The Plated Prisoner Series

Review of Glow by Raven Kennedy

/ authoramysbrown / Leave a comment

Synopsis:
The Booktok hit: The Plated Prisoner Series continues in book 4. This dark adult fantasy romance is inspired by the myth of King Midas and the gold-touched woman who realizes her true worth.

“I was nothing but a road to Midas. A means to get to where he wanted to go, and I paved that path in gold.”

My life has been made up of gilded lies. But death has been shaped from rot.

Like a phoenix caught fire, I will need to rise from the ashes and learn to wield my own power. Because my wings may have been clipped, but I am not in a cage, and I’m finally free to fly from the frozen kingdoms I’ve been kept in.

Yet the world doesn’t want to let me.

That’s the thing when you turn against a king—everyone else turns against you.

Good thing I have a different king in my corner.

But even with the dark threat of Slade Ravinger, the other monarchs are coming for me.

So I will fight for him and he will kill for me, and if we need to become the villains, then so be it.

Because so long as I live in this world, I won’t be used again.

Please note: This is an adult fantasy series with dark elements that may be triggering, including past emotional and physical trauma, violence, adult language, and explicit romance. Read at your own discretion.

Review:
Firstly, this book was SLOWWWW. 700 pages. And 10 chapters where we learn about the past, and spend so much time wondering about Auren. It did make the book feel like a bit of a drudge at the beginning with a small pacing issue, especially given how long the novel is. I think Kennedy did an admirable job in representing a repressed person and what trauma responses they can have, as well as how hard it is to work back up to being functional both with a disability/part of you taken away as well as not being oppressed anymore.

I very much enjoyed getting to see more of Slade and understand more of how he came to be in Orea as well as why he can be so dark. It was good to see a few more characters having a bit more time to shine, and I definitely enjoyed learning more of Rissa and Polly. It was also quite neat having Argo so close all, as well as those who he is used to; something I can relate to because often times people are scared or nervous around horses.

The spice in this was very well written, detailed, and why I’m also going to be tagging this under “Romance”. Definitely prefer Slade over Midas, that’s for sure!

Book 5 is due out in June, so I’ll probably be rejoining this world around then!

Star rating: ✯✯✯✯

Review of Gild by Raven Kennedy

/ authoramysbrown / Leave a comment

Synopsis:
The fae abandoned this world to us. And the ones with power rule.

Gold.

Gold floors, gold walls, gold furniture, gold clothes. In Highbell, in the castle built into the frozen mountains, everything is made of gold.

Even me.

King Midas rescued me. Dug me out of the slums and placed me on a pedestal. I’m called his precious. His favored. I’m the woman he Gold-Touched to show everyone that I belong to him. To show how powerful he is. He gave me protection, and I gave him my heart. And even though I don’t leave the confines of the palace, I’m safe.

Until war comes to the kingdom and a deal is struck.

Suddenly, my trust is broken. My love is challenged. And I realize that everything I thought I knew about Midas might be wrong.

Because these bars I’m kept in, no matter how gilded, are still just a cage. But the monsters on the other side might make me wish I’d never left.

The myth of King Midas reimagined. This compelling adult fantasy series is as addictive as it is unexpected. With romance, intrigue, and danger, the gilded world of Orea will grip you from the very first page.

Please Note: This book contains explicit content and darker elements, including mature language, violence, and non-consensual sex. It is not intended for anyone under 18 years of age. This is book one in a series.

Review:
I have a myriad of opinions on this one. Firstly, the relationship between Midas and Auren is, for lack of a better term, dysfunctional. We see bits and pieces of their past, but it seems like Auren is both desired and revered, wanted but isolated. There are definite moments where you can see the separation between her and others of similar status, and while at first I was determined to think that Midas was a possessive self-righteous asshole, in some ways further in I began to wonder if this isolation was also done to keep her naïve to the ways of how “saddles” generally work. There is a definitive moment in the book when Auren realizes that there are certain talents and abilities that women in the entertainment industry have for performance and manipulation that she doesn’t know of, understand, and very much lacks. I had anticipated that might be a bigger, more important part of this novel, but perhaps it will come up in the subsequent ones.

Secondly, we have Auren’s predicament. All the saddles dislike her and she’s seem as an oddity, which she is, but everyone wants to see her and finds her fascinating. In many ways, she has nothing that makes her special except her skin, and her position as Midas’ favored. Because of the gaslighting done to Auren, of how safe and protected she is in her cage, she thinks anything and everything that happens if she isn’t in it is ultimately her fault. While I recognize that there may be a bit more backstory that we, the reader, have yet to learn that makes her feel that way, it really makes you dislike Midas as it seems as if that was a thought he put in her head. In some ways Auren could certainly be seen as a Mary Sue, but there are certainly flaws she has that she looks to overcome.

I very much look forward to reading the second book in the series, so much so that I told myself I can only get it if I finish this review first. I recommend it to people who like fairy tale retellings and don’t mind the warnings in the synopsis.

Star rating: ✯✯✯✯