Book Review: Gilded Cage by Vic James

Gilded Cage
Author: Vic James
Publisher: Pan Macmillan Australia
Pages: 405 pages
Publication date: 1 February 2017
R.R.P: $16.99
Not all will be saved.
One glorious summer, Luke's family is torn apart. He's expecting nothing more sinister than exams, while his sister Abi anticipates university. But they'll be seperate to do their slavedays- a decade of labour demanded by law, enforced by a magically-skilled aristocracy. 

Like will dream of rebellion in a barbaric factory town. Abi will navigate the malice of a high-born estate, and find an unlikely love. But the siblings must choose sides as Britan moves from anger to defiance. They'll become entangled in acts of savagery and magic, as nobles view for power. No one is safe and none I'll emerge unscathed. Is there a better way- or will a dangerous young aristocrat remake the world with his dark gifts?

My review
Thoughts on the book: I recieved a beautiful ARC copy of Gilded Cage from Pan Macmillan to review back at the start of the year. I hadn't heard too much about it but upon opening the cover and reading the expert and the other information I was intrigued to learn more. They had a few dot points inside the cover and it was here I learnt that Gilded Cage was one of Pan Macmillan's most exciting 2016 debuts and that over 1/3 million readers has discovered the early first draft (entitled Slavedays at the time) on Wattpad.com. Of course reading all this I pushed the book high up on my overflowing TBR pile and shortly started it. Well in a way I kind of wish I didn't push it to the top of the TBR pile. 

I started off Gilded Cage eagerly anticipating this amazing storyline that I was going to absolutely love and three days later I was still struggling to even make it to page 50 (my ARC only had 293 pages). I struggled on until I had been attempting to read it for a week and then I had to sit it aside because my TBR pile was even more out of control and I needed to take a step back and try another book and then come back and see if that would help. After reading a few books I finally came back to the Guilded Cage and I did eventually complete reading it but as I have mentioned I really struggled.

Why did I struggle you may be asking? I really can't tell you why. I thought the plot line was very interesting and something I hadn't really read much about before and that the characters could have been brilliant but they just didn't work for me. Also there were that many different POV's that quite often I was getting mixed up with who was who not to mention the fact that all the different characters were at different places which sometimes made it hard to figure out why you had suddenly jumped into a different place with different people. Overall the book was very confusing but towards the end I think it picked up a little (which is why my rating is not too low) and I would like to see if the author can redeem himself with book 2. 

Rating: 3/5




Comments