Quick Stats
Overall: 4.5 stars
Characters:4.5/5
Plot:5/5
Setting:5/5
Writing:4/5

This review might not make a ton of sense if you haven’t read my review of A River of Royal Blood, so feel free to do so here.
Once again, Amanda Joy drew me head first into a lush, magical world. The world-building remains my favorite part of the duology, and I genuinely have nothing negative to say on that point. It’s beautiful and perfect to escape into (because who doesn’t use reading as a form of escapism?).
We got a lot more characterization in this book, which was great! I loved watching Eva, Aketo, and even Isa grow as characters. Especially Isa. She felt very underdeveloped in the first book, but she really gets her time to shine in the A Queen of Gilded Horns and I am here for it! We learn a lot about her personality, her motivations, and just why she is who she is, which was something I felt was lacking in ARoRB. I liked the split POV, although I kept getting confused for a minute when it switched back to Eva, because it went from third person to first person. Not in a bad way, just like, wait, what just happened I thought this book was in third person? But I stopped getting so jarred about halfway through the book.
Then we get back to Falun. Falun was my least favorite character in the first book, simply because he has no point. He felt as if he was only there for tokenized LGBTQ+ rep. He had no point. I was really hoping he would have more of a point in this book. He didn’t. He actually had less of a point. A few more bi characters were present in this book—still a bit tokenized, but at least less blatantly—so what little purpose he served in the first book, ceased to exist in this one. He was there, but only ever mentioned in passing. I still maintain that the series would have been stronger if his character simply didn’t exist.
The plot twist (I guess you can call it that?) at the end did surprise me. It made sense, kind of. All the clues were there, but there was no real explanation given, so it fell hollow. The entire ending wrapped up too quickly. A lot of things needed some explaining. They just happened with little to no solid reason behind it other than that’s what needed to happen to achieve a happy ending.
However, the plot and writing were otherwise very good. I didn’t have any issues with awkwardness in the writing and dialogue like I did in the first book. Everything flowed smoothly up until the ending. The plot kept me hooked from the start and I think that how good it was throughout made the lackluster ending all the more jarring.
Despite its faults, it was a solid conclusion to a great—and grossly underrated!—fantasy duology.