Title: A Touch of Gold
Author: Annie Sullivan
Rating: 4.5/5
Retelling of: King Midas
The Twist: The curse of Midas has already happened, and we see how it affects the daughter he turned to gold during his curse. Also, pirates.
Let me just open by saying — yes, this isn’t a fairy tale per se. However, I think any myth that perpetuates and is retold by different cultures counts very much as a retelling suitable to be counted among fairy tale retellings.
And boy, was this an amazing retelling. Annie Sullivan threw me into a world of adventure I was not expecting when I opened this book. Y’all I didn’t even read the summary all the way. I just saw “story about King Midas’s daughter” and I was like “Um, yes, sign me up.”
What I got was a high-seas adventure of a golden-skinned girl with a gold touch curse chasing down stolen gold. And I love me some high seas, pirates, and gold-chasing. Also fairy tales and curses. A total win-win for me.
If you like pirates, Greek mythology retold, and stories with feminine-but-strong heroines, A Touch of Gold is perfect for you.
The General Overview
The story opens with a glimpse of what it’s like to be turned to gold. Sullivan makes it sound downright terrifying, as I imagine it would be. And then we back up a bit, explaining how we even got here.
In A Touch of Gold, Midas is king because of a prophecy come true. Or so the townspeople think. And being king goes to his head. War is looming, and to fill the coffers (and his greed) he wishes for a golden touch from the often tricky Dionysus. And Dionysus delivers.
Thirteen objects are turned to gold, the thirteenth being young Princess Kora herself. Midas repents and asks for a way to cure the curse. The answer? Wash everything — everything — in water where the river meets the sea before sunset.
Midas only washes Kora before the sun sets. She reverts back to human, but after the sun sets her skin turns back into gold, but she is still a living and breathing human. The remaining cursed objects stay gold as well and start to eat at her father’s health.
Fast forward a decade and it looks like we’re about to settle in for a courtship plot. There’s a charming duke, who doesn’t seem phased by Kora’s literally-gold skin, and an evil Archduke who is rubbing his hands together waiting for an opening to attack and take over. But all those things get disrupted when eleven of the twelve golden objects are stolen — a move that could ultimately kill King Midas.
Kora makes the difficult choice to leave the only place she’s ever known and chase off after the gold, with the help of the duke who is courting her and his friend, a young ex-captain of the Royal Armada. Suddenly we’re plunged into a story of chasing down gold, which Kora can sense, to steal it back from pirates, specifically the infamous Captain Skulls, who collects the skulls of his victims.
But not all is as it seems, and Sullivan takes us through several shocking twists before we reach the end. The adventure isn’t the only world-shattering experience for Kora, who struggles to navigate newfound and fledgling love, family loyalty, her understanding of herself, and how scary the world is outside of her garden walls.
In a way, it’s a bildungsroman, which is just a fancy German word to say “a growing up story.” Kora leaves home, experiences first love (and first heartbreak), being independent, making her own choices, and summoning the bravery to push through it all to fight for what’s really important.
Not unlike my college experience, except I didn’t have the pirates. In real life, anyway.
There were two things I especially liked about Sullivan’s writing, and Kora in particular. One is that the writing is light and often light-hearted, without cheapening experiences like death or romance. Sullivan weaves in moments of just adorable humor that feels natural and funny right where it’s needed. As for Kora, she’s a more traditionally feminine heroine who, even despite some sword-fighting lessons, never turns into the Perfect Warrior Maiden or any other tropes or stereotypes. I actually liked that she stayed feminine through most of the story, and that she found her own unique ways of fighting back — or staying out of the fight to save as many lives as possible.
In the end, she finds a way to stay true to herself, without letting her curse define her. However it does go a long way in helping her get the gold back and save her father.
The Original Story Factor
The original story for this one is tricky because there are a couple of King Midas myths floating around, as well as records of real King Midases in history. Or so they say. Midas’ story isn’t very well recorded. A simple google search gets you a vague overview of the story, but no specifics on the tellers (aside from Ovid and his Metamorphosis). There is a bit more on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s version of the story, however.
From what I can tell, that’s a lot of where this story was inspired. Of course, I can find out for sure in a few days, because I snagged an interview with the author. But until then, I do see some parallels between her book and the short story by Hawthorne. Namely that both feature a daughter who desperately loves her father, and who is transformed into gold by him. Midas in both stories is also incredibly regretful of his gift upon losing his daughter, and the call to bathe the gold with water is evident in both tales.
