thoughts on the gilded blade from the spoilers
I have a lot of thoughts on this, but based on the ending of Glorious Rivals, I just knew that The Gilded Blade would be either a hit or a miss. From the spoilers we have received, it is likely to be a miss, and here is why:
1) Bringing back Emily literally undoes the first three books of the saga, it means what the character's went through was for nothing and feels like a cheap shock factor.
Now, I'm no expert, but I firmly believe that a good plot twist is when the reader can see all the loose ends tied up together. They can reread the book and see how everything was connected in one way or another, even if they missed it the first time. With this it feels like the twist came out of nowhere and I know that the book isn't released yet but we know how important Emily is to the story, if she was alive than the foreshadowing should be from the book 1, maybe something like her body wasn't found but it was and we knew that she was dead.
Jlb has also used the characters being alive plot twist for so many times now that it has lost it's value, now if a character is in danger or something I don't worry much because I know that she can just bring them back in next book.
2) The OG characters are taking up too much time and space in books, now I get wanting to see your favorite characters but I feel like this book and trilogy is relying too much on the old characters and I don't like it, it's like getting Toby's pov in The Final Gambit and epilogue being him getting to live with Avery and how happy he is with it. Also, let's not forget how advertising is mostly about the OG characters and very less of new characters, it feels like nostalgia baiting.
This wouldn't be a problem if it was done right, if we had few Jameson chapters and the story didn't end with them, it would have been fine. E.g. In Release Me by Tahereh Mafi, we get Warner's pov, he's not a main character but it's not a problem because he only has 5 chapters in the book. He's storyline with Juliette is important but it's not taking up almost half of the book or overshadowing James and Rosabelle.
3) Jlb is highly focusing on quantity instead of quality, she's trying to add everything to the book and it isn't working because there's already too much to focus on. She's prioritizing plot over character arcs and it fails because characters are just as important. She doesn't address trauma of some characters properly and we got that from the first trilogy but we see how towards the end Emily SA's Grayson and also has Jameson tied up, you want me to believe that the characters are just going to heal from it? Jameson, Avery, Xander, Grayson and many other character's trauma isn't explored properly, which is an important part of them. Like are we just supposed to forget how Jameson uses thrilling activities as a form of SH, how Grayson hallucinates, how Avery keeps everything inside, how Xander was affected from knowing that Tobias kept his father from him. It just goes on and on with many characters, I'm not asking them to heal but it would be nice if their trauma was explored more properly.
E.g. In A Good Girl's Guide To Murder Trilogy by Holly Jackson, we see Pip suffer through a lot but we also see how she copes with it, how she's changed because of it, we don't see her heal but we do see how she deals with it.
