A Taste of Gold and Iron is a beautiful book. The romance, friendships and familial relationships are wonderful and I loved the slow development of the romance. I also appreciated the way Kadou's anxiety was depicted in the novel. I only wish there was an epilogue.

"A Taste of Gold and Iron" is a meandering, sparkling romance with a light mystery attached, but it's primary focus is on character and relationships. This isn't a bad thing; the plot that's there is weak, with worldbuilding that's initially fascinating but could use a little more detail. That said, if you're here for characters, nuances in relationship, and romance, you'll find a lot to enjoy here. Kadou is a prince, beleaguered by a spiralling anxiety disorder. Evermer has recently been appointed his bodyguard, and instantly dislikes him. As mysteries pile up on top of one another, romance blossoms.

I really enjoyed a great deal of this book - I was in here for a fantasy-tinged romance, and this book more than provided. I particularly enjoyed that the book avoided a certain trope regarding Kadou's ex; I wound up liking that character far more than I had anticipated.

This book, however, is LONG - over 500 pages - and with a secondary antagonist introduced at the last minute, entirely too long. Honestly, the last "surprise!! villain!" plot could have been cut entirely, and the novel would have been satisfying.

Still, I enjoyed this one for what it was, and happily rate it 3.5 out of 5 stars. Thank you so much to Netgalley and to the publisher for allowing me to read this one!

A Taste of Gold and Iron was my most-anticipated book of the year. Look at that cover! The description! A+++

Unfortunately, I might have hyped it up a bit too much in my mind. I wanted to love it, but I'm not the biggest fan of narratives from multiple POVs (especially when they're in the same location and 80% of the time communicating with each other) and I personally think it lost a lot of the political intrigue / will-they-won't-they back and forth by showing us the POV of both main characters. If you're also not a fan of multiple POVs maybe skip this one.

I think it also suffered from comparisons online (tumblr specifically) to the Captive Prince trilogy. If you're looking for a story with a lot of detailed political intrigue this also isn't the book for you. The mystery is a plot device to get the characters together for the most part.

What I did enjoy - Kadou was adorable and occasionally a bad-ass, the concept of a world where the characters can taste metal purity is really interesting and a fantastic set up for a mystery based on coin forgery, and there were some tropes I really love (bed sharing! fake marriage!)

Alexandra Rowland's A Taste of Gold and Iron was everything I was expecting and more. The romance doesn't pick up until about half way through, but there's so much yearning and slow realization that I couldn't put the book down. It's a fantasy romance with plenty of political intrigue, some great doses of humor as well as suspense and action. I loved the honesty from both of these main characters as well as the inclusiveness of the world Rowland has created.

It's a beatifically engrossing tale with enemies-to-lovers, a slow burn, and damn, was my man Evemer poetic and romantic (*happy sigh*). The ending was a little abrupt for my taste, and it felt a little unfinished (like perhaps there should be another book (which I would totally be game for!)).

Other than that, I absolutely loved this world, and I'm placing Rowland on my must-buy list.

4.5 stars!

This may have been a me thing instead of a book thing, but whatever it was, this book was a very slow read. The writing style was just not for me.

The world building was sort of confusing and to be honest, I really did not like one of the main mcs, which will always make it hard to root for the book.

I do recommend it for people who love a long drawn out story that eventually gets to the point.

A third-world political fantasy about a prince and his loyal bodyguard. This is for fans of The Goblin Emperor and Winter's Orbit, and has a really fascinating metals-based magic system. I found the start a little dry and slow going, but once I was in, I read the rest in one sitting - really lovely.

Thank you Net Galley and Tordotcom for the arc of A Taste of Gold and Iron.

A Taste of Gold and Iron Is a fun, MLM fantasy romance that is apparently based on the Ottoman Empire. It’s got enemies-to-lovers, bodyguard/client and a sort-of grumpy sunshine trope. And I enjoyed it all!

