A Golden Fury by Samantha Cohoe || Review || Blog Tour

I received an eARC as part of the ‘A Golden Fury’ blog tour receiving my copy via Netgalley, this doesn’t affect my opinion of the book, all my thoughts are my own and honest.

Thea Hope longs to be an alchemist out of the shadow of her famous mother. The two of them are close to creating the legendary Philosopher’s Stone—whose properties include immortality and can turn any metal into gold—but just when the promise of the Stone’s riches is in their grasp, Thea’s mother destroys the Stone in a sudden fit of violent madness.

Thea learns through her mother’s notes that there is a curse on the stone that causes anyone who tries to make it go mad. For her own safety, she is sent off to Oxford to a Father who doesn’t know she exists. At Oxford there were a few alchemists who would not stop at anything to make the stone, choosing not to believe in the curse. Thea has a choice, make the stone and lose her mind or watch the people she loves die.

Thea was different from the protagonists that I normally read about. She was very smart while being very naive at the same time. Her character development throughout the book was very interesting to observe. We are in her head throughout the whole book and seeing how her thoughts and ideals changed throughout was awesome. I also thoroughly enjoyed the side characters, I found them to be very entertaining. There was one character that I had my doubts about whether they were going to be the antagonist, but I also thought there may be more than one antagonist.

This was the first book I ever read about alchemy, and I found the concept very intriguing and fascinating. Cohoe was able to put a very clear picture of what the alchemists were doing throughout their work.

The plot was one of my favourite things about this book, I can hands down say I have never read a fantasy like this. (I am not saying there isn’t a book out there that is like it.) The pacing was just right throughout the whole book, it did take me a few chapters to get into the story but that is normal for me and after that, I found the whole story to be captivating and I had a very hard job putting the book down.

With the way Cohoe wrote, I was able to imagine exactly what was going on throughout the book, I found the ending wrapped up nice and clean and I appreciate that. I also loved the late 1700’s setting.

Overall this book was very engaging, interesting and had great characters. I would definitely recommend picking this up when you are wanting a different historical fantasy standalone.

Thank you to NetGalley, Samantha Cohoe and the publishers for approving me a copy.