Reading With Tyler

Name: Glint
Series: The Plated Prisoner Series #2
Author: Raven Kennedy
Publisher: Penguin
Format: Kindle
Genres: Adult, Dark Romantasy, Retelling
Spice Rating: 🌶️🌶️🌶️

Rating:

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

Review:

Glint is the sequel to Raven Kennedy’s Gild – a dark romantasy Midas retelling. As such, there are likely spoilers for Gild within this review. I will hide any spoilers for Glint should they come up, as normal. Please remember do read the authors warning before reading this series. It is a dark romantasy which means there are some darker topics on the pages. By the authors own warning, this series is not for those under 18.

Dedicated to those who see no bars but still feel caged. Fly.

I really enjoyed Gild, and as such I was excited to get to Glint! The problem I had, was if every book was going to be as spicy as Gild, then I knew I needed to take breaks between the books. I don’t mind spice! But Gild was very spicy and I get bored of spice if I read too much in a row where it is such a main focus. I hadn’t meant to leave an entire month between books 1 and 2, but lucky me I still remembered Gild pretty well (it left an impression, clearly!) so I was still really excited to finally get into Glint.

It wasn’t as spicy as Gild. I’ll say that immediately. Do not take that to mean that this is tame in any way – there is still sexual acts on the page, and ultimately we still have Saddles – so it certainly isn’t a tame read. But it is less spicy than book 1. Personally, I liked that – I went into The Plated Prisoner series knowing pretty much nothing! But when I got to the end of Gild still unsure of who the romantic interest was going to be, I knew I was signing up to a slow burn… How many books will that slow burn cross over? I’m unsure, but we are still certainly in the slow burn stages. I’m here for it!

Auren finds herself torn in Glint as she’s been captured by the Red Raids, and then rescused/ captured by King Rot’s army, led by Commander Rip (known for ripping the heads off his enemies), and has only ever heard awful things about this army… And of course following the brutality of Sail’s death in Gild, and the death of the Red Raid’s Captain at Auren’s hands… she’s naturally exhausted, worried and scared for her life, the Saddle’s lives and King Midas’ Guards lives…

I can’t blame her for that honestly! That being said, with how much we had heard of King Rot and his army, I did expect (both going into Glint, and while reading Glint) for this book to be so much darker than Gild. It wasn’t! And this is a positive and a negative – because I think I just expected things to be so much harder / worse, that it was almost too slow in parts… I felt like there were parts where there just wasn’t anything really happening, which was a shame.

I enjoyed getting to know the fourth army, I won’t say who but I decided I liked one of the side characters and was going to riot if they died (considering I really liked Sail and I lost him too!) – and thankfully, I wasn’t betrayed again by this author. I still will be very careful about deciding to like any of the side characters because I don’t know if I trust Kennedy not to kill off the kind characters ha. But between Rip, Lu, Judd and Os and in my opinion, my mystery side character whom I love but thought would die but didn’t die, we had no shortage of characters to start falling in love with! I’m very excited for what this could mean going forward (you know me, I love a found family – are we going to get one?).

There were a number of additional POVs in Glint that I didn’t expect – and actually I quite liked some of them! I do think it’s very easy to quickly be overwhelming the reader if there are a lot of POVs suddenly when there wasn’t before… but I like what we are getting so far. I can’t help but wonder if we’re going to get a POV from the romantic interest (whenever that decides it’s going to happen)? But whether we do or do not get his POV, I am so far alright with the ones we’re getting!

You know, I rated this 3.5 stars after I read it because I found it slower than Gild and there were portions of it that felt like nothing was happening… But when I look back on the last sort of section of Glint, I’m giddy! Giddy with excitement for what is to come based on the reveals and the happenings at the end of Glint. I can’t help but wonder if my 3.5 rating was harsh – but I do stand by it because I ultimately didn’t love it more than Gild, it was just easier to stomach albeit slower… But yeah, that ending… there is no way I’m not continuing this series.

“If you tried, you could shine brighter than the fucking sun. Instead, you’ve chosen to sit back and wither.”