After reading Gilded Cage, the first book in The Dark Gifts trilogy, I knew Tarnished City had a lot to live up to because I absolutely loved Gilded Cage. I am not going to lie I went into this book with very high expectations, too high if I’m honest, but Tarnished City smashed all my expectations and I couldn’t be happier. I loved every page every word, everything about this book made the series become one of my favourite book series of all time, and I still have the final book to read.

I don’t want to talk about the story too much because of it being the second book in a series anything I say could be potential spoilers. The story continues on from the end of Gilded Cage and immediately takes you back into the action and the world. I will say that some of the questions that you had at then end of Gilded Cage will be answered in this book, but as always with book series there is also new questions you want answered when you finish reading Tarnished City.

I will say is that I found the story to be just as exciting and just as engaging as the first book. I thought the world and the characters were developed even more than the first book and the more and more I read the more I felt like I knew the characters personally, and I had visited the places mentioned. I think this is down to how descriptive the writing is because when you start reading you feel as if you are there with the characters, experiencing what they are experiencing, and living in this world. I thought the tone of the book was darker than the first and there were definitely some shocking moments that left me speechless.

If you are looking for a new book series to completely take over your life then I would honestly say you need to check out The Dark Gifts Trilogy. I haven’t finished the series myself yet, I know that whatever happens in the final book will be spectacular, and bring this amazing series to a close. Even though I had some very high expectations for this book, Tarnished City is a wonderful read and a brilliant instalment to the series.

Great for fans of The Hunger Games. Strong sequel to Gilded Cage - very dark and Orwellian. Look forward to reading Vic's next book.

I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. This review is spoiler-free for Tarnished City, but contains MAJOR SPOILERS for Gilded Cage.

I recently read Gilded Cage and while I wasn’t hugely impressed by the beginning, the story really picked up and it had an incredible ending. I had a feeling that the plot would continue to stay strong through the sequel, and I was right. Tarnished City is a thrilling, fast-paced read that will have you on the edge of your seat until the very end. It continues to build upon the interesting concept of the first book and remains one of the most brutal YA fantasy books out there.

I find reviewing sequels really difficult, so I’m going to keep this short. It took me a little while to fall back into this world, but I ended up fully immersed and really enjoyed the ride. While it’s strange to read about a modern Britain with a fantasy twist, I really enjoy the worldbuilding in these novels. James continues to expand on the world and we get to see more than just Kyneston. From Scotland to London, James shows us the broader picture and implications of the slavedays and I really appreciated it. Alongside this, we get a little more detail about what the laws around slavedays are (I, for one, was wondering why people don’t just delay indefinitely and just don’t do them). James skillfully presents a more full picture of life in her version of Britain, which makes the story much stronger.

I won’t say much about the characters, but everyone grows and changes over the course of this book. My favourites from the first book don’t match up against my favourites from the sequel, which is unusual for me. Some characters took me by surprise, some with delight and some with horror, but no one was boring. Even Abi, who was so dull in the first book, begins to show some spirit. We spend plenty of time with old favourites, but are introduced to a handful of new characters that are just as interesting and compelling as our original cast.

If you liked Gilded Cage, you’re going to love Tarnished City. From satisfying moments to deeply infuriating ones, this book will keep you on your toes, and sets up quite an explosive ending in Bright Ruin.

SERIES REVIEW:

Before going into Gilded Cage, I had heard SO much about this series. I had met the author Vic James and had the opportunity to see her talk on several panels in the last two years at YALC. All of this meant that I went into the series with SUCH high expectations. Luckily for me, the trilogy did not disappoint!

The Dark Gifts trilogy is fantastic. It is crammed full of plot twists and turns, steering you right away from the path you think you’re taking right at the last minute. I’m keeping this general as it’s a whole trilogy review but let me just say that the plot twists carry on right until the end of the final book. Every time I thought I could predict what would happen I ended up being wrong and thrown in a different direction. I loved the dystopian world that Vic James has created. I originally thought this was going to be a lot more fantasy than it actually is. In reality, this trilogy is a true dystopia. It’s set in the UK as we know it, with lots of shout out to familiar towns and cities, but there is a magic system and with that comes a powerful and dangerous hierarchy.

There is no doubt that these books are absolutely vicious. I would be happily reading a page and then BAM a character death would happen in a sentence. But don’t let me mislead you – some of the deaths are very short and sharp but they are absolutely gruesome and I can see them pretty vividly even having read the trilogy nearly a month ago. With the deaths comes some sadness but I didn’t find myself getting too teary when reading the trilogy.

These books have a whole host of incredible characters to fall in love (or hate) with. I can’t say much without spoiling things so let me say this: some of my favourites are Luke, Abi, Silyen and Renie whilst I thoroughly enjoyed hating Crovan. The plot twists provide many pivotal moments for the characters and some of those I loved early on became people I eventually loathed and vice versa. I loved that I didn’t know who I could trust, just as Luke and Abi didn’t know who they could trust. It made for a thoroughly enjoyable reading experience.

