https://lynns-books.com/2017/01/19/gilded-cage-dark-gifts-1-by-vic-james/
The Gilded Cage is an unusual and interesting story. Set in an alternative UK the story revolves around one particular family as they embark on a period of enforced slavery. I must admit that I have mixed feelings with this book. It was certainly fast paced and actually made for quite addictive reading but I felt like the world building needed something more.

The story starts with our main family, the Hadleys, as their life is about to completely change. The Hadleys are about to start their ‘slavedays’. Every commoner in the UK, or, more to the point, every person not born with ‘skill’, must serve a compulsory ten year period of slavery. The world here is split into those without magical ability and those with. Let’s call them the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’. The former being the aristocracy, landed gentry living lives of privilege on huge country estates whilst the latter are the commoners who undertake all the hard work within society. In this particular instance the Hadleys have undertaken to go to into this period of their lives as a whole family. Unfortunately, their plan to be located as a whole unit working on the Jardine’s country estate doesn’t go quite according to plan and although the mother, father, and two daughters are placed as planned the son, Luke, is torn from the family and placed in one of the factory towns up North.

We then predominantly follow Luke as he becomes familiar with his new and brutal surroundings and then switch to his sister Abi as she tries to plan for a way to get Luke back with the family whilst finding herself in the strange predicament of finding herself becoming attracted to one member of the family she now serves.

So, to the characters. My favourite storyline was Luke’s. Located in a town called Millmoor this is a grim place. The people work long and miserable hours and are barely fed enough to sustain them – obviously just one of many ways to keep them downtrodden and too tired to fight back. This doesn’t stop underlying rumblings and an underground movement with rebellion at it’s core and Luke fairly quickly becomes embroiled with this group. Meanwhile, Luke’s sister Abi is helping to run the Jardine’s office. She’s an intelligent young woman and fairly quickly finds her feet. Unfortunately she finds herself attracted to the middle son of the family, Jenner. Jenner is an anomaly in the world of Equals, born without skill he’s something of an embarrassment to the family. His older brother and heir is a particularly vindictive piece of work with a short fuse – Gavar. Rumours circulate the estate about how he murdered a former maid and the mother of his child. The younger brother, Silyen, is the one to watch. He’s incredibly powerful in terms of his own skill and seems to have his own agenda which hasn’t yet been made clear. The Equals have their own problems of infighting and back stabbing. There’s plenty of jostling for position and families seeking beneficial matches to increase their own status.

The plot, well there are two threads running through the story. Obviously the underground rebellion movement being spearheaded at Millmoor and then the political struggles taking place in the world of the Equals. Alongside this are a couple of twists, one concerning the younger Jardine and the other focusing on Luke’s own role. I won’t go into either as they will contain spoilers.

The world building. Set in a modern day world this is an alternative UK where history split from the one we currently live in many years ago. It’s a bit of a strange world to come to grips with and this is an area that I struggled with a little. The period just has a jumbled feel somehow. The factory towns feel like they’re straight out of the Industrial Revolution era. They have a Dickensian type feel. Poor housing, poor food, long hours, harsh wardens. The Jardine’s family home is like Downton Abbey, except that whilst one of the sons rides around the estate on horseback his brother chooses motorbikes as his favourite mode of transport. It feels like the book is conflicted a little with its own time period somehow – it’s not as far advanced in technological terms as our own, and yet it does benefit from some modern day advances.

The story does takes a good look at class division and exploitation and I thought that was a very thought provoking element that has kept me thinking for days after I put the book down. However, this brings me to the real issue I had which revolved around the slavery aspect and the whys and wherefores of how it all works. The idea puts me loosely in mind of conscription but much more severe – everyone serving a 10 year period of enforced slavery but there was very little detail in relation to this aspect and I guess you’re just expected to go with the flow and not focus on the finer detail. The thing is I just can’t help myself from wanting that little bit of extra detail. Such as, why were people allowed to volunteer at whatever age they liked. How is it feasible for a whole family to go together – what happens to their home, how do they resume life when their slavedays are over. How is the whole thing even monitored – what happens if you don’t volunteer, why wouldn’t you simply leave your volunteering days until your twilight years?? Look, I’m not suggesting that we have a full essay on the economics of dystopian society, nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition after all, but just a few lines here and there. As it is I didn’t really get the idea that people had any real qualms about going into their slavedays, and whilst some of this is explained away I do find it difficult to believe that everyone in the country is unaware of the horror that takes place during this period of their life.

On the whole this was an intriguing story that kept me entertained. I did have niggles, which primarily revolved around me wanting more information, but I can understand that this would have made the book a lot slower in pace and therefore not to everyone’s liking.

I received a copy courtesy of the publisher through Netgalley for which my thanks. The above is my own opinion.

​In a world where ordinary people must sacrifice a decade of their lives in service to the Skilled, we meet a host of addictive and compelling characters that bring this magical world to life in front of our eyes. The Hadley family make a choice to serve their ten years of service together and are happy to have gained a place serving one of the most powerful Equal families, the Jardines. But immediately things start to go awry when Luke is not allowed to accompany them and is shipped off to Millmoor, one of the many harsh slave towns that exist around Britain. And not everyone is as they appear to be. As Abi, Daisy, and their mum and dad try to settle in at Kyneston, their service may not be as harsh as that in Millmoor, but it is certainly just as complicated. With plenty of danger, rebellion, love, bitterness, and thirst for power, GILDED CAGE by Vic James is the stunning first instalment of The Dark Gifts series, which is sure to be an addictive fantasy trilogy. With excellent characters, some of which you will love to hate. plot twists, and otherworldly power, GILDED CAGE kept me easily enthralled throughout. I really hope that book two will be released soon as I cannot wait to get my hands on it!

