Emily Victoria

Flee across the sun-and-shadow islands of Eratia, where runes have the power to unleash monsters... Seven years ago, Karis was forced to become an acolyte for the Scriptorium, the rune scholars who rule Eratia. For centuries, these Scriptmasters have sought the key to reanimating the country's fearsome automaton army, and anyone they deem unable to help them achieve their goal is sent away...including Karis's brother, Matthias. Then Karis discovers a unique human-sized automaton and unintentionally wakes him up. Intelligent, with a conscience of his own, Alix has no idea why he was created. Or why his father--Eratia's greatest traitor--once tried to destroy the automatons. Upon learning Matthias is being held by the Scriptorium's sinister leader, Alix and Karis set out to rescue him and uncover the truth about Alix's past. But when Karis is faced with an unthinkable choice, betraying everyone she cares about may be her only desperate chance to save their world.

This Golden Flame

Victoria Sutton

You forget things when you're locked in one little place for too long. You forget how dangerous the world is outside its walls. Like a wild bird that's been handled too much. 

Chloé

i enjoyed this, but i dont think this is a spoiler but, i was sold this with its a greco-roman world with ai so when there was pirates i was just confused. even tho i enjoyed it i just kept saying "WHY ARE THERE PIRATES THO".

An Ember in the Ashes meets Mask of Shadows in Emily Victoria's #ownvoices debut YA fantasy, an epic adventure full of magic, rebellion, and finding where you truly belong. Orphaned and forced to serve her country's ruling group of scribes, Karis wants nothing more than to find her brother, long ago shipped away. But family bonds don't matter to the Scriptorium, whose sole focus is unlocking the magic of an ancient automaton army. In her search for her brother, Karis does the seemingly impossible: she awakens a hidden automaton. Intelligent, with a conscience of his own, Alix has no idea why he was made. Or why his father - their nation's greatest traitor - once tried to destroy the automatons. Suddenly, the Scriptorium isn't just trying to control Karis; it's hunting her. Together with Alix, Karis must find her brother . . . and the secret that's held her country in its power for centuries.

Giulia Pianta

2021 ‘tis the damn season readathon
  

Album: Fearless
Prompt: Read a book that you are intimidated by

After envying people for years, I finally got my first Fairyloot box. The gadgets were absolutely beautiful, and this book was inside the box as well. I thought that the plot sounded interesting, so I was very excited to find out more.
But I am so sad to say this just wasn’t it.


  The world

The world really feels extremely underdeveloped. The story opens up on an island and the main character is moving around in a place, but it is never described. 
And what are the Scriptorians? What is their function? We are just not told. I imagine they study the runes, but since they are so focused on the automatons, which are asleep, what do they actually do? We get to see Karis climbing on the automaton in the very first chapters while the rest of the people there are watching, but it’s never explained why she had to climb in the first place.

What is the world outside? We are told Matthias is somewhere at someone's Library and Karis is all shocked while we are ??? so confused because we have no idea who this guy that owns the Library is, what his role is in society and why he is important. We then find out that the Library is a prison. And just… why is it called Library then, and why didn’t you tell us immediately what this is?

Then we are told this country has islands and we have a map, but like what are the islands? How are they organised? How are the countries nearby? How was the war? Just, tell me more about it. This is not our world that we don’t need an explanation for because we just know it, this is a fantasy world and we need an idea so we can understand how it works and the reasons behind the characters’ choices and actions. I am not asking for an info-dump in the very first chapters, but give me something because I knew this country has islands just from the map as we are never really even told that.

Also, what were the automatons doing? Karis says they have limbs made to destroy, but did they? Who controlled them? We are not told where they came from, if they were roaming about on their own or if someone made and controlled them and what they were used for. And also, what do they look like?