I read the trilogy within a week – that really goes to show just how quick it is to access and read. I couldn’t stop myself flipping the pages but Vic James certainly does know how to end a chapter and keep the reader wanting more! A fantastic trilogy full of excitement, darkness and a compelling look into the injustice of society using a dystopian world. I loved it!

A great follow up to the amazing debut. I really enjoyed the characters and always loved to hear about the alternate history of the world run by Equals. Can't wait for the next one!

Unfortunately when I requested this book I didn't realised it was the 2nd in a series and I have not read the first, I did not feel like I could fairly review this book due to this. My mistake, sorry! Thank you for the opportunity :)

Action-packed sequel to Guilded Cage, this actually managed to feel darker than the first and held my interest (I often lose interest in book number twos of teen series...) Great mix of characters and plot with only a little angst, I'll definitely be reading the next one.

(ARC provided by publisher via NetGalley)

I requested this not realising it was a sequel. I will read and review once I have read the first book.

2.5 stars

After the events of Gilded Cage, Luke is now a prisoner and Abi is determined to set him free.
Silyen Jardine is curious to learn more about Skill while his father will do everything he can to keep power in his grasp.

Tarnished City follows straight on from Gilded Cage which I enjoyed. I was excited to see what the author had in store for the characters in this sequel.
I liked the characters and I was enjoying the plot for a while but then I found myself losing interest and I didn't really care what happened next. I think the problem was that the story dragged in places and some things that happened didn't shock me like they were supposed to - instead of being surprised I just thought oh, okay then.
I'm disappointed that I didn't enjoy this more. I might try and read it again another time.

Overall this was an okay read.

Gilded Cage was one of the books I read in preparation for YALC this year and I enjoyed it so much I was immediately on NetGalley looking to see if I could request Tarnished City and I am so glad that it was!

I didn’t think that I could love this sequel more than I loved the original (I usually find that second books in trilogies don’t grab me as much as the first and third instalments) but I was so happy that I was proved wrong! This book had me gripped the whole way through, and at one point I was in tears on a plane and I didn’t care if people were giving me funny looks!

If you haven’t read Gilded Cage yet I would suggest you stop reading as this will be kinda spoilery for the first book. You can check out my spoiler free review of Gilded Cage here.

Have you gone? Cool, let’s get started!

When we left our characters at the end of Gilded Cage everything looked pretty hopeless…and not much of that has changed in Tarnished City! If you thought that Vic James was harsh in the first book, it is nothing in comparison to this one! There was a point where I was on a plane and I actually cried out in shock and everyone turned and stared at me!

The feel of the story has a new dynamic following the dramatic conclusion of the previous book, as our characters are a bit more spread out and although a lot of plots overlap, geographically a lot of the characters do not interact with each other.

Abi is obviously now a fugitive having escaped at the very end of Gilded Cage, so she’s now working outside of the law, which I really enjoyed because it is really putting Abi out of her comfort zone. When we met her at the beginning of Gilded Cage she very much had a plan for how her life was going to go. Obviously that fell apart the second Luke was sent off to Millmoor but it continues to go even further off track throughout Tarnished City.

Luke’s plot gets a lot more interesting in this book as we get to see inside the twisted world of Lord Crovan. I won’t say too much, because obviously I want you to discover this for yourselves but I love how unpredictable this particular strand of the plot is. Lord Crovan is completely in control of all of the characters within his house and his personality is temperamental at best so it’s terrifying to read the ways in which he treats those under his roof.

Silyen still continues to be my favourite character, despite the fact that he still kinda creeps me out a bit.

There is also some great character development in Tarnished City and it’s done so well that you don’t realise that it’s happening until everything has changed, but at the same time it makes perfect sense.

I think the thing I love most about this book is the underlying tension. Although you are following these individual characters, you can feel something bubbling underneath it all and you are just waiting for it to explode.

So, in conclusion, Tarnished City has everything you loved about Gilded Cage and somehow still manages to give you more than you were expecting! I thoroughly recommend this series and cannot wait for book three!

Tainted City is a very, very dark sequel to Gilded Cage.

I keep seeing this marked as young adult but with the levels of cruelty, abuse and torture carried out by the magic-wielding Equals I don't see how it can be. It really should have an 18 certificate!

Luke has been sent to Lord Crovan's Scottish estate as a condemned, a prisoner, for the crime is he believed to have committed. Lord Crovan is renowned for the experiments he carries out on his prisoner and the sadistic way he treats them. When Luke arrives the level of cruelty he encounters is extreme. Prisoners live in fear, of each other as much of Lord Crovan.

