Author: Josie Jaffrey
Series: Sovereign 1
Genres: Paranormal, YA
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
Release: June 25th 2018
Source: arc
Pages: 303
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BLURB:
In the Blue, the world’s last city, all is not well.
Julia is stuck within its walls. She serves the nobility from a distance until she meets Lucas, a boy who believes in fairytales that Julia’s world can’t accommodate. The Blue is her prison, not her castle, and she’d escape into the trees if she didn’t know that contamination and death awaited humanity outside.
But not everyone in the Blue is human, and not everyone can be contained.
Beyond the city’s boundaries, in the wild forests of the Red, Cameron has precious little humanity left to lose. As he searches for a lost queen, he finds an enemy rising that he thought long dead. An enemy that the humans have forgotten how to fight.
One way or another, the walls of the Blue are coming down. The only question is what side you’ll be on when they do.
EXPECTATIONS: Author lured me in with her little explanation of what the book will be about. She was vague enough to not give me any unrealistic expectations, and her warnings, that there'll be a m/m romance also intrigued me. So what I did expect were vampires, politics, and possibly court, unwilling to deal with nobody's love. But it wasn't exactly what I got!
THE WORLD: Back in the day vampires called Silver or Noble, have lived with humans side by side. But be it failures to make more Silver out of humans, for natural births were rare and few apart, or some sort of plague, humans have befallen a curse, a sickness: they were turning into zombies called Weepers. One bite is enough to turn if they've not cleaned your bones, so they multiplied by hundreds in mere hours. Threatened, Silver have made a vaccine that made humans immune to the virus, and killed the Weepers in contact - be it through vaccine itself, or vaccinated blood of the bitten one. But that's exactly the catch. The vaccine never left the blood, and it turned Weepers into dead humans as easily as it turned Silver into humans too. The cured became the contaminated.
Many years after that we have a world ravaged, with new settlements of humans both contaminated, and uncontaminated, living in little settlements, unaware of what was once lost. One of those settlements is greater than the other though. It is called Blue and is ruled by Nobles whom humans serve, and whom humans feed their blood in exchange for protection from whatever horrors are out there, outside the walls, in the Red.
Many years after that we have a world ravaged, with new settlements of humans both contaminated, and uncontaminated, living in little settlements, unaware of what was once lost. One of those settlements is greater than the other though. It is called Blue and is ruled by Nobles whom humans serve, and whom humans feed their blood in exchange for protection from whatever horrors are out there, outside the walls, in the Red.
CHARACTERS: There two unrelated characters that tell the story, and I loved it. Julia was the less interesting one to me. She's a young woman whose runaway parents, people who chose to go out and die in the Red, leaving their child an orphan, have sentenced her to forever work as a server, unfit to even feed or attend the Nobles. She has a friend among the girls, one of similar fate. And only due to a chance, due to a missing attendant, Julia is put to serve one of the youngest Nobles of them all, one who is not even able to hide the silver veins in his eyes yet, a natural born Lucas. Lucas is kind, definitely kinder than most, and is treating her well. But him being the youngest means he has absolutely no pull or weight in this world, so once dark plots begin to unwind - he's afraid he might not be able to defend Julia. The second teller is Cameron. He travels Red far and wide, knows most if not all settlements, and is friendly and respectful of people out there. But, of course, he doesn't just wander about: Cam is looking for a long lost friend, a friend who might be an answer to all their troubles. He's looking for the long lost love of their one true King. Instead he finds a handsome woodsman Felix, who seems to have served Silver out here, for they're seemingly everywhere, and knows much too much about them.
ROMANCE: Romance here is very light. Now and again characters kiss and exchange love words, but that's the extent of it. It's just very kind and sweet. Julia, of course, is warming up on Lucas, who is so very kind and dear to her. And Cameron is afraid to even dream of Felix, who has just lost a man he loved by Cam's hand, no less.
GOOD: The books is damn scary at times. Weepers are terrifying, the way they multiply, the way they move, the way they feed. These are not mindless zombies, these are dreadful creatures. And if that wasn't enough, there's great schemes happening in between Blue and Red. Evidence of that are Caravans that leave behind pits with smoldering bones, with seemingly chewed off flesh, and blood spilled all around the territory. The intensity of the story at times has put me on the edge of the chair.
BAD: I feel like at times Rufus purposefully allowed Julia to learn of his plans. I have a bad feeling that I don't know who the real bad guys are here. But... To be honest, that might not be a bad thing.
OVERALL: I really, really loved this book. It was scary, different, and so full of unexpected events. The more I've read, the more I wanted to read. And the more I read, the more two stories, told from different sides of the world, came closer together, intertwined, and became one, seamlessly. Never before have I heard of this author, but I am so happy I know of her now. This is some good stuff.
What do you think about THE GILDED KING?
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