Not sure how the Script works. You write in a book and things happen? Like you write a rune for “mend” on a book and the sail mends??? It’s never explained! And also how does Alix work with the runes? We only know he hears music, but how does he mend the sail too? Just by listening??? Tell meee

So for me the worldbuilding was not really there as the world was not built at all. I feel that many times we were hinted at some information, like I guess that the automatons were used as defense, but never is that clearly stated and the readers are not meant to do all the guesswork. Just tell me what the Great Lapse is instead of having me making up what it might have been.



  The dialogues

The dialogues are also not good. When Karis wakes up Alix in the very first chapters, they talk very little, but suddenly their relationship is very developed and they trust each other immediately. We are able to read their thoughts and know what they felt and thought, but they can’t read each other's mind, so it makes no sense that they are so close already based on their dialogue alone. This is a thing that annoys me, I would much rather they had a longer dialogue where they get to know each other better. Let’s say Alix is wondering why Karis gave him her tome back when he was taught that would never happen and the Scripts are all bad. Why doesn’t he say this? He is thinking about it but not expressing it, but I don’t understand why. Let him say all that and have Karis reply by explaining to him the reason why she did that, instead of showing us her thoughts only. Like, we get so much of their thoughts because they think and ponder and wonder and guess and imagine, but they are mute. And this doesn’t advance the plot, it’s annoying and not realistic.


The characters’ internal monologues are often wrong as well. Like, Karis says the world hasn’t taught her to trust people now or in the past but...there is no instance of betrayal in her past? Like, by the way she talks it seems she has been soooo betrayed and stung in the past, but she hasn’t. She was separated by her brother by people she already knew weren’t good, so her distrust of literally anyone is unmotivated.
This is just one example but much of the book is like this.



  The characters

Karis was not a character I particularly liked. She doesn’t do anything blatantly stupid, but she’s not interesting either, and I didn’t care much for her.
I think her personality was not done well, as she goes on and on about how she doesn’t care for people AT ALL but she cares so much for Dane, and immediately adores Alix like girl what are you talking about? That’s how you don’t care for people?

There is also another thing that annoyed me about her that was quite evident when she meets a woman that is risking her life to take down the magistrate, and suddenly Karis distrusts her because years ago she had worked for the magistrate for like a month before turning against him. You fool, why? Why would you hate her like that when there is no reason to?

And this happened throughout the book very often, someone is so obviously not affiliated with the Scriptorium anymore, and still Karis, or the others, immediately doesn’t trust them even if there is absolutely no reason.

As for Dane, his only personality is “soldier”. Everything about him is soldier, and every time he is mentioned, there must be something about how he is a soldier inside and must miss it, and he isn’t a soldier anymore and now has to fight other soldiers who are what he once was so he must feel bad OK WE GET IT.

Alix and the pirates were ok. And also the representation, as Karis is asexual. I am not asexual myself and I have never read a book written recently with such a character, so I am not the best judge, but I think this was just ok. There were a few things she said to describe herself that were so obviously taken from social media and didn’t feel natural thoughts she might have, but I guess it was not in a bad way and a wobbly representation may be better than none.

I am sad that I didn’t like this. It did read quickly and I was not completely bored, but I think it had a great potential and could have been very enjoyable if only done a bit better and if the world was described.

Jennifer

A quick and adventurous read with ancient Greek-inspired worldbuilding and a diverse cast of LGBT+ characters. Conceptually This Golden Flame reminds me of Nina Varela's Crier's War that the main relationship involves a human and a robot (where there are chapters written from their narratives). In Emily Victoria's debut, the story is told in alternating narratives between Karis and Alix. Reading their narratives had me thinking what makes us human as well as the fact we're so much more than the role the society imposed upon us. I think this kind of messaging is so potent to readers because of the fact many of us are pressured to fit into certain societal expectations against our will.

I think the book holds a lot of potentials for a great novel, but unfortunately there are glaring technical shortcomings in This Golden Flame. This book suffers from numerous pitfalls commonly seen in YA books. For example: tropes and predictable (and too good to be true) plots. As well as technical issues e.g. rushed writing, sketchy worldbuilding, and problems with pacing. So while I liked the concepts and the two main characters, I didn't think the other aspects of the novel did them justice. In the end, I was left with a lot of unanswered questions about what goes on with the side characters and unexplored bits mentioned in the worldbuilding.

