Bingo Square: Red (mostly The Gilded Cage but all have shades or hints of reds)
I kept seeing this on book reels that randomly show up on my FB and IG accounts – it was one of those books that gets talked about but also isn’t so wildly popular that it’s off-putting. Just enough mentions here and there that it eventually stuck in my head.
Overall, I think it’s a decent YA trilogy but like so many others, the beginning seems to be setting up for a story that might be a little different and explore new themes only for it to end up following the same plot and genre conventions as many before it by the time we get to the conclusion.
Book 1: The Prison Healer
The novels are all told exclusively from Kiva’s perspective. Kiva has been an inmate at the notorious prison Zalindov for the last 10 years, since she was 7. Zalindov is hard to get to and only the toughest criminals are sent to Zalindov; it’s a prison shared by several kingdoms, located centrally.
Kiva’s father was a healer, arrested one night because he had been seen speaking to rebels against the monarchy/government, and Kiva was caught up along with him. Her father died in prison but Kiva has since taken on the role of the prison healer. Survival is difficult in a place like Zalindov so Kiva has a complicated role and position in the prison – she heals people but she is also the one that gives them their scar to brand them as inmates, and she has given information to the warden. She still has a small group of allies within the prison even if she keeps herself distant from the rest of the population.
But her routine gets shaken up – first, a mysterious prisoner, Jaren, arrives who doesn’t quite seem to fit. Then they get another new prisoner, allegedly the rebel queen, and Kiva gets directions from multiple fronts to keep her alive (she has been receiving smuggled messages from the rest of her family for years). The only way to do that ends up being volunteering to take the queen’s spot in the trials, a series of four tests that are easily passable for someone that has all 4 types of elemental magic (air, fire, water, wind) but much more difficult in a time period where magic is much more rare, and is basically mostly only something the royals still have.
There is another type of magic in this world, healing magic, but that is even more rare, and belongs only to those descended from one of the original monarchs, such as the rebel queen.
I enjoyed that this novel felt a bit quieter compared to some other fantasy, and was curious to see where it would go. While the story is structured around the trials, I was also very interested in the message to expect about monarchy, and what kind of government was putting children in prisons because their parents were accused of speaking with the wrong people.
Of the twists at the end, I would say one was pretty expected, and the other also wasn’t exactly a surprise but I didn’t necessarily think it would go that way.
Book 2: The Gilded Cage
Well. This one was still a very engaging story but it is also here that it basically becomes way too reminiscent of many other novels in this genre.
First off, Kiva is now out of the prison, and at the royal palace as Jaren’s guest. After ten years in prison, Kiva isn’t entirely used to this world and is adjusting. But … for a girl that survived the most infamous prison in her world, mostly alone, for ten years, she is just way too naive and trusting in this novel, and makes a series of frustrating mistakes.
She finally has a chance to reunite with her family, some secrets are revealed etc but mostly her family, especially her sister, want her to spy on the royal family and help bring them down. Kiva has been without them for a decade so of course she wants a happy reunion but at no point did her sister seem trustworthy.
The other issue is that we have this set up where we have a royal family and government, a group of rebels that want to put a family with a rival claim on the throne but the novel doesn’t explain why the common man would risk everything to support one distant claim to the throne and fight a war for it. In the first novel, we see children in a prison for hardened criminals because of their parents’ crimes, we see a family destroyed because someone saw one of them speaking to the wrong person – I would believe this is a corrupt government but once Kiva is with the royal family, all we get is a functional government, a beloved royal family (any dark secrets impact purely other members of the family) so why do the rebels have support? And we also know that Jaren dislikes the rebels because they don’t care about how much collateral damage they cause.
I did like the introduction of Kiva’s grandmother in this one but I was frustrated with how obvious it was that Kiva needed to think much harder about who to trust and use the judgement that let her survive prison.
Caldon, Jaren’s cousin, was also a highlight, and was at least decent at his job since he rather quickly figured out Kiva’s secret.
Book 3: The Blood Traitor
So many issues with this book and decisions that don’t make sense, at least from a satisfying story telling perspective.
After the events of the previous novel, Kiva is back in Zalindov, and her sister has had her dosed with the highly addictive drug introduced earlier in the series so she is in prison and strung out. Cresta, who was introduced as Kiva’s bully in book 1, is back but this time, she is trying to keep Kiva alive to pay her back for a debt.
In the previous novel, Noni had introduced some of the challenges the kingdom was facing on its borders with a neighboring ruler wanting to impose his power. This king becomes a larger player in this novel, and Kiva is eventually reunited with Jaren, Cal and a few others. Understandably, Jaren is incredibly mad at Kiva for breaking his trust, and much of the book involves Kiva beating herself up. It gets old fast, even if I also think Cal is way too nice to her about it all.
So at this point… Zuleeka and Jaren’s sister have taken the throne, there is an external threat coming for the kingdom and Jaren has lost his powers. One of the new characters introduced has knowledge of an old safeguard one of the founding rulers put in place and it may be the answer to returning Jaren’s powers which would then allow them to save the kingdom from internal and external threats.
Basically, we somehow end up with a concluding novel that is a quest novel, as Jaren, Kiva and friends have to visit four of the other kingdoms to get some family heirlooms back.
It’s not that it’s a bad concept or idea, it just feels like it’s placed in the completely wrong spot for a story like this. After all the interactions with Kiva’s sister last book, she barely features in this one, even though sister against sister would be a big emotional payoff. Instead this other king is the big bad of this novel. And the quest takes up the majority of the time. Also, believe it or not – there is another “secret royal all along” reveal … can’t anyone just be a peasant?
And in addition to hating how much Kiva was moping around, there is a scene where Kiva gets high (it was for the quest and all self sacrificial – eye roll please), and it’s during this episode that she spills her guts to Jaren who has been avoiding her all novel. Of course he has also been having feelings for her still and her confession helps him forgive her but so gross and cliche. I wish they could have had a real conversation instead of a drug induced misery party.
Final thoughts about the series
I know I have a lot of picks about this one but before I started writing the review, I was going to give this series 3 stars overall, and I am going to stick with that despite my rants. They were definitely still super readable and entertaining but I also think they wasted the set up. This could have explored different themes than the average YA fantasy novel, like prison reform, justice system, power of the people etc and instead we ended up with another story focused on a benevolent monarchy.
In some ways, it also reminds of Marissa Meyer’s Renegades trilogy, a series that started off seeming to have larger ambitions about good and bad, finding the gray areas, only to end by doubling down and taking all the gray “villains” and making them the straight up bad guys by the end, and reinforcing that the good guys had been right all along, actually.