This is one of the books that gripped me and pulled me in right from the start and would not let go
The setting of the South America-esque world feels incredibly lush and vivid, the blend of old style with new technology in a post-apocalypse society. The way the suns work is just incredibly fascinating, especially with the magic system tied into it. I cannot say I fully understand it, but that complexity and importance of light is what made it real.
Character-wise I enjoyed Lax and Ilumi the most, but all of the characters felt very distinct and intriguing, easy to like and follow, and when the individual stories crossed or connected, it was always a joy to see. I am not so sold o the side characters tho
The story itself... I like the individual arcs of the characters, but I am not sure of the overarching story. It remains a bit too undefined? Could be just because this is the first book and setup, although I do feel like it set up a lot, without giving enough answers
Where it lacks for me is the ending, which felt... not rushed, but in certain parts not as well set up. And again, lacking answers. The other thing which stood out to me a bit negatively was the writing style, because there were parts that showed that this is a debut. Also the ways the chapters ended. In the beginning i liked the dramatic cuts, but since they kept repeating they lost their power and slid into a bit of... drama for the sake of drama. BUT I can easily look this over. This is excellent work for a debut, and as someone whose first language is not english, and too learned to write in english, I do have to appreciate the dedication. Writing is hard, and writing in your second language is even harder (i did not expect the author to be hungarian, that came as a massive surprise, hello neighbor)

Premise and concept looked very promising and a perfect recipe for a High fantasy novel. I gave innumerable genuine attempts at this book, but its a very slow burn and has eventually landed me in a reading slump.
Every chapter a new character is introduced and we are not able to form any connection between them. It fails tremendously at generating interest and establishing the magic system even after 38%. I dont see any benefit of my time to keep pushing through it in hopes of finding out something interesting eventually.
Not worth the time. Thank you Netgalley for the opportunity to review the Arc and share my honest opinion.

Took a while to get into it, but then I couldn't stop reading it. A few mistakes here and there with tenses and grammar, but generally well-written. Not too stuck in describing every little detail, like Tolkien, and moves the action along at a decent pace.
The world-building is intriguing, and leaves you wanting to know more about what happened in the past. Definitely want to know more about how people are able to do 'findings'.
Characters are interesting, but as it's only the first in a series, leaves you with plenty of questions about them, their motives and how they are connected, which will hopefully be answered in the rest of the series!
I recommend giving this book a read if you like your fantasy with a healthy dose of science mixed in.

Rating: 3.8 stars

I don't know how to feel about this book, I like it and I am also very confused by it. It's an interesting world, with a mystery about it. Grieving Gold feels like a long intro for book to come.

I enjoyed individual plots of each character, but I still don't really get what is the plot of the book overall. In last 30% or so, individual plots start to combine more and more but the way the book ended felt very abrupt.

I like the approach of individual stories joining into one story, and what would have made this book much better if it ended with a more solid wrap up. Lax's story is the only one I feel stopped at a nice point. Dawb's maybe too. Both are a huge cliffhangers nevertheless.

World-building is nice, though maybe a bit slow. I feel way too confused about some aspects, though I think it may be on purpose.

With so many characters with their own stories, contributes to a feeling of reading first 100-15o pages of 500+ page book. I loo forward to the next one, as I am very very curious about this mysterious evil force. And gods, and Operators (who I believe to be lab people from the Intro), and what happened to the city in the past for so much to be lost.

NetGalley ARC honest review:

3.5/5

Upsides: the world building and themes of magic in this book are pretty unique, and a lot different than any other recent fantasy book I’ve read. It’s a completely new concept in terms of typical scifi/fantasy stories, which I liked. It isn’t tropey, the story gets quite complex with layers of betrayal, politics, hierarchy & layers of magic. Id say it has a ton of potential to be a really interesting series!!

Downsides: The 5-6 different character POVs start out overwhelming, and the first half of the book is more convoluted than explanatory. I think readers would benefit from a bit more backstory and detail, rather than jumping right into so many different characters. There were times when I wanted to ‘DNF’ because the storyline gets murky. This is a very very complex world (which could be quite interesting if it was developed further) but we aren’t given a lot of explanation as far as the history of the world or how the different types of magic work, so the differing POVs end up being confusing. I found myself having to re-read chapters to try and grasp what was going on because nothing was completely informative.