Abi ran away instead of allowing herself to be taken to a slave town. She intends to save her brother from Lord Crovan and allies herself with Luke's revolutionary friends.

Silyen is gaining power and investigating how skill works. His motives beyond becoming strong in the skill are unknown, he helps Luke sometimes but it seems like it's only because helping Luke helps himself reach his own goals. He's one to keep an eye on! I like his viewpoint because he shows more of the magic that is a mystery even to the equals. He wants to know why they were capable of great feats in the past but now they can only use it to simply make life a bit easier.

There is a lot of character growth in this book. Both Abi and Luke have had their eyes opened to the ways of their world and are no longer the naive teenagers from before they started their slave days. Gravan for me is the most interesting character. He started out lazy and uncaring but as he sees how cruel his family is to those without the skill he becomes more and more sickened by it.

Surprises just keep coming from all around, just when you think you know a character they go and show you a different side of themselves. None of them can be seen as all good or all bad.

There are so many different viewpoints though, and so many characters and names being thrown about that I found it hard to keep track of everyone. It's a fast-paced book but there's also a lot of talking and a lot of the characters thinking about events and I just couldn't hold it all in my head.

The politics and the scheming are still overly simplistic. How does Whittam Jardine just take over parliament? It all seems too easy.

I also didn't like the way it seems to support terrorism, with Abi and her allies burning farms and bombing buildings in London. They do it without question as to whether it's the morally right thing to do or whether terrorism can ever be justified. I find it irresponsible to not consider this, especially for a young adult book. The Hunger Games covers similar issues but with a lot more attention to the morals.

I like the general idea of the story and I would like to see where it goes but for me, there were just too many people to keep track of, and the terrorism and the endless and sick abuse portrayed throughout made me not enjoy reading this. I found it bleak and a bit depressing and I finished it because I felt that I had to not because I really wanted to.

Thank you to NetGalley for authorising me to read this. Number two in the series is another cracker, though there are signs that things are changing (and not always for the better).
I admit to being a little scared I would have forgotten details, as it felt a long time since I'd read book one. However, I felt I was quickly taken back to the world and didn't feel too many details were missing from my mind.
There is a lot of alternating between Luke and Abi following the events of Gilded Cage. Neither is in a good place, but they at least have something to fight for. The Equals we observe are also in pretty dire situations, but some have more of a chance of escape than others.
I felt Tarnished Cage was bold in its attempts to explore the more morally dubious characters. I can't say I liked many of the characters/ideas we come across, but James portrays them with skill. It was interesting to see their motivation, but there's still an awful lot we're not being told.
In many ways this was bleaker than Gilded Cage, but I got a sense of how events were moving on. I'm very excited to see where we go in the final part of the trilogy.

Really good book with a great plot. I can't wait to see what happens next

Thanks to Netgalley and Pan Macmillan for giving me this book to review.

Tarnished city is a really good YA paranormal dystopian novel which is even darker and violent and the previous book Gilded Cage. It is fast paced and with all of its twists, political manoeuvring and unpredictability it makes you not want to put the book down. It did not suffer from middle book syndrome and I felt the characters have become more interesting and those who were a bit two-dimensional in the first book have developed a lot more.

I felt like Luke had the least character growth in this book, partly because his story arc did not grab me as much but also, he was the character who had developed the most in Gilded Cage. However, Abi had the most growth as she is still determined to save her family but she understands that change is needed. She has also lost her naivety and her belief that her family can stay impartial. Silyen is just as mysterious and complex as before and I still have no clue what his plans are all for. The most surprising character was Gavar as he was so much more interesting in this book and developed into a character I was not expecting.

The ending was a bit confusing and did end on a massive cliffhanger but I am looking forward to reading the next book Bright Ruin. I would recommend Tarnished City to those who enjoyed the first book Gilded Cage, and this series to those who like dystopian alternative worlds.

Dark , foreboding and gripping from first page to last!

Tarnished City picks up from the point Gilded Cage left off with barely a backward glance (don't start here folks, read the first one), focusing in on the trials of the Hadley siblings and their glittering, ruthless Equal antagonists. With few illusions left to lose (and this volume largely dedicated to smashing each and every one of them), Abi emerges as a stronger, smarter character, her dedication to freeing her brother evolving naturally into a broader determination to free her people from the Equals. Luke - unexpectedly, given his situation as the sadistic Lord Crovan's prisoner and plaything - is the light in the growing darkness, the boy who refuses to give up on his belief in human goodness. And the gloom gathers fast here, as Vic James ratchets up the dystopia faster than you can say Make Britain Great Again. It's a deft dark mirror, and I found it gripping from start to finish. Add in the Equal plots - Silyen Jardine's pursuit of his own mysterious agenda; the realisation of his peers that their Skill exceeds their expectations; the weird implications of the briefly-glimpsed otherworld and its king - and there's more than enough here to keep me breathlessly on the edge of my seat for the release of Bright Ruin in due course.

