Ratings:
Star Rating: ★★★★★
If This Book Was a Movie Rating: PG-13
Review:
MARISSA MEYER.
QUEEN.
THAT WAS AMAZING AND BEAUTIFUL AND HEARTBREAKING AND PERFECT.
I LOVE THIS BOOK.
I LOVE THIS BOOK WITH EVERY GOLDEN THREAD OF MY BOOKISH SOUL.
PLEASE PLEASE I NEED THE NEXT ONE IMMEDIATAMENTE.
*flops down exhaustedly onto an extra squishy pillow whilst hugging her gorgeous copy of Gilded*
it’s just all too much for me Marissa now i’ll have to explain the plot from this pillow.
LE PLOT.
Serilda is the miller’s daughter, cursed eighteen years ago by the god of lies. Her fantastically magical stories and disturbing black and gold eyes have led Serilda to become an outcast in her village, the bringer of ill fortune. She spends her time as an assistant teacher to the youngest schoolchildren, weaving stories of the magical world. The children’s favorite one is the story about the fae hunt. You see, the veil that hides the mortal realm from the magical one slips every full moon. And every full moon, the Erlking, king of the fae, leads the undead souls on a hunt, one to terrify the mortals and catch the most exotic of beasts.
The children laugh and shiver at her tales, but Serilda knows both the hunt and the Erlking are much more real than their stories might make them appear.
The night of the Snow Moon, the thunder of the hunt is approaching Serilda’s village. When Serilda hears frantic noises from outside, she cautiously cracks open the door to find two moss maidens huddled by her door, granddaughters of the Shrub Grandmother herself. They’re hiding in the shadows to escape the hunt that’s trying to kill them. Serilda hides both maidens in her cellar, and when the Erlking himself arrives on her doorstep, Serilda does what she always does: she tells a story.
A story about how she can spin straw into gold in the dead of night.
At first, Serilda believes she’s saved both the maidens and herself with the story, but the next moon, the Erlking captures her, locking her into a dungeon overflowing with straw. He tells her that she must transform the entire roomful of straw into gold before dawn, or she will be killed for telling falsehoods.
Knowing full well she can’t spin anything into gold, Serilda believes her life is forfeit.
However, when the clock strikes midnight, a mysterious boy appears in the dungeon. He says he can spin every piece of straw into gold.
For a price.
OMIGOSH.
I NEED UN MOMENTO.
just rewriting the plot is giving me chills.
anywaaaays so Gilded is SUCH a beautiful retelling of Rumplestiltskin. Absolute candy. You don’t even need to have a clue about the original fairytale to completely understand what’s going on. OOOOO WAIT
I just remembered something very important.
*picks up megaphone*
GILDED IS COMPLETELY UNRELATED TO THE LUNAR CHRONICLES.
a heck ton of people have asked me about this, and so I feel the need to let you all know this in my proper review: Gilded is a completely different world, has completely different characters, retells a completely different fairy tale, aaaaaand it has faerie magic.
The Lunar Chronicles did not have faerie magic.
In terms of the plot flow, the beginning is kinda slow and rather confusing, but HANG ON because the pacing and the action gets SO MUCH better ;)
The worldbuilding. For a good number of the beginning chapters, THE WORLD (while very aesthetic) MADE NO BLOODY SENSE. For example, the concept of the fae hunt confused me for a solid 130 pages. Then after I finally gave in and posted a status update bemoaning my utter bewilderment, bestie El told me fae hunts are actually a part of fae lore and O MY GOODNESS somehow it being a historical fae concept just made everything click for me.
thank you El <3
Lastly, the writing was absolutely gorgeous. It was pure gold (hehe pun intended). The whole thing really just gave my aesthetic sensibilities pure delight with the lyric-ness of the sentence flow and how they every sentence created such beautifully vivid imagery *chef’s kiss*
CHARACTERS NOW YES.
The supporting characters were all QUALITY.
Surprisingly, there were actually quite a few young child side characters in Gilded. The kids at Marchenfeld were cute, but I have never met a five-year-old that talks in sophisticated sentences and comprehends complex social subtext, so i really wasn’t on board the Marchenfeld-kid train.
HOWEVER, I adore Leyna. She is my fictional firecracker eight-year-old child and such a smartie you go princess <3
For our side characters with a little magic in ‘em, all I’m gonna say is that I really wanna be like Shrub Grandmother when I’m eighty.
nooooo i’m not going to tell you y’all have gotta go read it to find out
Serilda was actually a very solid, enjoyable heroine. She was a tad quick in her decision making (leading her to make more than a couple hastily stupid decisions, but i really couldn’t be bothered because bella swan has permanently scarred me).
Serilda was not the most memorable of heroines a la Jude Durate, but she was strong and creative and ALSO I loved that even though she was spirited off to serve the hot dark fae king, she bloody DIDN’T FALL FOR HIM.
+100 heroine points
now for the hero: I LOVE GILD.
GILD IS THE MOST ADORABLE CINNAMON BUN
AHHHHHHHHH.
I can’t really say much else without spoilers so go read him too. he alone is worth it.
And then TOGETHER !!
I adored both these cinnamon buns. They are PERFECT and PRECIOUS and AHHHHHH IM SHIPPING THEM SO HARD RN.
Now, I feel like someone’s gonna call me out on this, so I’ll just say it up front: they do have a really *cough* quick progression of their relationship. However, it actually doesn’t feel like instalove, mainly because of the month-long gaps between moons (when they get to see each other).
so it was like drawn-out instalove. that i didn’t hate.
idk if that made any sense lol
AND THEN Gild and Serilda are at a very interesting point in that I’ve rarely ever seen depicted in YA fantasy sooo *winks*
no I’m not telling you what that is NO SPOILERS HERE, but like y’know.
ITS THE TYPE OF THING TO MAKE ME FALL APART SHRIEKING BECAUSE IM SO SO SO EXCITED TO SEE WHAT HAPPENS IN CURSED (THE NEXT BOOK COMING OUT IN NOVEMBER 2022.
*muffles fangirl screeches into the pillow so the confuzzled neighbors don’t come knocking*
anyways.
i loved this book sm.
go read it.
i promise you won’t regret it ;)
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