Whining and bad mistakes. [A Golden Fury by Samantha Cohoe]
"Cohoe transmutes the legend of the Philosopher's Stone into a dark, intoxicating tale of ambition, obsession, and sacrifice. Prepare for a magic that will consume you." - Rosamund Hodge, New York Times bestselling author of Cruel Beauty and Bright Smoke, Cold Fire
In her debut novel A Golden Fury, Samantha Cohoe weaves a story of magic and danger, where the curse of the Philosopher’s Stone will haunt you long after the final page.
Thea Hope longs to be an alchemist out of the shadow of her famous mother. The two of them are close to creating the legendary Philosopher’s Stone—whose properties include immortality and can turn any metal into gold—but just when the promise of the Stone’s riches is in their grasp, Thea’s mother destroys the Stone in a sudden fit of violent madness.
While combing through her mother’s notes, Thea learns that there’s a curse on the Stone that causes anyone who tries to make it to lose their sanity. With the threat of a revolution looming, Thea is sent to live with the father who doesn’t know she exists.
But there are alchemists after the Stone who don’t believe Thea’s warning about the curse—instead, they’ll stop at nothing to steal Thea’s knowledge of how to create the Stone. But Thea can only run for so long, and soon she will have to choose: create the Stone and sacrifice her sanity, or let the people she loves die.
A sheltered, highly skilled, snobbish but very talented girl makes poor and naïve decisions because she is a sheltered, highly skilled, snobbish but very talented girl. Poor little rich girl. I'm a bit tired of this trope. Though that describes more than enough female YA protagonists, for whatever reason it stays popular. Samantha Cohoe's debut, A Golden Fury, pitched as female alchemists against the backdrop of the French Revolution really got me hyped. But as told through the story of the (presumably) teenaged (maybe early 20s?) protagonist, Thea, her life of wealth and higher education was such a struggle. Thea meets Dominic, a poor, and, despite his general kindness, can't help herself from noticing how poor he is, how low-class he is. Dominic and his daddy issues, his projection of them on everyone else, was annoying. Thea's trash-ass father was annoying. I like the sexy rogue we got. The way she was able to manipulate everyone, including her part-time captors, into working for her, and then after insisting on their staying true to their word only to betray them in the worst way at the worst time, reeks of privileged white female protagonist. Of course I expected nothing less. "Wow, mommy didn't like me," or "wow, shallow girls are so shallow and worthless;" was I supposed to like her? I'll say for clarification that I didn't hate her, but she just whined and made bad decisions the whole book. And they got horrifically worse as the story finished.
It's probably the way I'm built as a reader but I cared most for her mother and the rogue. Was her mother every wrong? Not really. Was her mother in part to blame for her daughter's naivety, at least for the way she raised her? Sure, but not through the lens painted by the eventual villain. Not considering how she as rare female exemplar in a male-dominated field needed to be. More than anything the threat of the revolution didn't affect anyone. The drama happens away from her, she is never directly at risk, and at most, her stepdad figure loses his servants? Because their fighting for their rights? I can't really name it, this was a solid 3 star read but it dropped to around a 2 for me. Would I recommended it? Yes, maybe. So 3 stars on the NetGalley scale. Did I like it? Meh. Depending on who you ask, that translates to 2 or 3 stars on the GoodReads scale. Because I'm not heavily adverse, let's call it 3 stars from me.
A Golden Fury was published October 13, 2020.
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