Tale of Gold Leaf

Self-Published

Community Rating

Description

Sayuri Ueichi, heiress to the world-straddling Ueichi conglomerate, is half made of gold. The golden wires implanted in her skin are an unmatched feat of engineering giving her command over powers that no one, least of all her, actually knows the extent of.

On the day she is to be unveiled, a rival conglomerate assassinates her parents and attempts to kidnap her. She is saved by Thomas Chester, a washed out veteran who is part of a colonized underclass whose lives are made miserable by the same technology embedded in Sayuri's skin, and the two are forced to cooperate to get Sayuri safely back to her family.

The only things standing in their way are the enormous paramilitary armies of the conglomerates, a brewing ethno-national revolution, and a mad man convinced that Sayuri is the key to his dream of military dictatorship.

What to expect:

- Traditional sci-fi pacing

- ~3k word chapters

- A large scale with multiple lead characters

- An irregular release schedule

Information

Status: Hiatus
Year: 2023
Author: Bluesycobalt

Royal Road Stats

Rating: 4.3/ 5.0
Followers: 51
Views: 25,205

Chapters(45 total)

Reviews

No reviews yet. Be the first to share your thoughts!

Community Reviews(2)

Genuine55Royal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
I'm going to turn this into an advanced review later, but in the meantime I'm making this placeholder.
If you're looking for something that reads like an actual novel and not a serial, this is a story for you.
We follow a drunk Pinkerton detective type as he navigates a future corporate dystopia. It's got well written action and rounded characters. Go read it. Or wait for me to finish for more.
ModAddictRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
I will try for minimal spoilers in this review so you can read this safely. I post this review at the end of Book 1.
In short, the quality of this story is great. It feels like something you'd find in a bookstore or library and be completely happy with to take it home and not something you read for free on a website.
As said in the title of the review it's a classic dystopia with a lot of rich vs poor conflict and characters from both side of the conflict ending up together. In that sense it's familiar. But it's also where for me the similarities end. There definitely is a young adult character that's 'special' in some way. But unlike most YA this character, while being the driving motivation behind the plot, does not utterly dominate the story. To the point where I struggle if I should even classify this as a YA story even though it ticks so many boxes. For me the real main character was a different person in the group though in all honesty it probably depends on who you relate to most.
Point being that while it definitely looks at a distance like it fits in the standard dystopia YA box, it ends up stealing the positives of such a setting and losing a lot of the negatives. The setting is really worked out, taking a lot of familiar real world elements and twisting them to be unique enough that you keep being curious. The dystopia is realistic (unlike in some popular fiction) and shows a dedication and depth of knowledge on societal issues and ideologies.
As for the characters, I like the main characters and am truly hooked by following them through their stories. I am not going to say they're perfect because they all seem to really have that specialness about them in some way that sets them apart from the crowd which sometimes can make it feel a bit off. Like a dnd party being full of really unique people with all of their own tragic backstories. Though I want to point out this is nitpicking. I've happily spend hundreds of euros on books that do the same. I am only