Regular readers of this blog will know that I loved The Gilded Cage, the debut novel from Vic James. So I was delighted to get a review copy of its sequel, Tarnished City from Pan Macmillan. Go read my earlier review if you want the backdrop to this trilogy.

You will be relieved to hear that Tarnished City picks up immediately after the cliffhanger ending of the previous book, and continues with the same, unrelenting pace. Without spoiling the plot of either this book or the first in the series I can say that the events of The Gilded Cage have irreversible changed the lives of all those caught up in them. Both Abi and Luke find themselves set on very different - but equally dangerous - paths.

One of the things I loved about The Gilded Cage was its commentary on English history and class issues. This continues in Tarnished City, and James's writing if anything has got even more political. This book exposes in some detail the culture of the super-rich and powerful, exploring whether they should be seeking to preserve that position of power, or using it to help the less privileged. In a searing look at contemporary celebrity culture, James looks at the way the public are at times complicit in perpetuating those power structures by lionising the very people who do the least to help them. And where the last book fictionalised the Peterloo massacre, Tarnished City gives us both the Gunpowder Plot and the Stanford Prison Experiment.

This is incredibly high-grade writing from Vic James - Tarnished City is insightful and thought-provoking while delivering a thoroughly ripping yarn.

Goodreads rating: 4*

I love how the Dark Gifts series is a YA trilogy that does not understimate the reader. It is a complex story with nuanced characters, and that has lots of parallels with the world we live in. A lovely combination of "I can't put it down" and "I don't want it to end". I will be rereading the first too installments in preparation for the release of [book:Bright Ruin|33206899]

(Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the review copy!)

I have really enjoyed this series so far and find the basic premise very original and entirely terrifying. This tells the continuing story of Luke and Abi as they try to navigate their way through the machinations of power amongst the skilled. The notion of having a ruling class that possess special powers is nothing new, but what I have found so original and well developed here is the idea of slave days. In this version of Britain, all non-skilled people must complete a period of ten years servitude called the slave days. This is an ingenious method of control and one which sparks fascinating discussions about slavery, colonialism and the exercise of power all of which seem particularly relevant among the current political climate. There are some elements of the book that are a little cliche, but I find that the romances give some welcome respite from the relentless horror of the situation. It is interesting to see how the strength of the human spirit is depicted throughout and overall, I think this was a great read and I look forward to the conclusion.
I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.

The first thing you need to know about Tarnished City by Vic James is that it is not a stand alone book, it is the sequel to Gilded Cage.
Tarnished City starts where Gilded Cage left off with Abi and her family separated from each other. Luke is imprisoned and on his way to a remote island as punishment for a murder he didn’t commit. Abi’s parents are on their way to the slavetown at Millmoor and Abi has escaped the same fate and is not on the run. Meanwhile, her younger sister Daisy remains a servant of the Jardine family.
The prologue of Tarnished City begins with Jenner trying and failing to open the gate for Abi and her family to escape but his lack of Skill defeats him. His frustrations over this difference from his family build throughout the book and we learn quite how much it affects him.
Luke is taken away by Crovan, a sadistic Equal who lives on an impenetrable island. Luke has heard some bad things about him and is understandably nervous especially when he realises the collar round his neck will stop him from hurting Crovan.
Despite himself Luke is slightly put at ease when Silyen tells him that he has questions only Luke can answer and that as long as he doesn’t try to escape Silyen will ensure he isn’t broken beyond repair.
“The truth was, everyone in Britain wore a collar they couldn’t see. Millions of people, unquestionably obeying the Equals. Slaving for ten years in appalling conditions. Subject to rules they couldn’t chose or criticize. Confined to a country they couldn’t leave until their days were done. And accepting it all as normal.
Better to wear a collar you could see. That way you never forgot.”
The place in which Luke is kept sees the prisoners made to serve one another or enact cruel punishments on one another to prove that cruelty is just human nature.
Tarnished City sees the Equals getting stronger but it also sees the rebels stepping up their efforts to illustrate the inequality of the system and show people it is ok to fight back.
I had very mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, I love the premise of Gilded Cage and was excited to see what happens with the characters. On the other hand, I found a lot of the twists in Tarnished City to be a bit predictable.
Another problem I had with Tarnished City is that I just don’t care what happens to Abi. I am interested in what happens to Luke though and am interesting in what is happening with Silyen and Gavar.
Having said all of this I do think Abi becomes more likeable once her blinkers are off about the Equals and the unfair nature of the system they live in and she and the others begin to cause problems for the Equals.
Tarnished City is mostly about developing a lot of the primary characters and setting things up for the final book and I think I may need to read the final book to make my judgement on the series as right now it could go either way for me.