akacya 's review for:

This Golden Flame by Emily Victoria

4.0

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2025 reads: 60/300

2025 tbr: 27/111

karis wants nothing more than to find her brother, the only family she has left, but she’s forced to serve in the scriptorium, where the officials don’t care about family ties, only about unlocking the magic of an ancient automaton army. in her search for her brother, karis accidentally awakens one of these automatons…now, the scriptorium is hunting karis and her not-so-human companion, alix. together, they go in search of her brother, uncovering their country’s centuries-old secrets along the way.

i enjoyed the automaton aspect of this book. this is something i’ve seen in only a few other books, so i was excited to see how it’d play out here. karis didn’t care about the scriptorium, but since she awakened alix, she has to at least care about him. i really enjoyed their dynamic and how they stayed friends throughout the book. (no explicit labels were used, but karis is aro/ace.)

overall, this was a pretty interesting book. i’m interested in reading more from the author!