Kadou is a prince, and younger brother of the (female) sultan. Evemer is assigned to his detail following a misunderstanding and tragedy where a few of the guards were killed. Because of this, Evemer’s first impression of Kadou is one of contempt. Also in the background, is some political intrigue about a coin counterfeit ring.

As Kadou and Evemer work together to solve the mystery, they slowly have their viewpoints of each other change. What appears to them both, at first, as Kadou’s cowardice, is, in fact, severe anxiety and panic attacks. I feel that Alexandra Rowland’s depiction of what Kadou was experiencing with his anxiety was spot on. As someone who’s dealt with this for my entire adult life, I appreciated the accurate depiction of someone who is struggling with their mental health.

I loved the many side characters, their fleshed out personalities and funny banter. I also loved the diversity of sexual orientation and gender identity. The world of these characters was one that did not discriminate against one’s sexuality or gender, and there were several non-binary characters that were written with care.

The world building was very interesting, as was the type of magic that Kadou and others had: a touch-taste to different kinds of metals, which allowed them to determine what coins were counterfeit. Rowland did an excellent job with all of this.

The slow burn romance was lovely - with the yearning, pining, and ‘strategic’ kisses when on missions. Kadou and Evemer had an adorable romance.

I did feel at times that there was too much describing of places, clothes, etc. I felt some of that could’ve been scaled back for an easier read. There were also times that the banter felt almost too modern, which took me out of the fantasy world. It didn’t happen often, but enough that I noticed.

All in all, I really enjoyed A Taste of Gold and Iron. It gave me lots of feels with the romance, kept me intrigued during the action and made me laugh with the banter. I hope there will be more books in this creative world.

Welcome to Arasht a matriarchal society, where women’s names and choices hold the power. Creating an extremely intriguing (and frankly appealing) political setup.

A Taste of Gold and Iron is a tantalizing LGBTQ+, new adult fantasy novel with an incredible spectrum of representation. A forced proximity, touch them and die romance novel exploring themes of sexuality, religion and acceptance in an elegant and impactful way. This book has amazing character development and I all but guarantee you’ll find yourself invested in Kadou and Evemer from the first chapter.

A Taste of Gold and Iron is a bit slow off the draw, and Kadou’s POV is so anxiety ridden that it is, at times, exhausting. The dialogue gets repetitive and the end of the book dragged. However, the slow pacing helped contribute to character development and buffered the expositional dialogue. Solid world building without info dumping is a rarity, particularly in the fantasy genre.

My favorite thing about this book was that the diverse representation of characters was never treated as a primary character trait. These folks were just so well written!

This wasn't as good as I expected it to be.

The characters were interesting especially how the main character is laced with anxiety and confusion that people in this day may find themselves relating to. However, the story in itself was too flat and revolved so much around youth romance and lustful minds that it threw me off. If not for my love for queer novels, I would've DNFed this book.

I loved it. I loved the romance, loved the friendship, loved the main character grappling with his anxiety in believable ways. The magic was not overly grand at all and yet, every aspect of it was critical to the plot. The Ottoman-inspired fantasy world is beautifully crafted, whole and complete, without feeling like too much is being thrown at you.

Both Kadou and Evemer are flawed but compelling main characters, and I loved watching them grow and change as the book went on- it's what made me so invested in their relationship. Tadek was also a favorite of mine, and it meant a lot to me that the author showed the value of non-romantic relationships in the novel as well. I'm definitely interested in reading more of this author in the future.

For fans of Winter's Orbit by Everina Maxwell or A Marvellous Light by Freya Marske, this is a sure thing.

Thanks to Netgalley and Macmillan-Tor for the eARC! I'm going to need a hard copy of this one.

Reviewed for Shelf Awareness, review will run in the PRO newsletter before release date. Content may change during editing.

