Book Review: Goldfinch

Title: Goldfinch
Author: Raven Kennedy
Genre: Romantasy, Fantasy, Romance

What It’s About: Slade Ravinger is impatient to get going to Auren, now that he knows that the bridge of Lemuria has been fixed, and he can get into the fae world. He asks his brother how much longer it will take for him to prepare the Elites to go to Fifth Kingdom, and when Ryatt says that it will take him an hour, Slade tells Ryatt that he is unable to wait. He goes ahead, intending to get to the Kingdom, and slow down the fae army that is traveling through the continent. Slade takes off on his timberwing, and unfortunately, the rot in his veins gets to him. He and Argo have to go down to land, as he convulses and just when he thinks he is going to die, the payur bond fuses, giving him some of Auren’s magic—her magic is the light to his darkness—and heals him. He manages to get back onto Argo, and then promptly passes out after telling Argo that he needs to get to her. The next time he awakens, he is barely hanging on by a thread in his saddle, and he tells Argo to find shelter, where they spend the night. After that, they start flying out, and he realizes that they are not in the Fifth Kingdom, but rather they had headed towards the Seventh Kingdom, and the Bridge of Lemuria, where he would cross to get to Anwynn. Slade remembers his promise to Ryatt, so he decides to do what he can to help Orea from the Oreans, and that includes going around and making it harder for them to pass through the Sixth Kingdom. He notices that he’s in the Pines where there is a fire, not too far from Highbell.

Queen Malina goes around to the remainder of her people, and at one point Dommik pulls her aside. They realize that the pines are on fire, and she quickly has her people heading in a direction, trying to get away from the fire while Dommik looks for two individuals who had gone hunting. Unfortunately, the fire keeps encroaching on them, so Malina decides that it’s time for them to make their way to Highbell—she believes that no one will suspect humans to be alive, after all this time, since the fae had been passing through, and mostly everyone is dead. They make their way to the part of the city, and at first Malina thinks that the Fae had destroyed this part of the town, but one of the individuals with her tells her that this is the shantytown, and it had always looked this bad. Malina feels extremely bad, and realizes that she had spent all of this time in comfort, and her actions would have looked bad to the poor of her city, because she never cared about her people and how they lived. They encounter fae, including Pruinn, who had tricked Malina in the past. Malina tries to hold the fae off with her limited magic, but it goes nowhere, and the fae kill a couple of people from her group. King Ravinger shows up and kills them all, and she realizes how dangerous he can be, so she kneels in front of him begging for forgiveness. She asks him to help her save her people, and he tells her that there are more people in the Castle, also relaying to Malina that he is doing this because Auren would have wanted him to be kind and good to them. Slade takes off on his timberwing, and uses his rot to destroy as much of the Army as he can possibly kill of fae, destroying the land as well to make it difficult for them to cross. He uses his dragon to help him destroy the army, which shows Malina the dept of his power. Slade then returns to Malina, who is now in the castle, and asks her to show him where Auren was kept. She takes him to Auren’s quarters and sees this differently now—how Auren was as much a prisoner as she was in this castle, but one without any privacy and freedom. He walks out without saying anything to Malina after he looks at Auren’s quarters. Malina walks back towards the hall, when she comes across someone moaning in the servant’s quarters. Turns out it is Mist, the pregnant saddle, and she is all fully bloodied up. Mist tells Malina that her son was born with golden hair, just like his father, but that the boy did not breathe and the Fae took him away because went into labor while hiding away. Malina stays with her until Mist passes away, then she tells a servant about Mist, asking him to also find the body of the baby so that they could be buried together. Malina then goes to the front of the castle, where she finds Dommik working with the remaining servants to move bodies for burning. There, she also finds Ravinger getting onto his Timberwing, and she offers to come with him to the Seventh Kingdom to do something about the bridge. He gives her an hour, and then they head to the seventh kingdom with Malina riding with Dommik on the remaining Timberwing in Highbell.

