Two years ago I read A Touch of Gold by the wonderful Annie Sullivan and I was quite excited to learn there would be a sequel. And as you can imagine I was even more excited when I got an eARC for it. It took me a while to read it, but now that I’ve finally read A Curse of Gold of course I wanted to share my thoughts with you all. So let’s jump in!
After barely surviving thieving, bloodthirsty pirates and a harrowing quest at sea to retrieve her stolen treasure, Kora finds readjusting to palace life just as deadly. Kora’s people openly turn against her, threatening her overthrow as heir to the throne—a cursed queen who has angered Dionysus. When Dionysus puts out a challenge to kill the girl with the golden touch and burn down her kingdom, it’s not just her future on the throne in danger. Kora’s life and entire kingdom are now on contract.
As bold and brave as ever, Kora sets out to find Dionysus, the very person who is trying to kill her, on the mysterious disappearing island of Jipper. Kora has no other choice. If she wants to save her kingdom and have any chance at reversing her father’s curse, she will have to enter into a deadly game with Dionysus, the greatest trickster the world, or the underworld, has ever seen.
Curses and queens. Pirates and kings. Gods and magic. This highly anticipated sequel to Annie Sullivan’s enchanting A Touch of Gold, the story of the daughter King Midas turned to gold, is the gripping crescendo to this sweeping fantasy adventure. The final saga of a cursed queen, a vengeful Greek god, and a dazzling kingdom in the balance.
A Curse of Gold (A Touch of Gold, #2) by Annie Sullivan
Published by BLINK on 22/09/2020
Pages: 352
Goodreads
I received this book for free from in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
Cover
I quite like the cover! It’s not anything special but I think it fits the story. Especially all the gold. The crown is also really nicely done so I’m pretty okay with this cover.
Review
As with A Touch of Gold I listened to the audiobook. A Curse of Gold starts pretty soon after the events of A Touch of Gold. Kora saved her father in the last book and in this story she has to save her whole kingdom. Dionysus is threatening her kingdom and Kora wants to do whatever she needs to save everything and everyone she loves.
This second book has a lot of action. The first book was pretty action packed but this one even more so. While it’s good to have action in an adventure story, there’s also something as too much action. And for this book I felt like it was a bit too much. Or there were too little other things.
Because of all this action there isn’t that much development for most of the characters. And that is a shame because it made be story less interesting for me. Every now and then I felt myself drift off because I wasn’t as invested as I was in the first book. This story comes right after and I felt like the relationships, both platonic and romantic, were too ‘well-developed’ for relationships that are only a couple of days, maybe some weeks old. I also have to say Hettie annoyed me a lot haha.
We are introduced to a new character in A Curse of Gold. And that is Triton. He = my new favorite character is this world. Honestly, he felt like the only character with a character arc this time around. And I really liked his story. I think the whole story could’ve benefited from more characters with a plot separated to the main adventure. Triton really brought something extra to the story and made this book enjoyable for me. Unfortunately it just wasn’t as good as the first one.
Annie created an interesting world with likeable characters. I would still recommend this duology to YA fantasy lovers! It just won’t make its way unto my favorites list.