To summarise, I found This Golden Flame quite fun to read & enjoyed the LGBT+ representation but I ended up rounding down my rating to 2-stars due to the major technical shortcomings in the writing.

N.B. This book contains following trigger warnings: weapons and violence - but both are not frequently mentioned so this is suitable for younger readers.

(2.5 stars out of 5)

Story Eater

Reminiscent of Breath of the Wild and The Day the Earth Stood Still, This Golden Flame started out amazing and fizzled into mediocre for me.

The world-building in TGF is simple and complicated at the same time; tons of disabled automatons litter the entire world, no longer alive or powered, and an organization of scholars from the Scriptorium seek to reactivate them in order to gain…world domination? Much like the deactivated Guardians in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, they once served a purpose of benignity but were twisted by sinister people and used as weapons.

Enter a humanoid automaton: Alix. After being stuck in a cave for 200 years, he is discovered by our heroine, Karis, when she is performing work as a slave for the Scriptorium. She then uses him to escape slavery from the Scriptorium and find her brother, whom the Scriptorium separated from her when she was a small child. 

Enter the reasons this is a 3-star book for me: pirates. Sailors on a ship. Whatever. Hate pirate/ship stuff. Hate it. Additionally, the general unlikelihood of the encounter adds a bit of too convenient to the narrative. I also cannot believe how the gang of protagonists manages to solve something in the span of 2-3 weeks in the story that 200 years’ of scholars could not. It’s a bit far-fetched, even for a fantasy novel. 

The redeeming quality of this book was Alix. Anything about him was fascinating. I really wish the book focused more on him and the aspects of humanity involved with artificial intelligence. Unfortunately, despite this aspect, it was a genuine slog of a read to get through for me and made me avoid reading altogether for as long as I was reading it. 

My thanks to NetGalley for the ARC, for which I give my own opinion.

Luna

i feel like the first 2/3 of this and last 1/3 of this were 2 completely different books but … i still want more. i loved the wholesome ya fantasy (that’s also very clean and def suitable for young adults & preteens) vibes of the majority of the book with the most amazing characters and atmosphere, but there were still a couple of things that i didn’t 100% love. i thought the ace rep (and maybe aro depending on what the author’s said) was absolutely stunning, as was the adorable m/m relationship, as was the intro of the nonbinary character buuuut they were randomly misgendered in alix’s narration and it was just? weird. i spent the whole book thinking about it and i think it was just a mistake on the author’s or editor’s part because it was corrected later but didn’t have any impact on the characters at the time, but i still think it should be pointed out for anyone reading this. 

that one word was the only thing i didn’t love in the first 200ish pages but man the last part was angsty. i personally wasn’t a fan of that and i only think it worked out and didn’t ruin the book because the angst was more about friendship than romance but it still made me feel very weird. i totally wanted this to be a series until all of that went down but now i’m not sure if i want to see more of these particular characters, but i def want to see more from this author.

Paige Green

Disclaimer: I received this e-arc from the publisher. Thanks! All opinions are my own.

Book: This Golden Flame

Author: Emily Victoria

Book Series: Standalone

Rating: 4/5

Recommended For...: sci-fi readers, fantasy readers, ya readers

Publication Date: February 2, 2021

Genre: YA Fantasy

Recommended Age: 15+ (slight violence and gore, death)

Publisher: Inkyard Press

Pages: 384

Synopsis: Orphaned and forced to serve her country’s ruling group of scribes, Karis wants nothing more than to find her brother, long ago shipped away. But family bonds don’t matter to the Scriptorium, whose sole focus is unlocking the magic of an ancient automaton army.

In her search for her brother, Karis does the seemingly impossible—she awakens a hidden automaton. Intelligent, with a conscience of his own, Alix has no idea why he was made. Or why his father—their nation’s greatest traitor—once tried to destroy the automatons.