Both Malina and Dommik watch as Slade talks to Argo, then shoos him away when the timberwing attempts to stop him from crossing the bridge. Slade tells Malina that she needs to do something about the bridge in order to stem the flow of the fae that may come through the bridge. She tells them that she knows, and then Slade steps onto the bridge, walking across it until he comes to the other side of it, into Annwyn. There he finds dead land for miles, and comes across a camp of soldiers. He goes to talk to them, but the soldiers do not respond to him so he kills one of them, before a group overruns the soldiers, killing them. He speaks with this group and learns from them that they are the Vulmin fighting to free Annwyn from the King, and they tell him that Auren has been captured in the capital city. They want to know who he is and who Auren is to him, so he tells them his name, and one of the Vulmin recognizes him as the Breaker’s son. They are also surprised to find out that he is bonded to Auren.

In the meantime, Ryatt waits for word on Slade, only to hear that Slade is nowhere to be found and that the fae army had made their way through Fifth Kingdom. He has a meeting with his advisors and the members of the Wrath about the next steps, so he looks through the documentation he has and makes a plan. Rissa had woken up and is uncertain about her relationship with Osrik, but they actually decide to pursue a relationship together after talking about it, and they agree to be together. They make love and Rissa pretends to come, but Osrik smacks her across the butt until she admits to him that she faked it. He tells her to be herself and stop worrying about whether he’s bored or not, he cannot be impatient with her. So they make love and they end up have a good one. Once Ryatt makes a plan, Osrik heads over to Rissa, where he finds her arguing with one of her old friends, who also was a saddle alongside with her. Rissa is mad at her and Osrik tells her that he can go kill the guy who is scamming this friend, but Rissa tells him to not bother. He then tells her to pack up and pack warm because she is coming with him into an upcoming battle.

Ryatt, Lu, and Osrik along with their group of selected soldiers wait outside of what used to be Drollard Village, on the border with the Fifth Kingdom, from where the fae army is marching towards Fourth Kingdom. Ryatt has a plan, utilizing the soldiers that have some magic, and using what he knows about the land to try to beat the fae army. He starts carrying out his plan—using the Rot that is underneath the snow, placed there by Slade over years of visits as a deterrent to protect the Fourth Kingdom from the Fifth, and also to expel some of his power. They manage to turn things around, and Ryatt attempts to save a couple of his men who got stuck, when his timberwing goes down. It doesn’t seem like it will be an easy win against the fae army, until more timberwings arrive—Queen Kaila’s army—along with the Red Raiders. These help them turn the tide against the fae army and they win. Unfortunately, the fort at Cliffheilm gets destroyed, and Osrik, who is at the top of the fort, panics when he cannot find Rissa in the barracks. They both get out, and have a yelling match, where they realize that they were both looking for each other because they were worried. Rissa suggests that they stay together even in the middle of a battle in order to avoid this n the future. Judd comes up to them, and Ryatt also finds himself there when Queen Kaila shows up and tells them that she has fulfilled her duty. She speaks to her brother, Manu, and changes her tune after their conversation, saying that she will help them out instead.

Auren has been in Annwyn, and the only thing she is certain of is her name. The woman who has been visiting her, Una, keeps claiming that she is helping her, and healing her but Auren is certain that something is wrong. She has a negative reaction to the man with the eye patch, and the man with the crown who is the King. The king is frustrated as there is no progress with her, even though he had been promised by the man in the eyepatch that he could make her malleable and use her as a symbol in order to destroy the Vulmin. Eventually, when it doesn’t work, he has another woman brought in, who calls Auren by name, and apologizes to her for what she is about to be forced to do. This woman gives Auren a ring, while touching her, and becomes Auren, though Auren is confused about who she is. After yet another session with Una, Auren becomes frustrated with everything and the lack of knowing who she is, but since she figured out that she can use some of her magic even with the dampener on her, she manages to bring out some of the rot that she has, feeds it through her ear, and has it destroy some of the wriggling that she keeps feeling in her head. It takes her hours, and it is extremely painful, but some of her memories do come back and she recognizes some of the names of the people she was with recently. This makes her hopeful, though she knows she doesn’t have time. Auren is able to grab a sword from one of the guards, but unfortunately the guard gets it back. When Una comes back in to see Auren to keep healing her, Auren unleashes her magic and kills her. She also gets her ribbons back, which help her break the shackles, and then she heads out of the prison cell, when a soldier comes to open it. She fights her way through, unlocking cells for various people and telling them to flee, while searching for Wick and some of the other members. She comes across some Oreans, though she does not recognize them, as those memories are locked, and together the group heads out of the prison through a hidden system of caves underneath the prison that feed through the mountain and back out into the country. Auren urges the rest of the group to head out, but she plans on going back to the city as it calls to her.