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Alexandra Rowland strikes the perfect balance of political intrigue and romance in A Taste of Gold and Iron, a lush Ottoman-inspired fantasy with sweeping emotions and prose worth savoring.
Excited for the birth of his niece, Prince Kadou tries to ignore the casual cruelties of his niece's body-father Siranos. But when an altercation between his guards and Siranos' turns deadly, Kadou's older sister Zeliha, the sultan of Arasht*, strips both men of some of their privileges and publicly reprimands them. As part of his punishment, Zeliha replaces his kahyalar, assigning Evemer as Kadou's primary kahya. More than a bodyguard, a kahya is a highly trained professional in domestic service to the royal family. In most cases, promotion to the core guard would be great honor, but Evemer can't help but resent the "careless-flighty-negligent" [p 51, then repeated] prince responsible for the unnecessary deaths of two other kahyalar.
Evemer's judgments fade to compassion as he observes Kadou's self-sacrificing kindness and realizes some of the behaviors he considered self-indulgent are actually the aftermath of panic attacks. Kadou is his own harshest critic, calling his anxiety and panic disorder "cowardice" and despairing that he'll never be free of it. Rowland writes Kadou's mental illness and the reactions of those around him with nuance, neither ignoring the impacts of mental illness on Kadou's interactions nor using it as shorthand for characterization.
A counterfeiting plot, complete with drunken information gathering, political maneuvering and assassination attempts, pushes the two men together. Their close proximity and domestic relationship leads to gorgeously intimate scenes as the two get to know each other. In one, Evemer finds himself internally justifying a second wash of Kadou's hair just so he can feel it sliding between his fingers a bit longer. And when Kadou offers to return the service, Kadou's discomfort with his position of power and his longing for connection are laid bare.
Rowland's Arasht is queernormative, with central characters of multiple genders and a social structure that seems mostly free of gendered expectations of dress, behavior and occupation. Class is instead the primary social divisor and while he cannot change his status, Kadou is acutely aware of his responsibility to everyone living in the sultanate.
A Taste of Gold and Iron is a beautiful, compelling navigation of power and consent, loyalty and love, trust and hope.

This was wonderful! It's definitely fantasy-light - it lacked world-building, and I really could've used a map and a pronunciation guide, but the romance more than made up for it. It was slow-burn, gentle, and believable. I only wish it had been spicier!

3.5 rounded up to 4 stars.

I loved this so much!!

I wasn’t sure what to expect, since I’ve never read a book like this, but I was beyond surprised. This book was addicting. The characters, the plot—all of it made me eager to see what happened next.

Absolutely loved this book and absolutely loved these boys. Enemies to clueless dorks in love to lovers? One of my absolute favorite romance tropes and these two are truly excellent examples of the possibilities presented by both the misunderstandings, and possibilities, presented by this type of storyline. Also enjoyed the world, the subtlety of the magic, the strength of the secondary characters, and the growth of the main pair.
I really appreciate the way Rowland dealt with anxiety in A Taste of Gold and Iron as well. It something many writers seem to feel is a modern concept and either skip over entirely or use to weaken characters. In this one, it’s strengthens Kadou which, as anyone who’s lived through anxiety knows, is the truth about doing anything outside of of your comfort zone or facing down a threat when you live with an in-house, worst-case scenario, screech owl in your head.

Also Evemer and the grass stains - perfection. If you know then you know.

This review includes spoilers.
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Overall, I did enjoy this book. I really liked the main cast of characters, especially the trio of Kadou, Tadek, and Evemer. I liked the world building, but I do wish there was more taste touching because whenever it did show up, I found it super interesting - especially the part where things can change, like the iron, because of the door hinges. That was incredibly sweet. I also wish there was more about the sea serpents?

As someone with anxiety, I liked how it was represented/described in this book. I also absolutely loved the humor (Tadek is great, but at times felt a bit YA-ish?). Another plus is that this book has lots of queer rep in a world where that is 100% accepted, even in old timey fantasy times, which was nice, and it's not just men who can have powerful/military jobs. None of it felt heavy handed or like the author had a checklist of every diverse thing they wanted to include. Lastly, I also enjoyed the overall writing style, especially how well the lovey-dovey stuff was done. It was more about the intimate details and not super explicit.

