Veil of Gold

Veil of Gold, by Kim Wilkins

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.

This was an interesting book, catching my eye because of possible similarities to Enchantment, by Orson Scott Card, which I still re-read. This book has a lot more mysticism and a lot less humor than Enchantment. The worlds that Wilkins creates are richly imagined, peopled with creatures both bad and badder. Like all good fairy tales, it is about the journey, not the destination. The very beginning draws you in, with the discovery of the gold bear in the bathhouse. Clearly there is something unusual about the bear, proven both in it's discovery and in the electricity which passes between the bear and those it marks. Vasily, Rosa's uncle, is introduced to us and starts off promisingly, but in the end, his main purpose is plot device - leaving long enough for Daniel and Em to take the bear and go, then returning in time to send Rosa chasing after them. Most of Veil of Gold is split into two tales - that of Daniel and Em, trying to escape Skazki, and Rosa, stuck in Mir and looking for a way to cross over and rescue them. Interspersed with both of these stories is the history of the gold bear, as narrated by Papa Grigory, who has played many parts in Russia's history. The bear is a **spoiler!** MacGuffin, leading both characters and readers onward only to pull up abruptly in the end.


The end, in fact, is where I have most of my beefs. Through the book, we are given hints of various mysteries, including Rosa's reasons for breaking up with Daniel, Elizavetta's sickness, the bear's motives, and Papa Grigory's end game. Things are tied up neatly, but after finishing it, I kinda went back and thought it all out and went, ". . . really? Really?" Because, and I don't want to give too many things away here, but Rosa broke up with Daniel because she knew she would get Alzheimer's? Seriously? Yes, a disease you will likely die from when you're in your fifties is a great reason to break up with someone, then flee the country and refuse to tell them why you left. And I know that's a terrible way to go, but seriously, someone needs to slap some sense into that girl. So there's that. And also the terrible incompetance of Papa Grigory, who after all his shenanigans, apparently cannot notice after ninety years something that takes Rosa twenty minutes to figure out. Pssssh. So, all in all, a good book, a gripping book, and the scenes on the banks of the river in Skazki, where Daniel is abducted by russalki, are not to be missed. It's just - the ending is abrupt, and doesn't quite match the rest of the book. Still a good read, though.