Slade makes his way to Lydia, with the help of the Vulmin. There is a large crowd of people, and one of the Vulmin gets him close enough to the location of the stage where he watches a skit about Auren that’s distasteful. King Carrick comes out and has Auren dragged up. He makes a speech about how the symbol of the Vulmin is nothing but loyal to him, and has her bow. Auren in the meantime watches the whole situation, having snuck in from the outskirts with the crowd, and she is angry at how they’re making fun of her. She ends up revealing herself and then uses her gold to make the King tuck tail and run, and he grabs the fake Auren, who is really Emione, and disappears through a fairy ring. Slade had manifested his dragon, and had it stomp towards the Stone Swords that were coming to nullify the threat. At some point, Auren runs towards Slade, but in an attempt to attack him, because she doesn’t recognize him. But there is a part of her that knows that she is no threat, and when Slade calls her Goldfinch, she comes nearer him, until their payur bond solidifies between them and it clears away all of the other things that have been in Auren’s head. They end up having to go to a hidden lair for the Vulmin, where they solidify their bond through sex for two days, before they come out and meet with Wick at a goods warehouse. During their conversation, Wick reveals that he’s actually Wickhum Turley, and that he is her cousin—a distant relative of hers. He reveals that his family had travelled to Byrol to visit her family, and were there when they were all attacked and killed. They somehow managed to get the kids out by the side door, and they were going to be taken someplace else, but then their caretakers got killed, and Wick had run away to another village, leaving Auren alone with the captors. He feels so guilty for it and has been trying to make amends since by getting furtherly involved with the Vulmin. Auren forgives him, and then they go talk to Brennur, the fairy ring maker. Brennur does not want to reveal anything, but Auren gets him to reveal that he was able make a connection with Orea, and that he only stole her from Annwyn, and sold her to flesh trader—there have been no other children, and he does not reveal what happened to all of the other kids. Auren ends up using her bit of rot to kill him.

Rissa watches a battle at Ranhold from the house that she had been left in by Osrik, and with a single guard protecting her, while the battle rages outside, and she doesn’t know what is going on. She gets annoyed at not being able to see anything, so she has the guard walk her to Manu’s location, and tells him that she is here for the view because he has a tower. They don’t talk much, but they do work out a bit of their differences over her getting stabbed by his men. He eventually talks her through the battle and the plans, while telling her that all of this is them taking it on faith. They watch as the battle seems to stall, when suddenly another group of soldiers crests the hill, and suddenly there are big snakes in the ground that are snapping up the fae. Manu tells her that this wasn’t part of the plan, and tells her that this is King Thold of the Second kingdom. Once the battle is over, the two of them hurry out looking for their loved ones. Rissa is looking for Osrik and Manu is looking for his sister. When they find each other, they spend time with each other, and then the whole group meets up and decides that they will go chase after some fae that got separated, and then meet back up in High Bell to fight off the Fae. Ryatt, and the Wrath eventually make their way to Highbell, where he clearly sees the remnants of Slade’s power, and Manu comes out to reveal that Slade had been through, saved the remaining people, and that he and Queen Malina had made their way for the seventh kingdom.

Emione is thrown into a cell when Carrick lands in the camp by the bridge of Lemuria and he tells them to take her back to Lydia, destroy the city and burn her, while he goes meets with his men. She tries to figure out a way out, but is unable to do so, and spends a few days in there before she manages to steal the keys of the prison cart from the jailer. She gets out, switches her glamour to look like the man, and the hides him underneath the cart, before trying to take a horse. She gets approached at that point by another Stone Sword who tells her to take the horse to King Carrick because he hasn’t liked the horses he had been given thus far. She walks the horse over to him, and overhears that the King is telling the two twins that he wants to get into Orea, and that he will take over the barrier that has been stopping the fae from using the bridge of Lemuria. She is then shuffled into the ranks, and is forced to cross the bridge to Orea. While on the bridge, it removes her glamour, so at one point a soldier starts to speak up, recognizing her, and so she trips him off the bridge, before reshuffling further back to get away from the crime. What she doesn’t like is that after the stone swords get off the bridge, the Gore will come—and those fae are flesh eaters, basically a nightmare for which they had been banished to an island as an abomination. When they arrive through into Orea, Emione’s glamour comes back on and she tries to follow the King around to try to kill him. Unfortunately, she is discovered, and beaten to a pulp by the Twins, before being thrown into the same castle that the King had made earlier.

