Tag Archives: Slavery

Gilded Cage (Dark Gifts #1) ~ By Vic James – 4.0 Stars

27 Tuesday Dec 2016

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Thanks to NetGalley and Del Rey Books for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Release Date: February 14th, 2016

368 Pages

Not all are free. Not all are equal. Not all will be saved.

Synopsis: Our world belongs to the Equals–aristocrats with magical gifts–and all commoners must serve them for ten years. But behind the gates of England’s grandest estate lies a power that could break the world.

A girl thirsts for love and knowledge.

Abi is a servant to England’s most powerful family, but her spirit is free. So when she falls for one of the noble-born sons, Abi faces a terrible choice. Uncovering the family’s secrets might win her liberty, but will her heart pay the price?

A boy dreams of revolution.

Abi’s brother, Luke, is enslaved in a brutal factory town. Far from his his family and cruelly oppressed, he makes friends whose ideas could cost him everything. Now Luke has discovered there may be a power even greater than magic: revolution.

And an aristocrat will remake the world with his dark gifts.

He is a shadow in the glittering world of the Equals, with mysterious powers no one else understands. But will he liberate–or destroy?

Gilded Cage has had a lot of buzz surrounding it for several months now and I’m glad to say that after reading it, I’m a fan. The setting is contemporary Great Britain in an alternate universe. The country is ruled over by the “Skilled” ruling class who have a variety of magical powers. The “un-skilled” are required at some point in their lives (they choose) to serve ten years as slaves. Abi, the oldest sister of the Hadley family has arranged for their entire family to serve out their slavedays together on the gorgeous Kyneston estate which is home to the most powerful family in the country. Naturally though, things go awry and sixteen-year-old Luke is separated from his family and sent to the dangerous slave town of Millmoor. The characters in this are incredibly complex which is the main reason why this novel succeeds at the level that it does. The story is told in the third person by Luke and Abi in alternating chapters. They’re everything you want to see in your protagonists: courageous, clever, and good-hearted. They can both be a little naive and gullible when it comes to trusting others, but this just makes them even more likable. There is quite the motley crew of secondary characters. There are some truly black-hearted villains with absolutely no redeeming qualities whatsoever, and the narrative pulls no punches exploring the depths of their depravity. But there are others whose personalities and motivations are much harder to figure out, and they keep you guessing right up until the end. The world-building is beautifully done. The opening chapter gives you the sense of a thoroughly modern day Britain, with Luke and Abi out studying in their yard. But then you’re suddenly yanked into this fantasy/dystopian world. I especially liked how this book referenced the UKs international dealings with other governments, some who function under the same social system and some who don’t. And then there’s all the political wheeling and dealing and backstabbing going on behind the scenes. It’s made me very curious as to how this will all play out in the next two books. There are just three things that kept this from being a perfect read for me. First, except for two black secondary characters, there’s a distinct lack of diversity which really surprised me especially since the story is about oppression. The second issue I had was with the slavedays themselves. People have the choice as to when to serve their ten years, so why don’t more choose to wait until they’re in their later years? I’ll be honest and admit to being a total procrastinator, but it makes more sense in putting off giving up ten years of your life until the last possible moment. I mean, by then, you might be dead anyway. But, I realized early on in the book that I needed to just let this go, and the rest of the story is enjoyable enough that I was able to do so. And finally, there’s the awful sort of romance between Abi and Jenner, the middle son of the “Equal” family that owns her family. Abi is an otherwise feisty, independent and intelligent girl yet the way she moons over a boy who quite literally owns her is just ridiculous. Thankfully this subplot is a relatively minor one which is a good thing because it had me grinding my teeth. The plot is fast-paced right up until it’s cliffhanger ending, even with all the complicated world-building going on, and I finished this in two days. Overall, Gilded Cage is a captivating read and an intriguing and imaginative addition to the fantasy and dystopian genres which should appeal to older teens and adults alike.

Lost Girls ~ By Merrie Destefano – 4.5 Stars

14 Wednesday Dec 2016

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Thanks to NetGalley and Entangled Teen for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Release Date: January 3rd, 2017

360 Pages

Synopsis: Yesterday, Rachel went to sleep listening to Taylor Swift, curled up in her grammy’s quilt, worrying about geometry. Today, she woke up in a ditch, bloodied, bruised, and missing a year of her life. 

She doesn’t recognize the person she’s become: she’s popular. She wears nothing but black.

Black to cover the blood.

And she can fight.

Tell no one.

She’s not the only girl to go missing within the last year…but she’s the only girl to come back. She desperately wants to unravel what happened to her, to try and recover the rest of the Lost Girls.

But the more she discovers, the more her memories return. And as much as her new life scares her, it calls to her. Seductively. The good girl gone bad, sex, drugs, and raves, and something darker…something she still craves–the rush of the fight, the thrill of the win–something she can’t resist, that might still get her killed…

The only rule is: There are no rules.

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Lost Girls is being hyped as a cross between Black Swan and Fight Club, and while such comparisons often irk me, in this case it’s entirely on the mark. Even more, the story is actually better than what the intriguing premise suggests. I started reading this around 7:00 last night and couldn’t put it down until I had reached the end in the wee hours of the morning! The story begins with a dirty, bloody, and battered Rachel pulling herself out of a roadside ditch and basically throwing herself in front of passing motorists to get them to stop. It’s the type of opening that immediately grabs you, and from there the pace never slows down. Rachel is one of the most intriguing characters I’ve read this year. She has a powerhouse of a personality and I became completely invested in finding out what happened to her. The romance between her and Dylan is not your typical one which made me like it even more. I also loved her interactions with her close knit family, especially her younger brother and her Navy Seal father. Which brings me to my only slight criticism. Rachel’s mom is a nurse, and her father a war hero who’s seen plenty of combat, yet once the mystery of what Rachel’s been doing the past year is fully revealed, I found it a little hard to accept that her loving parents didn’t know or at least suspect what was happening. But this is a very small complaint in what is otherwise an outstanding novel. The imagery is incredibly detailed from that first scene to the very last. More than once I felt as though I was in the story experiencing everything the characters were. There’s a lot of themes at play here: amnesia, PTSD, slavery, drug abuse, etc. but it’s all combined into the mesmerizing storyline in a completely believable way. Technically Lost Girls is a YA book, but honestly, it could easily pass as one for adults and it’s one I highly recommend!