The Gilded Wolves by Roshani Chokshi (Book Review)

The Publishers and Author granted me an e-copy via Netgalley. This does not affect my opinions regarding the book.

TITLE: The Gilded Wolves 

BY: Roshani Chokshi

SERIES: The Gilded Wolves #1

GENRE: Fantasy, Fiction, Young Adult

PUBLICATION: January 15th 2019 by Wednesday Books

“I don’t want to be their equals. I don’t want them to look us in the eye. I want them to look away, to blink harshly, like they’ve stared at the sun itself. I don’t want them standing across from us. I want them kneeling.”

Set in a darkly glamorous world and is full of mystery, decadence, and dangerous but thrilling adventure.

Paris, 1889: The world is on the cusp of industry and power, and the Exposition Universelle has breathed new life into the streets and dredged up ancient secrets. In this city, no one keeps tabs on secrets better than treasure-hunter and wealthy hotelier, Séverin Montagnet-Alarie. But Severin doesn’t work alone, he has a crew that features five misfits who happen to be excellent in their fields.

But after one acquisition— it’s what they call their thievery slash treasure-hunting — they found themselves owning a dangerous information that might kill them when their only goal was to acquire an artifact that would be a bargaining chip to the Order of Babel so that Séverin takes back his inheritance that the Order denied him ten years ago.

 

If there’s one thing the reader can expect from the characters, it is that they’re not stupid. They’re genuinely smart. They calculate things before doing something that even if they make mistakes, it won’t be annoying because you know they’re honest mistakes and not out of stupidity. They also know their goals.

That being said, let me start with the characters:

Séverin Montagnet-Alarie – French-Algerian wealthy hotelier and part-time treasure hunter. Supposedly an heir to House Vanth (one of the 4 houses of France)  His goal is to take back his inheritance and is the leader of the gang.

Laila – Indian. Dancer. I love her character arc, she has a past that makes who she is today and what she is aiming for. She has this ability that lets her know things about the object just by touching it. And oh she’s a baker and almost serves as everyone’s mom who reminds me of my close friends in high school. I was the youngest in our whole batch. 🙂 🙂

Zofia – Jewish and Polish. Autistic. She’s a mathematician. I found her funny in some ways and I really enjoy her sorta competition with Enrique.

Enrique – Queer and Biracial – Spanish and Filipino. As you all know I’m a Filipina so this makes me so happy. He’s a historian and struggles with racism because of how he looks like. You all, Enrique’s funny and adorable but his internal monologues pinched my heart more than few times.

Tristan – Séverin considers him his little brother and swore from when they were younger that he’ll protect Tristan. They grew up together in foster care. He’s a botanist and loves his pet tarantula Goliath. I love him the most out of all the characters. He’s just 💖💖 and it is impossible not to love him.

Hypnos – Black, queer and heir to House Nyx. He and Séverin were childhood friends coz they’re both heirs. He’s funny and will steal your heart the moment you meet him.

You all should be ready to be captivated BY these characters. They’re everything we ever wanted in Literature. They embodied all we requested from authors, the answers to our protests due to their absences in the books we’ve read so far. And I’m not even exaggerating.

As for the PLOT and WORLD-BUILDING:

The world and the plot are as genius as its characters but I have a minor issue. First, the pacing is good. The good bits started right away and just kept getting more intense. The plot is also fine, not really the most extraordinary I’ve ever read but thanks to the characters, the plot seems grand. And then there’s the world. It was intricate but carefully woven but you have to pay attention, really give your best to understand everything in the world the author created. The magic system is a bit complicated and you won’t understand it without reading the explanations carefully. And that’s not really a bad thing because the author really did a good job at explaining it to the reader and not in an info-dumping style. And I LIKED It and want to revisit this world.

“But the greatest thief of all was the Order of Babel, for they stole more than just objects . . . they stole histories”

By the way the world has this org called Order of Babel and they possess/protect/collect/wield? Babel fragments. And yeah if you’re thinking this has something to do with the Tower of Babel, you’re right. In this book, it says that FORGING, the magic in this book, originates from that time when people tried creating a tower to reach God and equal His power but God stopped it and  let people speak different languages. So how genius Roshani Chokshi is? She picked a notable event from the Bible, forge an amazing ensemble of characters, tackle some serious and timely issues with so much care and research and use a writing style that’s magic itself. You all, if you haven’t read any of  this woman’s work then you’re missing a lot. She really writes beautifully and creates such amazing worlds.

Overall, I highly recommend this book to every fantasy lovers. This is really Diverse and I will surely recommend this to my book club, “Diverse Divers” We read only diverse books there. 🙂 Before I forgot, this books reminds me of Six of Crows a lot but I’m rating this one less star. I think it’s because with Six of Crows I’m already familiarized with the world and magic system, so my main focus is the plot and characters while in this book, I still have to learn everything and deal with the intricacy.

4 Blissful Pages with lilies.

So guys, will you read this book? Have you read it? tell me what you think. Let’s chat.

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