But that’s where the stories end, and most of that is wrapped up in Sullivan’s first few chapters. This story is about Midas’s daughter, not King Midas, and we aren’t watching a girl repeat her father’s mistakes. She has a golden touch of her own, but it works differently, and unlike her father she tries to use it as wisely as possible, though she really avoids using it at all.
But those moments when she does? They’re worth the risk, and they can be pretty epic, honestly.
The Criticism
Sullivan shines when it comes to plot twists and sudden shocks, but I was a little disappointed by the worldbuilding and setting work that was going on. We start off in what seems like a Greek or Mediterranean setting, with Greek gods named off (namely Dionysus, Triton, and Poseidon), yet the pirates feel very…well…piratey. As in 17-18th century piratey.
I was definitely imagining the ships and sails of Europe circa 1700 instead of the mega-sail multi-oar pointy-beard ships of Ancient Greece. Is this a bad thing? Well, maybe not, but I think it could have been established whether or not this was Ancient Greece or a fantasy with a few hundred years’ more technology. The problem for me lies in keeping things vaguer than need be. You tell me whitewashed buildings and tile roofs and Dionysus and Oracles, I still think Ancient Greece. You place most of the plot on a ship that has masts and rigging and sails and pirates in the most traditional sense, and, well…I’m confused. Loving it, because pirates, but confused.
Perhaps a bit more detail, or a bit of world history, would have helped. Maybe it’s like Greece but close to 1700? What are the gods doing in that era? Does anyone remember them? Or is it ancient, still? Then tell me about the togas! The laurels! The temples!
Another, smaller critique is that the pacing is a little off at times. Moments where I wanted to linger were barrelled on through, though not heavy-handed. I just like to take my time, and I wasn’t allowed that for certain things like romantic moments or somber moments. Sometimes you just need to take a moment and live the aesthetic for a few more paragraphs, you know? I didn’t always get that when I wanted it.
That sounds a little snooty, but truly I think pacing one of the hardest things writers deal with. I’m still working on it myself. It wasn’t a major issue in the story, I just noticed it a few times, mostly when I was — like I said — just wanting to linger in a moment for a paragraph or two.
My final critique is the ending. Oh my stars, the ending. When I flipped the page and saw “Acknowledgements” instead of the next chapter I literally was like “Nu-uh that’s fake” and flipped through the acknowledgements thinking there would be a chapter hidden behind it.
It just…ended so abruptly. I needed more. I needed a resolution. I needed an arrow pointing to where the future lay. Instead the ending is a bit…it’s almost a cliffhanger. Spoiler alert, but Kora saves the day, but there isn’t time to linger in the victory. The chapter ends a few short paragraphs later, leaving me with a lot of unanswered questions.
I’m not normally one for epilogues, because I feel like a lot of the time they run the risk of being badly done, and when they’re badly done they’re badly done, but I’d like one for this story. Or a sequel. Give me more of Kora and her Love of Choice (I’m not revealing who it is because that’s a spoiler). I need to know how she’s doing. I need to know the answered to the questions we were left with!
Final Thoughts
I think A Touch of Gold is a story worth soaking into. While it doesn’t always give me those moments to linger, what it does give me is a sense of high-speed, action-packed adventure that smacks beautifully of the usual three-test trials of fairy tales and mythologies, as well as mythical adventures with sirens and pirates and so on. At one point I was so enthralled with the action, letting it shoot my forward like a shot out of one of the pirates’ cannons, I was pretty much curled around the book like I was braced for impact.
That means it’s pretty great writing, honestly.
A Touch of Gold keeps you on your toes with its sense of classical adventure, while also serving a healthy dose of humor and romance to balance things out. It’s a story that keeps your attention from start to finish, as you never know what’s going to happen next or who’s what or if up is down sometimes, but in a way that makes you want to find out the truth immediately. What it lacks in its worldbuilding and pacing, it makes up for in pure, exciting action, and though the ending does seem a little abrupt, everyone got what they deserved.
At least, I think so anyway.
Keep checking in this upcoming week for an exciting interview with Annie Sullivan, the author of A Touch of Gold! Have any burning questions to ask her? Message me or comment them below!