Review: The Dying of the Golden Day
Carrie Gessner
419 pages
Self-Published (2016)
Read this if you like: The Wheel of Time, David Eddings, character-driven high fantasy
tl;dr summary: Three magic users in a world where magic is dying set out to avert war, solve a murder, and avoid bringing about a prophecied doom.
I can be very picky when it comes to my sword-and-sorcery. I’ve read enough fantasy that too many familiar tropes bore me quickly—but I’m disappointed when writers drop or subvert the typical tropes entirely, to the point it no longer feels like high fantasy.
It’s a delicate and difficult balance to strike, and I’m always excited to find somebody who does it right. And I got really excited about The Dying of the Golden Day from pretty much the first sentence. The way this opens is smart. It teases with a little fake-found-text-ey intro that tells the reader this is a fully developed world, with its own history and mythology. That’s something I like seeing early on as a fantasy reader because it’s a sign this world is going to be unique and immersive, and that definitely held true throughout this novel.
I also like how this gets into the story. Starting with Aurelia on her own lets the reader get to know her outside the context of her bond with Renfred. The opening also sets up a nice mystery around Brennus’ identity that adds a lot of productive tension to the first half of the book.
Aurelia is the best-developed of the characters, which stands to reason, and for the most part I felt like the secondary cast was developed to the correct depth relative to their role. There were a couple of characters I found myself wanting more of—Minerva for one, and also Mira, both of whom had a lot of presence on the page when they graced it. I’m hopeful they’ll get bigger roles in future books, because I didn’t feel like their potential was fully realized in this one.
That said, this really wasn’t their story—the main focus was on Aurelia, Edana, and Brennus, and it does make sense to keep the reader’s focus there for the first book. Their story had a nice quest arc, and the way that wraps up at the end is enough to give it the feel of conclusion. I almost wish it had ended a bit earlier. I understand the logic of a cliffhanger ending to pull readers into the next book, but honestly I feel like this book did enough to get a reader hooked without needing that kind of device, and it did leave the ending feeling a bit unresolved.
I tend to read fantasy for the worldbuilding as much as I do for the characters, and overall The Dying of the Golden Day doesn’t disappoint. The device of the heartfriends I very much enjoyed. It had shades of the Aes Sedai/warder bond from Wheel of Time but different enough that it didn’t read as derivative. I also enjoyed the building of the prophecy and the play with translation from an in-world language. The only place I found myself wishing for a bit more was with the magic system itself. I like the division into 3 types of magic, which kept individual magic characters from being too powerful while still allowing for magic as a concept to be broadly useful. That said, I felt like the healing magic in particular came across as too weak. Most of the times Aurelia is shown healing someone she does it using herbs. While I appreciate that she can’t heal everything, I was looking for maybe one or two on-page examples of how her magic healing goes beyond what the physicians can accomplish. Granted, it does seem like all of the gifted’s powers grew stronger over the course of the book. Possibly in future books her power will expand. Still, so much is made of her being gifted that I felt like it should be used more.
This book is a great example of how to creatively subvert tropes to keep them fresh. The big one I’ll cite as an example is the prophecy. Usually when there’s a prophecy in this kind of book, the main character ends up being the prophecied chosen one—not the dark force whose arrival portends doom. While the prophecy around Aurelia is a bit more complicated than this, I appreciated that there were at least characters in-world who thought this was the case. It added another layer and a bit more depth to the traditional prophecy plot line.
I’ll definitely be reading the rest of this trilogy. It’s made me feel like I need to know what happens next, and that’s a sign of success from any book in my opinion. A strong recommend for other writers and readers of high fantasy.
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