Queen Malina and Dommik work together in Seventh Kingdom after King Rot had left. She puts up barriers while he burns the fae bodies, and at one point, he tells her that she needs to eat—she reveals that it’s hard for her to eat in all the smell, and so he takes her away to what used to be a house, and she glazes it over with her ice. They spend that time together, eating whatever they have taken from the fae, and then they make love in the house. Then they fall asleep, and suddenly are awakened when they hear a big booming sound. Malina realizes that it’s her barrier that is breaking. They rush to the location, but aren’t able to do anything about it, nd Dommik holds her back from doing anything about it. They are unfortunately attacked by two Fae, who Malina recognizes as the twins that had tricked her before. They tie her up to a pillar along with Dommik and King Carrick comes in, changes the whole building around, and then reveals that he will do whatever it takes to get Orea rid of humans because he believes that the superior species should have the land. The Twins reveal something to Malina—they chose her because she had the right blood, and because the she was willing—the key to the bridge is willingness. Dommik wakes up and asks her what happened. She tells him some of it but doesn’t tell him what she had realized or learnt from the twins.

Emione hears someone speak to her, and realizes that there are two people tied to the column in front of her. Even with her battered up face she sees that they are Orean, and she gets enough strength to get up and saw through Queen Malina’s binds, and the Queen in turn takes the binds from around the man. They then talk, but Emione tells them that they need to leave; that what is coming is even worse than what the fae are, and describes them briefly to Malina. Both Queen Malina and Dommik run, but Malina asks Dommik to return back for the fae woman, and get her out. While Dommik is gone, she runs through the area and onto the bridge. She has a memory of herself finding her mom crying with the mender by her side in the garden at Highbell, and how her mom told Malina that her blood is more important than her own. She knows the choice that she has to make, and before she can make it, Dommik finds her and stops her. She tells him the truth—that to end the bridge, she has to die and will it to be unmade. So Dommik tells her that he wants to be with her even as they die together, and she stabs herself in the heart, and then he does the same to himself, and they watch each other as they die.

In Annwyn, the Stone Swords come to the city of Lydia, and they start burning it, which causes the citizens to run away. Auren gets mad at this, and decides to enter the fight, and she uses her gold to both stop the spread of the fire, while also fighting off the stone swords. Slade gets on his dragon and kills off many of the Stone Swords, before grabbing Auren and flying around the top of the city to make sure there weren’t any left. As they fly around, they notice some Stone Swords by the castle, and it’s only when they’re close enough that Auren realizes that they are not the Stone Swords but rather they are loyal to Slade’s father. Suddenly, the dragon’s wing gets cracked, and then they both go down with the dragon, though Slade tries to protect Auren, and Auren tries to slow down the dragon’s fall. The dragon gets trapped in a net, and Slade gets trapped in one too, but luckily he pushes Auren away from him before she too gets trapped. His father reveals that he has been wanting Slade to manifest a dragon—he knew that Slade could do it—all so that he could take it for himself, and be the king of Annwyn. Slade’s father grabs the golden spear that Auren throws at him, and stabs Elore with it, and then he is going to stab Slade through the heart in order to take over his power of manifesting a dragon, but Auren throws herself in front of Slade, and so she gets stabbed through the heart instead. The father throws Auren aside, but this gives the net around Slade a bit of leeway and he makes his way out from underneath it, before destroying both his father and his father’s soldiers. He then runs to Auren, as she dies, and tells her that when he created the rip, and took his mother away to Orea, she had turned sick, and the only word that she had ever said in her life after that was the word “goldfinch” and that is how he had always known that she was his.

In his grief, he carries Auren all the way towards the bridge, with the plan to take her to Orea to have everyone say goodbye to her, but he ultimately agrees to have Auren buried in Annwyn because that is where she belongs—she loved Annwyn. The group makes their way to the Bridge of Lemuria, only for them to hear a massive boom, and discover that the bridge exploded. Slade has to run with Auren in his hand away from it, but then he ends up falling. And so the star that died out flickers, and Auren finds her way back to him, scorching like the sun. Her ribbons come together to create wings, and she flies them out of the abyss and onto land, where Elore comes up to them, along with Wick and they’re glad to see them alive. Auren then heals the land that had died, and together the group walks through it. Eventually, the group bows to her as the Queen, but she abdicates the throne in favor of a much better suited fae—Wickhum Turley—and he later proves to them that he wants to do something different for Annwyn, in terms of ruling by commission or a group of people so that they can make a difference and welcome all sorts of idea. Auren and Slade talk amongst themselves in Lydia after they’ve returned, and make plans to leave the city to head to Byrol and see Annwyn. They decide to make peace with the idea that they will not be seeing Ryatt, the Wrath or any of the others in Orea, and that they’ll never know what had happened to them, but they agree to pretend that everyone is fine.

