'Rhea and her twin brother, Lexos, have spent an eternity helping their father rule their small, unstable country, using their control over the seasons, tides, and stars to keep the people in line. For a hundred years, they've been each other's only ally, defending each other and their younger siblings against their father's increasingly unpredictable anger.
'Now, with an independence movement gaining ground and their father's rule weakening, the twins must take matters into their own hands to keep their family—and their entire world—from crashing down around them. But other nations are jockeying for power, ready to cross and double cross, and if Rhea and Lexos aren't careful, they'll end up facing each other across the battlefield.'
In a Garden Burning Gold tells the story of a family that rules a troubled nation, of a fierce and abusive man who has held power for more than a century thanks to the magical powers that he controls, and his twin children who come to try to challenge his rule.
The story takes place in Thyzakos, one of several nations that have come together to form a federation of countries ruled by un-ageing, magical leaders called Stratagiozi. The Argyros family has ruled Thyzakos for more than a century, ever since patriarch Vasilis Argyros killed the former Stratagiozi and claimed his title and powers for himself. As with other Stratagiozi, Vasilis has shared some of his power and responsibilities with his children, tasking them with controlling the tides, creating the constellations in the night sky, and changing the season.
His eldest daughter, Rhea, is tasked with ushering in each new season, and her powers are tied to her consorts. At the start of each season Rhea picks a suitor to marry, spends the season with them and their family, and come the end she kills them to end the season and usher in the new. She's had hundreds of consorts over the years, and has become numb to the killing, believing it's part of her duty to her father and her nation. However, when she returns home at the end of autumn, having delayed the changing of the season when she didn't kill her latest husband on time, she finds an angry father, and a nation on the brink.
Rhea's twin brother, Alexandros, who is also their father's right hand, tells Rhea that the nation is on the brink of war. Some of the lords and nobility have begun to tire of their fathers rule and are unhappy, and open rebellion has begun to form in the distant north where separatist groups have started to form in secret. When new suitors arrive at their home for Rhea to pick out for the new season her father tells her quite flatly which man to choose, wishing to strengthen their relationship with one of the noble houses. However, Alexandros has plans of his own to try and get to the bottom of the separatist issue, and has invited one of the northern heirs to present themselves to Rhea.
Despite fearing her fathers wrath, Rhea chooses Michalia, the northern heir, as her consort. Heading out into the cold north, Rhea prepares to try to learn the secrets her brother needs to solve the Separatist issue; whilst back at home Alexandros must try to keep everything from falling apart whilst avoiding his fathers punishment.
In a Garden Burning Gold is a dense book. Just picking this novel up you can feel it's a thick, heavy thing; and the content inside mirrors this in some ways. The first thing that you'll notice when you open the book is that there's a big list of people and places before you've even gotten to the story. This is probably something that you're going to want to just skip right past. I would not recommend reading this first as I got three or four names into this and was immediately lost. For example, the list begins with several location names, titles, and characters both living and dead with no context to them at all. I didn't know what Thyzakos was, where Ksigora is or how it relates to the story, why it was telling me about a dead saint, what a Startagiozi was. I felt my eyes beginning to glaze within the first minutes of starting the book.
Skip this. Just skip these pages and use it as reference later if you need it, because everything important that you need to know, all of the places, people, titles, and how they all relate to each other get explained in easy to understand ways as the story unfolds. It was much better to discover it as it went, and I honestly never found myself going back to the list at the front of the book because Rory Power made all of these new complex systems and people easy to track over close to six hundred pages; no easy feat. I can only think that perhaps the publisher wanted to include a list of characters to help readers out, but probably should have put it in the back of the book rather than the front.
After this somewhat odd start, however, In a Garden Burning Gold quickly became a book filled with political intrigue and complex schemes. Whilst the book is very much a fantasy novel, set within its own world with certain people possessing magical abilities, it's not a traditional fantasy story, and instead plays out like a political thriller. Very little of the book deals with the regular folk of this world, other than a handful of times when we get to meet the ordinary, everyday citizens through the eyes of their rulers, this book deals almost exclusively with people in positions of power, wealth, and privilege. More specifically, the book deals with the Argyros family.
The Argyros' are a strange mix to say the least. Vasilis, the head of the family, is frankly a bit of a bastard. It's clear very quickly that he's a man who runs his family through fear. His children, people who are more than a century old themselves, are treated like children who don't know better, and are afraid to set foot out of line for fear of his punishments. In a Garden Burning Gold isn't afraid to show Vasilis punishing his children, and has some pretty graphic depictions of abuse throughout the book. Having seen novels where fathers seem to rule with fear, yet never go into how, it makes for a decent change to see how these kinds of situations come about. It highlights what abusive behaviour is like, and doesn't shy away from its depictions.
The two youngest children in the family, Chrysanthi and Nitsos, are the least developed of the group, and we don't really get much chance to know them. This is in large parts due to how they're treated by Vasilis, given even less responsibility or trust than their older siblings. Despite being decades old they act like kids, not really having much to do, being kept out of important discussions, and spending most of their time doing whatever activity they want. They've been initialised by their father so much that it seems to have affected who they are as people.
Rounding out the family are Rhea and Alexandros, our two point of view characters. As discussed in the breakdown of the plot, these two characters actually have responsibility, and play important parts in the running of the nation. Despite this, they are both also prisoners of Vasilis in a lot of ways. Alexandros is desperate to be seen as a man, to be listened to when he comes to his father with advice and suggestions. He's a smart man who is capable of doing more than he's given, yet never gets a chance to shine. This is a big driving force behind everything he does in the book, as he desperately tries to prove himself by 'saving' the family. Rhea begins the book quite dissimilar to her brother, and simply wants to perform her duties as her father lays out so as not to incur his anger. She isn't looking to prove herself beyond simply keeping Vasilis happy, and it's only through what she experiences in the north that we see her actually begin to grow and thrive as a character.
Speaking of the north, we get to visit a number of interesting locations throughout In a Garden Burning Gold, and Rory Power manages to make a lot of these locations feel different and unique, whilst also having it feel like one cohesive whole. The Argyros family home, Stratathoma, feels like a wonderful Mediterranean estate, surrounded by beautiful blue waters and open, airy architecture. Ksigora in the north feels cold and hard, a place where it's more difficult to live; yet always feels like a beautiful, mountainous place. Trefazio is almost wild and exciting, with strange customs, oppressive heat, and huge, expansive buildings. Each of the places that the reader visits in the book feels so incredibly clear in your head, with wonderful descriptions that leap off the page.
One of the things that Power does best though is the political intrigue and shady dealings. There are multiple times where our characters find themselves in dark rooms, plotting out schemes and making deals. These moments are done incredibly well, and I got bought into a lot of the trickery that takes place in this book, trusting characters I shouldn't have whilst being suspicious of the wrong ones. It was wonderfully crafted so that I never felt like I had all of the information, and was always thirsting to learn more, but seemed to think I knew enough to have most of it figured out. Much like the characters, I bought into the lies and the half truths and was totally taken in by it; leading to a wonderfully surprising series of conclusions.
Sadly, the story doesn't really end with this book, with it instead being the first part of a continuing story. That being said, it still felt like a book that stands on its own, that you can read and be happy with and not need to return to this series if you don't want to. I think that people will want to, however, and that this is a series that will get a lot of notice thanks to how clever and complex it is, without being exclusionary. I think In a Garden Burning Gold is a book that people who don't normally read this kind of genre will be able to pick up and really enjoy.
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