Overall: That being said, the book really picked up in the second half and I enjoyed the way the different character storylines began to converge. It definitely ended on a cliffhanger, and I’d look forward to reading the next book. I hope with the development of the trilogy some of the foggy details and descriptions become a bit more clear!

I must say, the world building in this book is tier A grade, I'm so in love with the world building in this book!
This book fallows 5 individual chars that do interlink at some point.
The characters a well thought through and built up, it was so interesting to get to know them. But you must take your time and maybe take some notes, otherwise it can be overwhelming. I can not wait to read more stories in part 2 “Crippling Crimson".

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for offering this eARC in exchange for an honest review.

DNF at 20%

I wanted to enjoy this book as the summary had everything I wanted in a book (multiple POVs, diverse characters, an interesting magic system/world, etc.), but the writing made it parse through. From the very first page, I felt as though I was thrown into the deep end, and I never found my way out. The plot points were scattered and unrefined, there without much reason behind them. I rarely DNF, so I will likely give this another go, as I think the story has some potential and hopefully finds its footing as it progresses.

When I saw the cover and read the blurb thought about one of my top series/writer: Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories by Fritz Leiber.
There something in the world building that seems to be inspired by Leiber's novels and I enjoyed it even if the pace it's a bit uneven at times.
3.5 upped to 4
Many thanks to the publisher for this ARC, all opinions are mine

I was ready to champion this book because I really like this author and the project they're working on. I think the covers are absolutely excellent and the book definitely has the feel of a Cosmere novel by Brandon Sanderson, so I think it's accomplishing what was intended and a lot of people will really like these books.

There are just a couple things that kept pushing me away every time I thought I could get into it. Admittedly two of them are the result of the audiobook narrator and may not be related to the author at all-- 1. the voice actor puts on a falsetto for the female voices that makes them sound weak and dumb and just generally unlikable even when the narrative does not, 2. the voice actor puts on offensive stereotype accents for the "thugs" that felt uncomfortable to listen to.

The other thing that I found jarring was how often fatness was used as a shortcut to describe unlikable characters, or how the narration would disparage their multiple chins/etc. It's been awhile since I've encountered this in a book, and admittedly I know little of Hungarian culture or what's common/acceptable there so take this criticism with a grain of salt. But for my background, it felt really uncomfortable to read.

Apart from that, I felt about the same way reading this as I did when I recently started reading the Stormlight Archive for the first time and I think there will be an overlap in the audience that enjoys it.

DNF at 25%

Unfortunately, I just couldn't gel with this book. To me, it felt a little choppy with each chapter having a different POV with no link to others prior and I had a hard time keeping up with everything.

Other than this the world-building seemed fantastic. Gutted I couldn't do more.

Thank you to NetGalley for the eARC of Grieving Gold by Daniel McDaniel!

I enjoyed this story. I don't want to summarise about the plot, as its definitely the type of book to go in blind (the blurb is enough)!

There's multiple POV's with different storylines, large amounts of world building and a unique magic system.

Really great start to what looks to be a great series!

The writing in this story is lovely. I started out really enjoying things, with engaging characters and excellent world-building... but things soon became just a bit too complicated.

The multiple points of view were tough to keep track of as so much was happening with everyone, and it wasn't immediately clear how they related. I found returning to the book difficult, as while it was clear who was narrating, so much had happened since I'd last 'heard from' them that it took a while to catch myself up.

I will be finishing this in due time as it certainly was enjoyable - the magical technology was especially interesting - but for now had to DNF at about 1/3 through.

A fantastic start to what will surely be an amazing series of books, beautifully written, would recommend

First, I would like to thank NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me to read an ARC of this book.

This Aztec-inspired novel is the beginning of an all-new fantasy series by Author Daniel McDaniel. While this is the first book I've read by this author, it was advertised as "perfect for fans of Brandon Sanderson and George R.R. Martin, so I was intrigued.  Plus, the cover art was gorgeous! While mostly sci-fi/fantasy, there are elements of horror as well.