But for me, it was around the 70% mark where things started to fall apart. It went from super interesting fantasy with romance in it to…oh. Okay. This is just…mostly a romance. Which I’m mostly fine with because I think all the romance stuff was done exceptionally well and I really liked the two characters who were falling in love, but it just meant that suddenly the whole rest of the story - the evil plot, etc - was really only there for the characters to have something to do while falling in love. I guess I just like more substance with my romance.

Also, I just really didn’t want Siranos to be the bad guy. It was just tooooo obvious and felt extremely cartoonish. And why was the evil sister (also over the top cartoonish) introduced two seconds before all the evil-plot-action went down? It just seemed cheap and predictable. And then more and more questions kept piling into my head, such as:

*They realize Siranos is the bad guy. Siranos knows where the safe house is. Why does not a single person bring this up or suggest they find a new safe house? Sure, they have guards, but it could have been as simple as asking Evemer’s mom if she had any friends in the weaver’s guild (or any friends/family, really) that she trusted and then move to that new house.

*The wedding scene was absolutely ridiculous. I love that it happened and what it did to the romantic elements of the plot BUT - why would the bad guys immediately untie a trained guard just because they asked nicely? And then they let their captives wander off to a corner of the room to chat, unguarded? Once again, this could have made a whole lot more sense if this entire scene happened in the wine-cellar-dungeon while the bad guys were off finding their satoya. Then they could have dragged them out of the dungeon for questioning, then tossed them back in again. Instead they are literally standing in the same room while secretly getting married? And NO ONE notices? No.

*Why do the bad guys leave Melek alive? They beat cir up, tie cir, and hide cir away…Why not just kill cir if they truly are the evil bad guys? In a lot of ways I felt like this book played it too safe, with the only characters who died being those first two in the very beginning who we don’t even know. Okay, maybe it’s not that kind of book…but still. Everything about this book felt safe and cozy, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing just…maybe not what I thought it was going to be.

*The satoya/lie detector woman. Come on. Why wouldn’t the palace already have several in their employment? You would always use two…or even three…to trust that the satoya herself wasn’t lying about the people lying. Then Zehila IMMEDIATELY trusts the one that Kadou stole from the bad guys??? I kept thinking there was going to be some sort of twist there, because they shouldn’t be putting so much trust in a complete stranger but nope…nothing happened.

Other random things:

I kind of wish they would have shown more heartbreak and devastation with Zehilah and the fact that the father of her child is a convict and for her to question if any of their relationship was even real. She mentions the love letters, but she doesn't mention whether she thinks they were real or not. And what even happened with those bad guys, anyway? Were they thrown in jail? Executed? What? Did I miss something? That whole plot just felt weak and pointless…literally just there for the romance to happen. I just liked so many other things about this book, I wish that part of it would have felt more important and well thought out instead of a side quest on the way to true love. That whole plot part gets wrapped up super quickly and then there’s still about 15-20% of the book left to go and I just kind of felt bored, especially since you could tell from a mile away that it was going to be an HEA. And then it just kind of ended and it felt abrupt. I wish there could have at least been a prologue of a page or two of Kadou and Evemer on their honeymoon? I can't be the only one...

However, I would read more books by this author (this was the first I’ve read). Perhaps if I’d known this was going to be 98% romance novel, I wouldn’t have felt so disappointed.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an ARC.

"A Taste of Gold and Iron" was a solid, enjoyable read. It did take a while for Kadou and Evemer to grow on me, and their attraction relied a little too heavily on physical attraction for my personal taste, but the quick pacing and solid prose kept me rapidly turning the metaphorical pages till the end. I loved seeing the casual inclusion of many different queer identities, and it was refreshing to see exes (if Kadou and Tadek could be called that) who still cared about each other as friends. Even if it wasn't mindbogglingly brilliant, there's still a lot to enjoy and recommend.

