A review by likeapiper
A Taste of Gold and Iron by Alexandra Rowland

adventurous emotional funny hopeful mysterious reflective medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

I count myself incredibly lucky to have gotten an arc of this. A Taste of Gold and Iron is a beautiful book. I have rarely (possibly never) seen such well-handled casual queer representation or such realistic anxiety in a character. No canonically queer people die in this book, and it manages to be a book populated with many queer characters that avoids falling into any of the common queer angst narratives. I loved almost every one of these characters, and if this book had been just character-driven with no more plot than the interpersonal relationships at play here, I'd have read it and loved it for that. However, this is a full-service book and comes complete with a plot about counterfeiting that was so gripping and well-thought-out that I would probably have read the book for that alone too. (This is the more impressive side of things, because I don't tend to read for plot if I don't care about the characters.) In addition to all of these things, the writing is both so beautiful that I found myself wanting to stop and read it out loud and also so hilarious that I kept scaring my cat cackling at it. 

This is one of those books that I hate to review because there are so many fantastic things that I can't decide which ones to highlight. It is an absolutely superlative book, and I am definitely going to be rereading soon.
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