This is modern Britain, but not as we know it. Gilded Cage is one of those absorbing reads that effortlessly builds a recognisable universe so quickly that it's a while before you can stop, examine it, and find it beguiling and new. Vic James does an excellent job in establishing the rules of her dystopian, magical world - and then repeatedly peels away the surface to reveal nastier implications hidden underneath. And trust me, there's always room for it to get worse.

Young protagonists Abi and Luke Hadley are likeable, and blessed (or cursed) with soft hearts and a desire to do right by others. But unexpectedly, I found them the weakest links - blank pages to be overwritten by their new environments. Needless to say the book gets right to its task - Luke is quickly sucked into indiscreet acts of rebellion in Millmoor, while Abi gets a little too cosy with her Jardine masters.

It was the secondary characters who caught my interest and kept me turning the pages - I still have no idea what Silyen is up to, and I'm as eager to find out as I am to see whether Gavar can live up to his potential rather than down to his instincts (and whether he and Bouda will in fact kill each other).

While this is marketed at YA and has teen protagonists, it is a gripping, ageless read and I can't wait for the sequels.

Highly recommended.

This may be an unpopular opinion, but I didn’t enjoy this book.

First off, let’s talk about the characters. I am a person who rarely enjoys narratives split between so many people (especially when POVs are split so unequally), so I may be unfairly biased on this point, but I feel like we got way too many chapters from Luke’s POV and hardly any chapters from our other supposed main character, Abi. I think this is why I didn't connect to her and found her just a bit dull – we never actually got to know her. Her brother, Luke was a more fleshed out character. At least I got a sense of who he was (and his reactions were the only one I believed, I swear he was the only person with a modicum of sense in this entire book). There was real potential with Abi, but in the end, I really struggled to care about what happened to her. She did start to get better towards the end, but until then, she lacked any drive to do anything. All she could think about was a doomed romance with Jenner Jardine, an Equal boy with less personality than a dishcloth, instead of focusing on getting her brother back (which she promised she would do). It was her ten-year-old sister who fixed the problem, and even then, Abi was too preoccupied with Jenner to even see how much her brother had changed, or why that may be. And to top it all off, she got a chance to learn something that could really help her, to ask questions about a history shrouded in secrets (I mean, wasn’t the whole point of her doing her slavedays before going to medical school because she wanted to find out about the Equals’ powers?), but instead of taking advantage of that opportunity, she spent the whole time obsessing over dishcloth boy. It was all too insta-lovey for me.

Jenner had very little personality so I don't really know what to say about him. Gavar, his brother, was an awful person, but he was more interesting to read about. He hated his father, but was powerless to do anything about it. He just had to do what he was told, and I liked seeing this because it added another dimension to his character. However, it didn't really go anywhere, and he was generally still a pretty terrible person (though who knows what will happen in the next book). He treated women like crap, he only cared about his daughter and viewed most other people as just dirt on his shoe. And did no-one else think it was insane that his baby was left in the care of a ten-year-old?! I did really like Renie, one of the people Luke met while he was at Millmoor, but I just couldn’t get into the whole storyline she was involved in. Silyen, the youngest of the Jardine brothers, was probably the most interesting character, but unfortunately we barely ever actually got to see him, and so little was explained that I never had any idea what he was doing.

Plot-wise, I really struggled to believe the world the characters lived in. First, I didn’t get why everyone didn’t just do their slavedays when they were really old and had already lived their lives. Was there some kind of punishment for their families for not finishing them? It wasn’t explained. Second, I was confused as to how slavedays were viewed globally? Other societies in the world were not even communicating with Britain because of them, so surely this meant countries with slavedays and countries without them were hostile towards each other? Were they at war/in conflict? How did trade work between them? How did such differences develop in the first place (I really, really wanted more backstory)? As some countries had no slavedays, were there any known rebel groups acting against the system in the countries that did? It didn’t seem like it, but then after abolition was proposed, people started taking action? There was no information on any of this, and in my opinion, the world-building was all a bit convoluted. Obviously as readers, we understood how horrific this society was, but the history of how it came to be was sort of brushed over in the book and I was left wondering how things were in the terrible state they were in (there was some brief explanation of a war and some historical figures that came up with these rules, but it wasn't enough). Another thing was that the Equals’ powers (or Skills) were not explored at all – after reading the book, I still don’t understand how they work. I suppose the next book could explain all of this in more detail, but I felt I was missing out by not understanding in this book. There were some parts I did enjoy (the story with the Dog Man, Luke trying to rally support for abolition). The ending was also surprising, and I have to admit, I was interested to find out what would happen to those characters involved. However, because the rest of the book was so difficult to get through, I can’t really see myself reading the sequel.

Overall, I didn’t like this book. I’d recommend borrowing it from the library first if you want to read it. Perhaps you will enjoy it more than I did - most other people have!

I'm not gonna lie: I requested to read this one purely based on its cover.
Gilded Cage is set in an alternative, modern day Britain, in which the majority of people (who don't possess magical abilities) are made to serve 10 years of their lives as slaves to the magical minority. It's a very interesting concept, well executed and I will definitely look out for the next title in the series.
I very much enjoyed it but at the same time I think the pacing could've done to be a little smoother. Several points of view made it a little stop-start for me. Another minor gripe I have is that it felt like a set up for the rest of the story. Albeit a very good and gripping set up but I wish the story had moved along a little further.
Dystopian books have been done to death in recent years, but Vic James has taken the genre and refreshed it by injecting great characters and clever twists into it. I can't wait to see where the next volume will take us.

Brilliant Book! Excellent Storyline and Fantastic Concept.

This book features everything that someone who enjoys fantasy, magic, romance, villians and so much more.