*I received a free copy in exchange for an honest review*

I almost didn’t get past the first chapter, things were moving so fast and I felt as though I was missing quite a lot of information that I needed to understand what was happening. Thankfully, I managed to push through and started to actually enjoy this book. I really enjoyed the interactions between Kadou and his kahya, especially given Kadou’s reluctance to let them do things for him and their reassurances that they WANT to do things for him. It was nice to have a main character who struggled with anxiety, and to see how he learned to see himself when he was surrounded by people who genuinely cared about him. I did find the interactions between Kadou and his sister to be a bit annoying because she never gave him a chance to speak or fully explain himself before she lost her temper with him, and the fact that she only grew from that at almost the last second was a bit frustrating.

Overall, I really enjoyed reading this (once I actually started I couldn’t put it down) but I felt there could be more context provided about certain things, especially before throwing the reader into the deep end. There seemed to be no explanation for certain cultural things, and I wished for a bit more of that so I could fully understand the world.

I really enjoyed this book! I thought the magic system was very interesting and I really enjoyed the relationships. I really enjoyed the dynamic between Kadou and Evemer, I love an initial misunderstanding of who a person is and a slow change of opinion. The mystery was fairly compelling. I did think there were a few places where there seemed to be more conversation instead of actually doing things, but this is a minor complaint. My biggest complaint is the ending. I guess the ending is fine for a fantasy novel, but it was a little unsatisfying for a romance. I thought this was a stand along but maybe there is a planned sequel?

A Taste of Gold and Iron was truly wonderful from start to finish— an easy five star read for me and genuinely one of my new favourite books.

Loosely based on Ottoman history, ATOGAI follows the story of second born crown prince Kadou and his reluctant, stoic bodyguard Evemer. While there is an interesting plot line revolving around forged gold and political manoeuvres, this is a primarily a fantasy romance and most of the plot and stakes revolve around Kadou and Evemer’s relationship.

Alexandra Rowland has proven themselves to have a wonderful talent at creating extremely genuine and viscerally real characters— both Kadou and Evemer had developed and singular voices, wants and motivations that only grew stronger as the book progressed. I loved seeing how their opinion of each other changed throughout the book, from reluctant allies bonded in a forced relationship to real, true love. I was rooting for them *so* much and Rowland did an excellent job at pacing the relationship perfectly to both build tension and keep things from feeling too rushed.

I always know an enemies to lovers storyline is going to hit different when I genuinely can’t picture the characters together when they first meet— as was the case here with Kadou and Evemer. Kadou is anxious, insecure, deeply caring and loyal character, constantly wanting to do the right thing by both his title and his people. It was wonderful to see Evemer’s analysis of him transform from careless, flighty, reckless to a deep admiration that transformed into love.

On the flip side, Evemer is fastidious, level headed and slow to speak, Kadou’s opposite in many ways. While Kadou’a journey was more about gaining confidence and security, Evemer’s was more about accepting his own value and the power of his voice. Similar, in many ways (two sides of the same coin, if I can make the pun). By the end of the book I was fully convinced on their validity as a couple and in their love.

One of my favourite parts was the portrayal of Kadou’s anxiety. As someone who suffers from anxiety and panic attacks, seeing it represented so accurately and viscerally in a fantasy novel was hugely refreshing. I love how Evemer helped Kadou when he had attacks, viewing him not as broken or damaged but stronger because of it. Kadou’s anxiety was a part of him as a person and a vital part of his story, something I loved seeing.

I genuinely don’t have a single critique— the world building was (although light) interesting and fleshed out, the writing was beautiful and lyrical, and the plot well paced. I couldn’t recommend A Taste of Gold and Iron more and can’t wait to dive into everything else Alexandra Rowland has written. 5/5 stars!

This was a slow burn book, which is not usually my cup of tea, I could not put this book down. For however slow this book moved - I could not get enough of Kadou and Evemer. I was not only invested in their relationship but how they went about solving the conspiracy that was surrounding Kadou and his sister, the Queen.
I think I just realized that this might be a standalone which bums me out - there was so much more that could have been fleshed out. This reads like a great first book to a series - as a standalone I am left wanting so much more from the magic system, the characters... this is a long book and some of the pages could have been dedicated to other things than secondary characters.