With what seems like a bottomless pit of supernatural fiction now littering bookstore shelves, it’s rare to find a novel that doesn’t focus on the done-to-death romance between a human and the new, mysterious town stranger who happens to be a ridiculously attractive vampire/werewolf/witch/alien. One of the many reasons The Golden Lily so appealing is that we’re dealing with a romance between two supernatural characters yet there’s still ample amounts of power play, lingering stares, fear and of course, tension.
The Golden Lily is the second installment in the Bloodlines series which is a spin-off of Richelle Mead’s Vampire Academy series. Set in the fantastical world of “good” (Moroi) and “bad” (Strigoi) vampires, The Golden Lily also delves further into the mysterious, secret world of the Alchemists – a group whose work is to maintain the secret of vampirism from the blissfully ignorant human population.
The novel follows the undercover mission established in the first novel to keep Jill Dragomir in hiding. Her protection cannot be understated as her half-sister Lissa, the Moroi Queen, can only keep her title if she has at least one living relative. Sydney Sage – the protagonist – is the young Alchemist sent to oversee the mission and despite Alchemists being indoctrinated to be repelled or at minimum, feel uncomfortable around vampires, begins to question her beliefs and her place in the Alchemist world.
Sage is a generally likeable character if you ignore the constant quips and comments about her weight insecurities. In comparison to the ultra lithe Moroi, our Alchemist is constantly watching her calories and fighting a war against sugar which wouldn’t be a bone to pick if it weren’t a topic of conversation during every meal scene. Kudos to her unrelenting no-sugar rule but would it kill an author to have a protagonist that wasn’t a size 4?
And then we come to the other half of what the fangirls call the OTP (One True Pairing), Adrian Ivashkov. Think Chuck Bass but more disheveled, slightly insane, complete with an addiction to cigarettes, smoking and with fangs. Not to mention that I happen to believe Ed Westwick (pictured) is a dead ringer for the character’s description, if a little too tanned. Everything would be peaches and cream (but when is that ever likely to happen in a novel?) except for the fact that Ivashkov’s a Moroi and every bone in Sage’s body is telling her not to have feelings for him, not even a “just friends” feeling.
Ed Westwick by greginhollywood on flickr.
So we see Sydney start dating Brayden – a guy who everyone sees as being 100 per cent compatible with her. He also happens to be about as exciting as watching paint dry. While Sage mirrors this at times, at least she has moments of badassery to provide some balance. When our OTP (unofficially known as Sydrian) finally has their ‘moment’, despite it being electrifying and “glorious”, it’s over before it even really begins and we’re left with a gaping hole that should have been filled with butterflies and swooning.
With the exception of Brayden, most of the other side-characters are genuinely lovable and worthy of the reader’s attention. There’s Eddie, the Dhampir (human/vamp hybrids that train to become pretty badass bodyguards), Jill who fills the role of the adopted sister, Angeline, another Dhampir whose short temper and lack of social skills provide ample humor throughout the novel and Ms Terwilliger, the teacher who not-so-subtly forces Sage to dapple in the ancient art of witchcraft. Even the almost love triangle between Angeline|Eddie|Jill is detailed enough to make you care but not overshadow the main pairing of the novel. It’s not very often that I feel as strongly about sub-characters as the protagonists, but the amount of passion, heart-ache and to some degree, self-torture Eddie goes through makes him one of the more outstanding characters of the novel.
To top off the mountain of drama that befalls these characters, their problems worsen when they happen upon an unavoidable amount of evidence to suggest the existence of human vampire hunters. There’s conflict, as with most supernatural fiction but Mead is eloquent enough to describe violence in an almost dream-like quality, through the eyes of someone who isn’t accustomed to gunfire or hand-to-hand combat. It’s a refreshing break from fight sequences that are loaded with countless punches thrown and people tackled to the ground.
While The Golden Lily took a while to really get into the thick of the plot and had some pages wasted on boring dates and conversations between Sage and Brayden, as it progressed, I found myself less willing to put it down. By the last few pages, I had to actually stop myself from reading further because the anticipation for what was about to happen, or well, what I thought was about to happen, was too much.
Needless to say, the cliffhanger has left me desperate for the third installment – The Indigo Spell which is out now. Waiting for my pre-ordered copy to arrive from London has never been so torturous.
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