strongest aspect, though. The political intrigue was well-built, including a dark and corrupted but also complicated monarch, and betrayal and assassins and whatnot. There was also some wonderful worldbuilding and history, with some fascinating religious conflict thrown in for fun. Altogether, extremely well-written, especially for a debut!

I only have two real critiques: one is that the romance fell a little bit flat for me. It was marketed as a romance, so I guess I expected more, but even then, I didn’t really root for the relationship as I was reading–and I couldn’t fully explain why! It just wasn’t there. The second thing is that the interactions with Death got very repetitive and boring after a while. Don’t get me wrong, it was a super interesting magic system! But they just kept having the *same* conversation, and certain events felt anticlimactic because of it. 

Besides that, this book was amazing! I was expecting a standalone, but the ending proved me wrong, so it will be interesting to see how the author stretches this into a sequel. I look forward to it. Altogether, I definitely recommend this book if you enjoy magic-focused, fairy-tale-feeling high-fantasy!