Tome Thursday: Gilded Rose

 

Hello everyone!

 

I'm finally back.

 

Well, it's a relative term, as I'm still working to get rid of the rather persistent cough that's currently trying to keep my life absolutely miserable, but I at least don't feel like I need to sleep all the time and do nothing else anymore.

 

That said, it's time to get right down to business.

 

And what better way than with a book that stole my heart just before the seasonal cold did?

 

I swear I occasionally trip and fall face-first into a book collection from an author that I ought to have known long before this, but only discovered now, and end up loving them to bits.

 

Emma Hamm is an author like that, and I'm DEFINITELY reading just about anything and everything of hers I can get my grubby little hands on ASAP.

 

For tonight, though, I'm focusing on just the one book, which is a re-telling, conveniently enough.

 

Let's looks at Gilded Rose.

 

I'll have some links to similar blog posts down at the bottom of this page, as per usual.

 

Gilded Rose is a Beauty and the Beast re-telling, and it's absolutely beautiful.

 

Amicia lives in a world where beasts called the Dread tend to hunt down humans to change them into the same type of beast as they themselves are, and our story opens when her home town gets attacked, her father unfortunately doesn't make it, and she puts the entire thing to the torch with a system he'd built in (as tinkerer and resident genius) so that, you know, even she has nowhere to go back to.

 

Then, as she's running away from the Dread, she ends up at a magnificent castle she'd never known existed, which turns out to be the HQ for these Dread and their King, the head honcho who's turning every single human into one of his minions, so she hides in secret passageways within the walls for as long as she can.

 

Until she discovers an ancient coffin in the dungeons, with the most beautiful man she's ever seen inside, touches him, and let's the King know exactly where she is.

 

For her efforts, he yeets her off the castle parapet, then she wakes up in the kitchens where the dread who was first kind to her by giving her food is patching her back together.

 

Why, you ask?

 

Because the King said so.

 

Listen, nobody ever said the road was going to be easy to walk.

 

Amicia slowly heals, and as she does so, she also slowly finds her place among the dread, who have to leave her alone by order of their King, who is also rather intrigued by this human girl. See, the longer he hangs out around her, the more he remembers, and the less monstrous he is, as if her presence alone - and her humanity - could be enough to break the curse that was set upon him.

 

As he unfortunately can't talk about that, Amicia has to figure out all on her own that something's not right in this whole affair, and once she's in possession of a magical book that'll only let her read a few pages at a time, well, then she can REALLY get to work.

 

... this includes but is not limited to reading in the library right next to the King, or having him wrap her up within his wings while she's out reading in the middle of the snowy castle grounds, so she doesn't catch a cold.

 

She learns that the Dread weren't always so - and that the King's curse is actually more horrible than she'd initially thought. 

 

See, rather than a beast turning others into someone like him on compulsion, because he'd made a deal with this group called the Alchemists, he's one of the Celestials, a powerful race of beings who'd come to Earth to help the people and guide them, but something happened along the way that corrupted these beautiful and just creatures.

 

When Vivienne shows up, apparently the King's intended from before they became dread and the only one who seems to have a much better memory of anything and everything, Amicia's pretty sure that something is MUCH more rotten in the land of Dread than she first thought.

 

The longer Alexandre - the King, by the by - spends with Vivienne, the more monstrous he again becomes and the less he remembers. The longer he spends with Amicia, the process is reversed.

 

And when the Alchemists visit, and they're a creepy group who have skulls instead of actual faces and use blood magic to twist everything inside and out, and a ball is thrown to celebrate (listen, don't ask me why, it's just what happens), things go from bad to worse.

 

At this point, the book reveals that the only way to end the curse is to kill the King, and Amicia has, by now, fallen in love with Alexandre so she can't bring herself to do it, which basically means she's failed in her mission. Alexandre sends her from the castle, and she ends up in a small hut by the river in the forest where her father's ghost comes a-visiting, and they re-examine everything together.

 

During which moment, it tuns out, the Alchemists have been driving everything, twisting reality, and even bending it to the point of making her believe something that's not true at all, giving her the dagger, and having her misunderstand what Alexandre was saying (he was, in fact, begging her to stay with him, no matter how hard it was going to get, because together they could get through it all).

 

Being the fighter that she is, Amicia returns to the castle to see that Alexandre is almost fully under the Alchemists' spell now, more horrible and powerful than before, and Vivienne attempts to stop the pesky little human, because as it turns out, SHE was the one who initially brought the Alchemists over the sea to the kingdom, seeking more power and trying to make Alexandre more powerful in the process too, drunk on the notion that she was.

 

More by accident than design, Amicia plants that dagger in Vivienne and goes to kneel before the monster on the throne, looking up fearlessly and full of love because she knows the real Alexandre is in there and can still be reached, no matter what the Alchemists say.

 

Because she'd seen him. The coffin with the body? That's him, what's left of him, his soul having been trapped under the Alchemists' yoke, but Amicia's love frees him for good, and he expels the foul sorcerers out of his kingdom

 

Then as a reward - as if his life isn't enough - he brings Amicia to the Celestials' city high up in the clouds, telling her that there used to be so many more, but the humans feared them, and battled them, and eventually they were overwhelmed and fell. Those who remained swore a pact never to communicate again, becoming leaders of kingdoms to guide and nurture them towards enlightenment, but the darkness from across the sea has apparently swept through the land.

 

They're unfortunately forbidden from interfering with the rest but, knowing Amicia and how tenacious she is, I'm sure this isn't the last we've seen of her and Alexandre, but it's where we leave them, wrapped up in their love and on the road to mending their kingdom together.

 

Magnificent. Beautiful. Sublime.

I think I've found my new favourite fantasy genre author. Alexandre and Amicia are just *chefs kiss*

I knew Vivienne was bad news from the start. I love being right! Ha.

I still want to know who the dark haired woman who died was, but equally I can't wait to read the next book and see another heroine beat the crud out of these creepy Alchemists.

100/10 recommend! And also, yes, I do believe I still like the Beast more when he's an actual beast rather than a man. LOL.

 

xx

*image not mine

 

Song of the Abyss - Gift of Light - Of Roses and Rituals - Bellamy and the Brute - ACOTAR