This Golden Flame by Emily Victoria - Blog Tour & ARC Review

Happy Tuesday everyone!  I'm very excited to welcome you all to my leg of the This Golden Flame blog tour!  Today, you'll find the details and summary for this novel,  my ARC review, and an about the author, Emily Victoria.  Thanks for visiting my stop on this blog tour!

Title: This Golden Flame
Author: Emily Victoria
ISBN: 9781335080271, 1335080279

Publication Date: February 2, 2021

Pages: 384

Format: Hardcover

Price: $18.99 USD, $23.99 CAD

Genre: Young Adult Fiction/ Fantasy/ Epic

Age Range: 13 and Up

Buy Links: Bookshop.org, Powell's, Barnes & Noble, 

Amazon, IndieBound, Chapters, & Kobo

An Ember in the Ashes meets Mask of Shadows in Emily Victoria's #ownvoices debut YA fantasy, This Golden Flame, in which asexual Karis, a servant to the mysterious Scriptorium, accidentally awakens long-dormant automaton Alix, initiating 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.

My Review:

❋ ❋ ❋ ❋

I reviewed an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This Golden Flame by Emily Victoria is a promising standalone YA LGBTQ+ Fantasy debut.  The world-building is truly outstanding and the world comes across as quite vivid and atmospheric.  The magic system regarding the Scriptorium and the automatons is also really cool and unique as well.  I really enjoyed getting to know both Kara and Alix, but as far as I'm concerned Alix held my attention the most.  I think I would have preferred the novel not to be told in dual perspectives, but to focus specifically on one character or the other.  I think the story could have benefited from the streamlining that could have provided regardless whether Kara or Alix would have become the main focus.  Either way, I greatly appreciated Kara as our aroace lead.  I don't often get to see the A of LGBTQIAP represented at all, so this was refreshingly delightful especially in this fantasy setting.  Overall, This Golden Flame by Emily Victoria lives up to the hype and I can't recommend it enough.  There's so much potential for this author to become a favorite of mine just based on her debut release.  I'm really looking forward to her next #OwnVoices YA Fantasy book, Silver in the Mist, which is due to be released in the Fall of 2022.

My review is also on Goodreads.

About Victoria:

Emily Victoria lives on the Canadian prairies with her Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, works at her public library, and has just finished her Masters of Library and Information Studies.

Website - Twitter - Instagram