In Grieving Gold, we meet 5 protagonist characters all living in Luminocity: Laxerion, and his brother Val-Gustus; young scientist Illumi; huntress Aiana; and conman Dawb. The world-building in this novel is beautiful and complex, full of detail and dark, twisty corners and a system of magic. The characters are well-developed, likeable and well-woven with unique and engaging POVs.. The author does a great job with the pace and writing in an easy-to-understand way and really transports you into the story and makes you feel like you're on an actual adventure. The book is very ambitious and a bit long, but the plot moves along very quickly. It really pulls you in and pulls you along so you can't put it down!

I will definitely be recommending this book to my sci-fi/fantasy friends, and also anyone looking for a new and different magic series. I really like this book and will definitely be anxiously awaiting the sequel (especially because of that cliffhanger) ...

This is such an epic fantasy, and I absolutely loved the world building! This was quite complex and sometimes confusing but the plot is interesting and addictive…

There is multiple POV which I personally love, and given the number of different characters, the story is well thought out. It was quite slow at times, but this is common for an epic fantasy, and it works well within the story. I will definitely be picking up the next instalment in this series!

Thank you for making this book available for reading!

This was a very enjoyable read. McDaniel really went all-in with the worldbuilding, creating a colorful, intriguing atmosphere, and characters filled with life, goals, plans and plots.

I specifically want to give credit to the wonderful writing, especially considering that this is not the author's mother tongue. It reads fluidly and is genuinely enjoyable and intriguing, reading quite like the works of other seasoned authors of the genre.

Some of the things I particularly enjoyed with this series was the magic system - it is original, something I haven't come accross before, and fits the world McDaniel created perfectly. The characters and points of view, albeit in quite a large number, were distracting at first, but over the course of the book things came to make sense, and really had me on the edge of my seat for the next chapter. I won't spoil too much, but I am really looking forward to see what will be next for this author and the series!

A slow start and a bit confusing at times early on but I bared with it and I'm glad I did. Multiple POV and world building leads to and interesting book, lots of characters and hopefully it will all tie up in the next volumes. Thanks to Endless Equinox and Netgalley for this review copy

4.5*

I haven't read something this unique in such a long time and I'm so excited to continue this series!

Normally with as many POV's as this book has it can be so hit or miss for me. The author has done such an amazing job of making each character distinct so there was never a point when it felt like they were all morphing together. it's rare that I enjoy every POV when there is this many but I wasn't bored by a single storyline.

The plot and the world this is set in was so intriguing and unique that I just loved seeing the story unfold. There was a few points when I was slightly confused by the abilities and the focus on light, but in all, there was no major info dumping which was nice. There's nothing that takes me out of a story more than masses of info dumping!

I will 100% be continuing with this series and can't wait to see where the story goes!

<i>Thank you to Netgalley, the publisher and the author for providing me with an E-ARC of this book</i>

First of all I want to thank the author and NetGalley for gifting me this book!

I gave this book 3.5 stars. It was a bit slow in the beginning and I had no idea what it was about. Towards the 150 page mark it started to pick up and from then on it became really good and very entertaining. I do have to say that i still don’t know where this story is going. Their are to many pov’s and to many subplots to understand what the main plot is. The world building was amazing and very well written. The magic system was very cool and interesting. Though both the world building and the magic system needed more explaining. Some things you learn when you read through the book but other things I still don’t understand.
I did find the scientific explanations in this book amazing. I really liked ilumni’s point of view because of the science in it.

This book was very entertaining and I can’t wait for the second book I really want to see where this story is going.

Thanks to NetGalley for this ARC

I really thought this was promising at first but it really began to falter as the book progressed.

Pacing is a huge issue here. By the end…. Not much has actually happened. We’re somehow still setting things up.

The world building: I’m still unclear why the city is reluctant to go to war. I do love the premise of multiple suns and light vs darkness. I wish there was more about the magic of finding and losing things in the light - it seems not everyone can? And there are different kinds of affinities perhaps? Maybe my biggest gripe here is that the level of technology begins to show cracks (scanning cards? Hold music? How?).

Characters: The number of POVs begins to expand to the point where some characters get let behind. Lax’s storyline started promising and then just became so incredibly dull. Val feels childish and annoying in his singleminded view despite having grown up in the realm of nobility. The others feel more fleshed out.

The building blocks are here, I’m just not sure this was executed to the fullest potential.