Ryatt and his contingent arrives in Seventh, when a portion of them are downed by netting coming in from one of the Fae. Ryatt gets stuck on his Timberwing, so Judd comes to help him, only for Judd to be run through with a sword and later die in Lu’s arms. He fights his way to Dig, and they find Argo arriving to help them with the stone soldiers—literal soldiers built from stone by the King of the Fae. He realizes that he’s not able to defeat them but he needs to get near to the king and Dig gets him to the King. So Ryatt fights the King, outmaneuvers the stone soldiers and then kills the king himself without any additional help. From there he realizes that the battle is still going to be difficult to win because the fae army is huge and they are only a few of them, when suddenly everything explodes—he had noticed the figures on the bridge—so he and his men run for the mountains as the crevasse opens before them from the bridge bursting. When it settles down, and they take care of their own wounded, he decides to fly Argo right into the edge of the world only to find nothing, though he does hear whisperings of words—like disjointed voices. After a bit of panic, they return, and he gets lectured by Dig, Osrik and Lu for doing that, though he admits that he shouldn’t have done it but he did it because he was desperate to get to his brother. King Thold and Queen Kalia had long left to go meet in the Fourth to decide what to do about the kingdoms since Sixth and First did not have any Royals left.

They hear some talking, and the group finds themselves listening in on a Fae male yell at a fae female and as he goes to hit her, Ryatt steps in to stop him. Emione was being yelled at by Friano about what she could have done he was going to hit her, when he gets thrown away from her, and when he tries to go for the male human again, the female knocks Friano out. She talks to them, and she realizes that Friano has a fairy ring, so they could get back to Annwyn. At first neither one of them want to tell the humans what is going on, but then the woman who is holding down Friano knocks him out, and Emione reveals that she can glamour herself. She overhears them talk about Auren, and she shows them what Auren looks like. Eventually she does tell them that the ring they are looking at is a fairy ring that she thinks is connected to Annwyn, so they wake Friano up and Osrik forces him to take them through the fairy wing, with Argo joining them at the last minute.

They then find themselves in Annwyn, Lydia specifically, and Ryatt kills Friano with a dagger that Friano had taken out a dagger to try to stab one of them. They then walk through the city until they come across Slade, and Auren, so the group reunites. They reveal that Judd had died in the battle, and later catch up.

Two months later, Auren sits outside of the gilded tree in Bryol—the city had become a symbol of restoration as once the Vulmin heard what she wanted to do with it, people started to arrive from all over the place to come and make it better and rebuild it. Slade joins her, and takes her on a walk to a river spot, and they have sex, before they wash off in the river, and he shows her that he has a splintered dragon form again, and that he feels it. He believes that Auren brought his dragon form back in some way, but he’s honestly just glad that he’s getting to spend it all with her. Everyone had adjusted well, including Dig getting along with Elore and spending time together, but the only one who is struggling is Ryatt, who was distraught to find out that the other fairy ring maker had been killed and that there is nothing to be done to take him back to Orea.

My Thoughts: Overall, I enjoyed the book but I didn’t really like how convenient the battles were in this story-line. The first one was very valiant effort from the group, but then in the second battle, King Thold coming and decimating the fae, and then how easily Ryatt ended up killing the King was a bit boring. It’s definitely convenient and felt like the author was just getting it done and over with so the book could be finished. I don’t know how I feel about Auren coming back to life—I feel like it probably should have been left alone as it was instead of them getting a very happy ending, which felt a bit boring. I am glad that Slade’s and Auren’s story ended—though I do wonder what the deal is with Emione and Ryatt, and hope that the author will want to explore that in a short book. It’s been an enjoyable series and I am glad that I got to be along for the ride with Auren as she grew through the different life situations that she’s been through.