Walk on Earth a Stranger (Gold Seer Trilogy)

TW: animal death, mentioned parental abuse, racism & historical prejudice, gun violence, slavery, biological warfare, fatal childbirth, amputation
3.5

Lee Westfall has a secret- she can sense gold. It's a secret that could change her family's life, but her parents have always been wary of drawing attention to their gains, or putting any suspicion on Lee herself, as gold becomes more scarce. Travelling West might be the answer, with more gold to find and no one who knows them- but before that decision can even be made, Lee's parents are murdered. With her best friend running away West himself, and an uncle who seems to know more about Lee and her powers than he should, she has no option but to flee, disguised as a boy. But life in hiding and life on the road are not easy things.

While I liked the concept for this book, it never panned out quite to the extent I'd imagined. Though it is fantasy tinged, for the most part this book acts more like a historical piece than anything else.

I will say, while sometimes on the slower side of things, it is paced well. The time skips are placed perfectly to keep things moving without losing track of anything major. If you enjoy travel stories and the more small detail based down to earth stories then you'll enjoy this pacing. It's not a flashy book, and you have to sink into the story enough to sort of slog the trail with them, but it can make it easier to understand the journey itself.

As I said, it's not a flashy story, and that also means the action is a bit sparse. While there are a some bigger events most of those events are not a grand scale. However, it doesn't make the book less compelling. It's a lot easier to see the stakes as bigger, because you're so close to the characters and their motivations.

Still, the slower pacing and the lower stakes does make everything feel middling. There's a lot of the same, keeping things at an even keel more often than not. Nothing makes too big of an impact, beyond the very beginning, so nothing really feels that dramatic. While I could buy into the events enough to care about them while reading they still didn't make me feel much, and there isn't a lot of excitement.

I also disliked the romantic element. In the beginning of the book it's set up as if Lee doesn't have romantic feelings for her best friend but would have just been friends and travelling companions- which I was happy about. But then, in the middle of everything else, she decides to harp on about how maybe they should have gotten married and her jealousy and him being handsome and it was honestly both very annoying and very exhausting to have to constantly read. There is no organic growth of feelings here, it reads more as Lee trying to hold on to what she has by getting possessive and compromising her feelings/role. Plus, the way in which her love rival is dealt with felt so cheap.

Finally, I just wish there was more magic in this story. I was excited for gold magic and secrecy, but this story is so focused on the more mundane aspects of life and travel that the gold magic barely comes up, and when it does it rarely is actually used for anything important. I'm not really a historical fiction person and I make exceptions for historical fantasy so this not really being much of a fantasy meant a lot of disappointment for me.

While this wasn't really the book I expected or the book for me personally, I do think this is well written and has some interesting ideas.