Its sweetness and sultriness was sheer perfection, paced magnificently and written even better. Ultimately, though, I think it was the romance that really buoyed Gilded. I think there could have been less detail about how much Serilda likes working with children (the answer is so much), but by and large the world is rich and compelling. It’s very realistic to see the full range of human experience rather than just the negative, and I liked the secondary characters well enough. People were reasonably superstitious and self-serving, but could also be generous and thoughtful. Serilda’s life, and village and town life in general, held as much dismay as joy. Maybe it’s the setting that kept the book from going full horror.

It’s not gratuitous exactly, more that Meyer really embraced the darkness of the original Grimm’s fairy tales. Torn-out hearts, a zombie chewing on its own flesh…the list goes on, but I’ll spare you more detail. There’s plenty of adult murder, too, which is also graphic. There’s a surprising amount of child murder, for one, and some of it is graphic. Yes, Gilded was much, much grimmer than I expected while still somehow-I really don’t know how-maintaining that trademark Meyer optimism.

It’s a very nice trait to see persist across the book, not least because it keeps Gilded from becoming full grimdark. She’s not perpetually sunny-her life has been marked by loss too much for that-but she’s hopeful. I loved her ability to be cheeky even when in mortal peril and her ability to tell stories under the strangest circumstances. She’s been cursed–or blessed–by the god of stories to always have a fantastic tale at the ready, but this makes her a bit of a girl-who-cried-wolf to her town, who rarely put stock in anything she said. To balance him out, heroine Serilda is stubbornly optimistic and full of moxie. His cruelty is on full display, and he only becomes more fearsome the more we learn of him. He rides across the land seeking prey of all kinds, whether mythic beasts-or human children.

And thus, instead of a mortal man, we have the Alder King, immortal leader of the Wild Hunt.

Meyer starts with the very reasonable premise that this king must be an absolute piece of garbage to make this unreasonable threat. The woman then marries the king and defeats Rumpelstiltskin by learning his name. To accomplish this, she trades her most precious possessions to Rumpelstiltskin, who is actually able to produce golden thread. We know the beats: a young woman, under pain of death, must spin straw into gold for a king. That’s no small feat given that the source material is already established. I really never knew what was going to happen next in Gilded, her 12 th novel and her return to fairy tales after some time away.

Hopeful book marissa meyer