The Gilded Cage Book Review

 

From Goodreads: Kiva Meridan is a survivor.

She survived not only Zalindov prison, but also the deadly Trial by Ordeal. Now Kiva’s purpose goes beyond survival to vengeance. For the past ten years, her only goal was to reunite with her family and destroy the people responsible for ruining their lives. But now that she has escaped Zalindov, her mission has become more complicated than ever.

As Kiva settles into her new life in the capital, she discovers she wasn’t the only one who suffered while she was in Zalindov—her siblings and their beliefs have changed too. Soon it’s not just her enemies she’s keeping secrets from, but her own family as well.

Outside the city walls, tensions are brewing from the rebels, along with whispers of a growing threat from the northern kingdoms. Kiva’s allegiances are more important than ever, but she’s beginning to question where they truly lie. To survive this time, she’ll have to navigate a complicated web of lies before both sides of the battle turn against her and she loses everything. 

CWs for mentions of sexual assault, mentions of death of parents, drug addiction, abduction, mentions of self harm and suicide, abuse from parents, forced drug use, PTSD (main character and others). There are possibly some others too, so please be aware going into this book!

Thanks to Netgalley and Hodder and Stoughton for sending me a copy of this book to review! Please note that this review will be spoiler free for The Gilded Cage, but will include spoilers for the first novel, The Prison Healer.

I wasn’t sure how I’d feel about The Gilded Cage, given my rather mixed feelings about the first novel. But I knew that I found it compelling enough that I was curious to give it another go with book two in the series. And it was actually something of a pleasant surprise. Part of the cause for concern that I had with twist ending of The Poison Healer, where it was revealed that the main character, Kiva, was actually the Rebel Queen’s daughter, meaning that she has what appears to be a legitimate claim on the throne. I wasn’t entirely expecting this twist and it did change things up, but at the same time it did feel like it was starting to tread a little too far along the Throne of Glass path, especially since the main character has a lot of personality traits that remind me of Aelin.

So it was kinda nice to see this book divert so much from what I expected it to be. It was quite character-driven, with some plot here and there, so if you were expecting a lot to happen in this book, you might want to reassess your expectations going in. Kiva struggles a lot with her sense of self in this one, and grapples with her family’s demands and her own feelings for Jaren. I think what was especially nice is that the novel goes against the trend of tyrannical royals in this one and makes the royal family much more layered and complex. I think it also did a really cool job of making the reader try and think about some of the harsher realities of rebellions. In so many novels I’ve read, the main character is part of a rebellion, but because the royal family is tyrannical and they and their rebel friends are good, the rebellion generally goes pretty well, there are as few casualties as you can expect there to be with these sorts of things, and everyone secretly supports them and their cause because they are the better option. The Gilded Cage plays with this idea a lot more and shows some of the uglier aspects of rebellions, as well as asking if there is even a good cause for this one.

Which does also bring me to my main gripe with this novel. While I liked seeing Kiva’s character arc and her growth throughout the book as she makes her choices and deals with the consequences of them, I did think that she lost a lot of the charm that she exhibited in the first novel. In The Prison Healer, Kiva was kind and brave and just wanted to help people, often at the expense of herself. And while the reveal at the end of the book obviously means some of her character was a performance (and trust me, I have a lot of feelings about this, since it was written in first person), it feels like she becomes a lot less interesting in this second novel? In fact, I found her increasingly annoying at times. She sort of started to remind me more of Alina in the Shadow and Bone books– pretty passive and easily swayed by others. Her decision could have easily been made pretty early on in the book, especially given that she has been in prison for ten years and so her stakes in what’s going on in the world around her are not particularly high, but she drags out this will-she-or-won’t-she thing for the majority of the book, and it’s pretty infuriating. It also just made the main character seem less intelligent as a whole, because she kept dithering on a choice that really shouldn’t have been difficult to make.

I will say that I did end up liking Jaren more in this one than I did in The Prison Healer. Again, that’s in part because he does some things in the previous book that I think the author meant to be romantic, but actually was a bit iffy in terms of consent. In this one, there is one moment where I winced a bit at his timing, but at least it seemed consensual and he didn’t overstep. He also does just get a bit more backstory and things to do, so I appreciated that. The other main characters do take a backseat in this novel, which I didn’t really like, because I thought Kiva’s friendship with Naari and Tipp were good, and helped to make her a more sympathetic character in the process, but they get sort of sidelined in this book, Naari especially. I really hope both of them have more presence in book three, because it would be a shame to lose them.

Again, while I think the book goes in a refreshing direction away from the SJM plots, I do think the writing and tension and things in the series is pretty similar to her work, so I imagine people who really love SJM’s writing will appreciate this one. The twist at the end is also something that I imagine will keep people hooked to the series. Even though I found this book pretty annoying in some places, it was a quick read and I still want to know how the whole thing ends, because right now certain aspects of the plot seem unfixable and I just want to know how it resolves!

Overall, I’m giving The Gilded Cage:

 

 

 

 

 

I thought the ending was interesting, and there were some refreshing aspects to the novel which made it different to a lot of other YA novels I’ve read recently. However, the lack of the two main side characters disappointed me, and I felt like Kiva really changed for the worst in this one, becoming more passive and generally just a bit less intelligent with her decisions, and the plot dragged on for no real reason. So it was a little hit and miss for me, but I will still be picking up book three to see how things get resolved!

What kind of books do you prefer reading- books which are character driven, or books which are plot driven? Let me know in the comment section down below!