October 2020, Wednesday Books
review copy via netGalley, thank you!
In her debut novel A Golden Fury, Samantha Cohoe weaves a story of magic and danger, where the curse of the Philosopher’s Stone will haunt you long after the final page.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.While combing through her mother’s notes, Thea learns that there’s a curse on the Stone that causes anyone who tries to make it to lose their sanity. With the threat of a revolution looming, Thea is sent to live with the father who doesn’t know she exists.But there are alchemists after the Stone who don’t believe Thea’s warning about the curse—instead, they’ll stop at nothing to steal Thea’s knowledge of how to create the Stone. But Thea can only run for so long, and soon she will have to choose: create the Stone and sacrifice her sanity, or let the people she loves die.
My first love is historical fiction so when magic/fantasy collide with it I am happy! This story of a young Thea opens up with her leaving her crazy wizardly mom behind in revolutionary France so she can find her father in England. Thea has learned a lot at her mother's skirts as an apprentice of alchemy and when she reaches her father in England that skill is all she has to her name.
Thea's entire purpose for living is to be loved by William Percy but more importantly to achieve the ultimate success in creating the magical Philosopher's Stone. Fame, health and fortune beckon as Thea pursues this potion but it has to be under the careful watch of captors of her beloved Will.
While there are a few threads of converging storylines with each of the characters the author does not digress far from focusing on the Golden Fury of what is the Philosopher's Stone. The plot is fairly straightforward and could be a double edged sword as it teeters towards lacking in depth but yet again it sticks to the point of the storyline. A Golden Fury is an intriguing debut novel with a spunky heroine in Thea who makes it easy to be invested in her quest, so much so that if there is a sequel I'm on board!
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