Suddenly, the Scriptorium isn’t just trying to control Karis; it’s hunting her. Together with Alix, Karis must find her brother…and the secret that’s held her country in its power for centuries.

Review: Overall, I really liked this book. I do want to remark that the book was really good. The book is diverse, having aro/ace characters, gay, and other lgbt+ characters and also showing and writing disabled characters. I really liked how the story flowed and for a debut novel this was really well done. The characters were well developed and, from what I could tell, wrote with care in who they are. The world building was also well done.

However, I did have issues connecting to some of the characters, specifically Zara, and the pacing in some places was really too slow for my liking.

Verdict: It’s pretty good!

Samantha Bass

One of the first things I found that I liked about this book was that the main character, Karis, is asexual. I think the thing I liked the most about it was that it wasn't made as some "big deal". Sometimes, ace rep is used as a comparison to what the author would call "normal" feelings/attraction, which always made me so angry. But that's not done in this book. Karis mentions she doesn't have those romantic or sexual feelings towards others and that's that. It's not a pressing issue, it just is. And I love that. 

Next thing I found myself in love with was the dual POVs. Karis is the exact opposite from Alix, personality wise. Where Alix is more shy and reserved, Karis is more of an in your face kind of person. She's willing to stand up for what she believes in, especially concerning the people she loves, and she's willing to take a risk to get what she wants. Their dichotomy made the back and forth so much more fun. It was great to switch POVs and see what the other person is thinking or feeling in the same situation. And while this leads me to intense feelings in certain moments, I found that I loved every chapter, even during moments that I hated. 

And with each chapter I read, I loved the book more. I think the background of this world is so cool. The way that automatons, which used to be robots controlled with magic, are now just giant statues, is so interesting. It was so weird that basically no one knew what happened to them and that goal of working to get them up and running again made me anxious. I couldn't imagine wanting to have giant robots running around at my beck and call. It gave me vibes of The Iron Giant, but less destructive. And even though Alix is an automaton himself, he feels so human compared to the other machine, and maybe that's why I liked his character so much.

Along with the world, I loved the plot too. How the book progressed was so seamless and clean that no matter where I stopped I was dying to read more. I had to know what was going to happen next, it was so difficult to find a place to stop. Which is why I took as few breaks as I possibly could. By the end, I was so sad to find there were no more pages to read, and it took me a little while to gather my thoughts. 

Overall, I loved this story. I loved the two storylines converging into one without overshadowing the other. I loved the characters, especially Alix, and the fact that most of them were well fleshed out. And most of all, I loved the feeling of "I can't get enough of this" as I read. This was a great book and I'm excited to read more from this author!

Megan Leprich

*Thanks to Inkyard Press and NetGalley for the complimentary copy for my honest review*

My main complaint about this book is that everything that happens in the book is in the synopsis. Normally I don't have to worry about that except for in thrillers but the synopsis gave pretty much everything away so reading it wasn't exactly exciting for me. It was well-structured for a standalone but I feel like it lacked a lot and was too simple of a book for me, especially for the fantasy genre.

Leah Butler

This Golden Flame follows the story of Karis, a rune acolyte for the Scriptorium, on her journey to rescue her brother Matthias, who was taken away seven years ago. When she accidentally awakens Alix, a human sized automaton with a conscience of his own, the Scriptorium begins to hunt them both down. Together, Karis and Alix go on the run to escape the Scriptorium and find Karis’s brother.

I loved reading this novel, with its captivating world and rune magic, I couldn’t put it down! I loved reading about Karis and her efforts to rescue her brother from the hands of the Scriptorium. I also liked the changes of pov throughout the story, we get to see the world from Alix’s pov and I found him to be a very interesting character.

This book is a standalone, and a part of me wishes it had been made a duology as it was a little fast-paced at times and I feel like the characters could have had more time to develop. But as a debut book from this author, it was still a very interesting read.

This Golden Flame

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