AURARIA by Tim Westover_Review

Reviewed for Great Minds Think Aloud


Auraria: A Novel by Tim Westover

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


A delightfully winsome and cozy historical fantasy, set in Northern Georgia; an alternate history of a factual locale, a near-ghost town which, like so many, was founded on the potential boom of a gold rush. Auraria, in this book, is not what one might expect to find, however; instead, it is something more akin to Faeryland: singing trees, fish that live in mist, and much, much, more.

Staid Mr. James Holtzclaw, right-hand man for a land acquisitions firm-a man who values order and symmetry-is about to experience his perception of reality undergoing a kaleidoscopic change. Holtzclaw plans to travel to Auraria to buy up all the land possible, for his employer’s unstated purposes; but folks in Auraria are much more clever than he has any right to expect.

Really, Holtzclaw should have paid much closer attention to the mythical and bizarre figures on the gold coins his employer handed him, to use for payment to the landowners of Auraria and environs. And he should have listened to what folks told him about Auraria…




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