Veil of Gold, The [Hardcover]

Kim Wilkins (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 22, 2008

When an ancient gold bear is found walled up in a dilapidated St. Petersburg bathhouse, researcher Daniel St. Clair and his frosty colleague Em Hayward set out for the university in Arkhangelsk to verify its age. Along the way they are mysteriously set adrift. Maps are suddenly useless. Lost and exhausted they turn north, sinking even deeper into the secrets and terrors of the Russian landscape.

Daniel’s lost love, the wild and beautiful Rosa Kovalenka, fears the worst when Daniel goes missing and resolves to find him. To do so will mean confronting her past and secrets that she has fought to suppress. The only way to save him is to go forward, where she encounters the haunted Chenchikov clan, a family with their own shadowy tangle of grief, desire, and treachery.

In the unknowable, impenetrable Russian forest, Rosa meets an enigmatic wanderer who is full of tales and riddles of times past. Who might hold the key to Rosa and Daniel’s future--or the destruction of their world.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Praise for The Autumn Castle 
 
"A fascinating adventure on a high note."

--Publishers Weekly
 
“An eerie, dark fantasy of friendship, art, pain, and magic.”

--Locus

 

“Aficionados of dark urban fantasy will find this a fast-paced treat.”

--Jacqueline Carey on The Autumn Castle

 

About the Author

Kim Wilkins is an Australian bestseller who has won an Aurealis Award for both Best Horror Novel and Best Novel. She resides in Brisbane with her husband, son, assorted cats, and far too many books. 

Product Details

• Hardcover: 496 pages
• Publisher: Tor Books; First Edition edition (July 22, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0765320061
• ISBN-13: 978-0765320063
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.6 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,828,876 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars engaging horror fantasy, May 23, 2009

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Veil of Gold, The (Hardcover)

After breaking with her boyfriend the historian Daniel St. Clair, Rosa Kovalenka returns to her homeland Russia for the first time in years to assist her uncle at a St. Petersburg dilapidated bathhouse. Workers uncover a golden statue of a bear buried in the walls. Rosa asks Daniel to authenticate the find. Accompanied by Em Hayward, Daniel suggests asking his former professor in Archangelsk to take a look at the artifact; Rosa agrees.

Daniel and Em drive towards Archangelsk, but vanish somewhere on the two day trek without a trace. While Rosa searches for her missing former lover, the bear has taken the pair into another realm Swazi; a place where a millennium ago when a Russian princess adopted Jesus the country split apart into the land of men called Mir and the realm of dangerous magic Skazki.

This engaging horror fantasy is played out along three well written subplots. First there is Daniel and Em trying to survive the dangerous Skazi realm while finding a way home; then there is Rosa in Russia trying to rescue Daniel; and finally there are asides starring an elderly person telling tales of the history of Russia to his daughter (and readers) around the time that princess caused the split. However, the key to this excellent saga is no one is incredibly courageous or 100 percent evil. Everyone is a little of both with a basic instinct, whether you are a human in Russia or Skazi or a mythical creature, to survive. Thus the underlying message of this exciting tale is ethics are personal so what the reader might find horrific, another person (or creature) might find as the norm. This is a great work by a terrific author.

Harriet Klausner

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Adventure with a Russian Twist, August 15, 2008

By 

Tim Lasiuta "Comic Fan 42" (Red Deer, Alberta) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Veil of Gold, The (Hardcover)

"The Autumn Castle" is an amazing novel from one of Australia's best authors.

Storywise, she combines European folklore and mythology with contemporary influences into a charming, hypnotic tale of search and rescue through time and space. A golden bear leads the way to the storied past of Russia inhablited by entities more at home in Grimms' Fairy Tales than modern day Russia. Daniel St Clair's love, Rosa Kovalenka, goes searching for him and encounters her past and the guidance of a wanderer with more mystery than answers.

Truly, this is a novel far removed from the usual fantasy realm, yet it beckons to a time before fairy tales were replaced by modern day mythologies.

Outstanding!

Tim Lasiuta

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Russian folklore, history, fantasy and magic, May 22, 2009

By 

Alicia E. Castillo "Creating wealth from inno... (Perth, Houston) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Veil of Gold, The (Hardcover)

An exquisit modern novel. With drama, suspense, love, magic. Russian tales and some of the country's historic events come alive with this book...

Beautifully written, the stories unfold surprising the reader, never a boring chapter. the main characters, Rosa, Daniel and Em, are somehow unusual. I greatly enjoyed how the author used the heroines as modern strong-willed women.

although I had never been fond of creatures and demons, I was pleasantly surprised on how well they fit in the story.