Gilded Cage (Dark Gifts #1) by Vic James

Hardcover, 368 pages

Expected publication: February 14th 2017 by Del Rey Books

ISBN13: 9780425284155

3.5/5 books

*eARC  provided by the publishers through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review*

Not all are free. Not all are equal. Not all will be saved. 

Our world belongs to the Equals — aristocrats with magical gifts — and all commoners must serve them for ten years. But behind the gates of England’s grandest estate lies a power that could break the world.  

A girl thirsts for love and knowledge. 

Abi is a servant to England’s most powerful family, but her spirit is free. So when she falls for one of the noble-born sons, Abi faces a terrible choice. Uncovering the family’s secrets might win her liberty, but will her heart pay the price?

A boy dreams of revolution. 

Abi’s brother, Luke, is enslaved in a brutal factory town. Far from his family and cruelly oppressed, he makes friends whose ideals could cost him everything. Now Luke has discovered there may be a power even greater than magic: revolution.  

And an aristocrat will remake the world with his dark gifts. 

He is a shadow in the glittering world of the Equals, with mysterious powers no one else understands. But will he liberate—or destroy?

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I won’t lie, I almost DNF’d this.  It was a very slow start and I felt very confused about what was going on. At times, it felt like I didn’t have a complete ARC.

The only thing that kept me from not dropping it was what happened in the middle of the book, with Luke in the factory town and the people he met there and the set up for the rebellion that they put into motion.

The rest of the book was very very confusing.  There were so many things that just didn’t make sense.  Like Luke couldn’t go with his family because they didn’t have a job for him, but later on when he is brought to the estate and all of a sudden there is a job for him??

Also each chapter was from a different person’s point of view, and some of them made no sense to the overall story of the book.  There was family drama and there was political drama that had to do with the Equals, which hurt my head.

The types of “magic” these Equals had also didn’t make much sense.  I would think that a family would have some sort of inherited type of magic (like how families have hair color or eye color) but each member had something different and that was hard to follow too.