THE GILDED ONES

Okay, we go from a mediocre book to one of the best I've read in a long time. The Gilded Ones is AMAZING. It's YA fantasy and it's better than most out there. 

I'm going to try to set the stage without revealing anything. This book unravels secret after secret as it goes along, so I'm likely going to end up not saying too much. Just read it. It is so good. 

The setting is a world called Otera. There are 4 different regions that mimic Earth. The Northerners are pale, frequently blondes and redheads. One of them speaks with a vaguely Irish accent. Another is named Katya. You get it. The Easterners are basically East Asian, though there is also reference to a mid-Easterner, which is Middle Eastern. The Westerners sound mostly to me like Central and South American Indians. And the Southerners are black. They're ruled by an emperor, whose capital is in the northern part of the Southern area. 

The religion of the book follows a single god called Oyomo. The scriptures are very misogynist. Women come of age at 16 after a special ceremony in which it's determined if they're pure or not. Pure women start wearing masks then. These masks cover from their forehead to under their noses, though they can also cover the entire face. Women are taught to be subservient from birth and the entire society is basically horrible for that. 

But what makes it worse is the purity ritual. The girls are bled. Pure girls have red blood, but some of them bleed...gold. Like literal molten gold. Things are crafted from their blood and it's frequently sold. These girls are viewed as demons and face the Death Mandate. 

So in the Northern town of Irfut, our heroine lives. Deka is the girl on the cover. You can tell by my description of the regions that she doesn't exactly look like a Northerner and naturally the Northerners are incredibly racist. Deka's mother was Southern and her father Northern. But Deka's got bigger problems than racism because she bleeds gold. Thankfully, she is fetched by a woman in the employ of the emperor. He's creating an army of the golden-blooded women to fight the monsters that are preying on the people of Otera.

The golden-blooded, called alaki, are all female. They're stronger and faster than humans. They can be killed, but it isn't easy. Some are more easy to kill, but others can be killed over and over until their method of true death is found. 

Deka journeys from her hometown to the capital in the south, where she begins her training for the emperor's alaki army. As each chapter unfolds, more is learned about the alaki, about the history of the world, and about Deka herself. 

I'm not going to say anything else, because I can't without spoilers. But the world-building here was fantastic. It's a fantasy world, but it's not that different from the real world. There are mystical creatures that sound awesome, but many echo natural or mythical creatures. There's not really magic. A little bit maybe but in a different sense than the ways other fantasy writers use magic. That was one of the high points of the book to me. The magical aspects are unique. 

I do want to warn you though that this is not an easy book to read. There's torture, a lot of violence, girls with PTSD, off-screen rape, and loads of sexism. It's not gory but it doesn't pull its punches either.

I give this the highest possible recommendation if you like fantasy YA. I hope she's working on a sequel right now!