Review: The Gilded Wolves by Roshani Chokshi
I have pretty complicated feelings about this book! I really liked some aspects of this book, but a lot of it fell flat to me. I wish I had loved it; I opened it ready to love it. Unfortunately, the more I read, the less I loved it.
The Gilded Wolves is set in 1889 in Paris right before the Exposition Universelle begins. It follows six main characters as they try to pull off a heist, prevent an evil shadowy organization from taking over the magical society, and save the world from fascism. All of these things are things I love.
I did love the characters in this book. Severin, the ringleader criminal mastermind (who is like 70% Kaz Brekker), has a tragic backstory and has been wronged by the Order of Babel, the magical governance body, who have prevented him from becoming the head of his family house. We begin the story with him disenfranchised, and at the tail end of repatriating the objects, the Order has stolen from his family. Severin's father was French, and his mother was North African; this seems to be why the Order will not let him become the head of house.
Tristan, a character I liked early on but didn't have enough page time for me to remember much about him, is Severin's sort of little brother. He is able to forge, wield the magic of the world in the book, and is a genius of the natural world. The other characters treat him like he is 12, so I had a hard time figuring out how old he was meant to be.
Laila, an Indian migrant with a very fraught past, is a part-time baker part-time night club starlet with an unexplained magical ability and a ticking clock on her life. Her narration was always excellent, she is the mother of the group, and I look forward to seeing more of her in later books.
Enrique is a bi (woop for bi male rep) Spanish/Filipino historian and political activist. He is kept out of helping Filipino activists due to being biracial, and his goal is to help liberate his country. He has one of the most interesting motivations, in my opinion.
Zofia, tied for my favorite, is a Jewish immigrant who seems to be autistic. She is a mad engineer type; she used her ability to forge in her creations. I loved every minute she was on the page; I felt her emotions so deeply. I loved Zofia.
Hypnos, my other favorite, is a French/Haitian gay man who is the head of one of the two remaining houses of France. He is performative and over-the-top in basically every way. I love him. He is capable and smart and very in tune with how others perceive him and how to use that to his advantage. The entire book I was just dying for the other characters to fall in love with Hypnos the way I had.
I loved how diverse our core group of characters are! It is Paris in the 1980s; people are flocking there from around the world, from places that had been colonized and elsewhere. I particularly found the way Roshani Chokshi wrote about being mixed race to be interesting. She is herself mixed race, and I liked that she didn't give Enrique and Hypnos the same experience, and the way she talked about all the minority characters' interactions with white French society was so well done. I especially liked having a Jewish character, pre-war Europe is obviously a tipping point on how Jewish people are reacted to politically in Europe, and I thought Zofia was a great character overall. I mostly just am a massive sucker for an ensemble cast. Found family is hard-core my thing. Chokshi kicks ass at found family; the group scenes early in the book were beautiful.
The setting was so deftly done. We go everywhere you expect to go in a novel set in Paris. I was unsurprised by some of the location-specific plot points, but I don't think that is Chokshi's fault; if you are in Paris, there are places you have to hit. I really liked how she used Paris as a way to talk about the exploitation of other cultures. She handled this wonderfully and made her point very well without taking the reader out of the narration.
Speaking of the narration. I have heard that this book is much less synesthetic than her previous YA, but every time a character tasted an emotion or memory, I was a pulled out of the narrative to make sense of the metaphor. Chokshi writes beautifully, but occasionally that beauty made the prose confusing. I think this was exacerbated by my listening to an audiobook and not reading the physical book. I will be reading book two to try to see if my hunch is correct.
The plot is exciting but not very streamlined. It is convoluted. I was baffled by what was going on a few times throughout the book and felt like this book needed an extra 50 to 100 pages to be easier to follow. I did love the way she blended mythology from so many places together and how she handled the interplay of mythology and science. It just felt like the plot needed a bit of room to breathe.
I loved the politics of the book, the contention was everywhere, and I was so into it.
I did not love the romance of this book at all. I just was not that into the conflict keeping the main couple apart. I don't find "we love each other deeply but can never speak of it again" that interesting the older I get. And the Enrique love triangle was super interesting, especially because I love the two characters he is torn between, but I don't know how comfortable I was with the only bi person being torn between a boy and a girl, art and science. He just seemed a bit like a confused bisexual stereotype. I am very curious about how his storyline progresses in future books.
I have read some reviews from other people, and some people don't see Six of Crows at all in this book, I was not one of those people. I kept pausing my reading because my brain was drawing Six of Crows comparisons. Sometimes in positive ways, but this book did a lot of the things I didn't like about Six of Crows. I don't love the whole "tricking the audience into thinking all is lost, but jkjkjk it was all a part of the plan" thing. Especially when it is abundantly clear (due to heavy-handed foreshadowing) that it's gonna be okay.
Mild spoilers from here on out, I assume.
I was so unsurprised by the location of the Fallen House. They have a bone clock; it is immediately obvious they are in the catacombs, before knowing about the bone clock how could you not guess the shadowy, mysterious evil family was hiding in the catacombs. I did not love any of the twists; I wanted more surprises and fewer clues. Please stop giving me clues; I already have figured it out. Especially the last reveal in the book, I felt like it was done slightly awkwardly and that it was kind of obvious from about the 50% mark.
Everyone babied one character, oh okay, I won't get attached. I was surprised a bit by the timing of this, I thought the death was going to come 20 pages earlier, but I was expecting the death from about 15% through the book.
I also didn't think there was enough explanation of the reasoning behind the character who did the betrayal. Primarily because we were meant to forgive them so quickly. I just wasn't into it. And the animal torture we find about at the end, don't love that either. I feel like I read a different book than many others because I did not find this character charming after the first few times, they were on the page.
I also found the magic system confusing. I do not understand how the magic works. Are there any consequences to the people using the magic? It doesn't seem like there are, but I wanted more characters who use magic to talk about the mechanics of it.
I do think I am going to go back and read more by Roshani Chokshi, I have the first Aru Shaw book, and her first series is available through my library. And I do plan on continuing this series. I am hoping for a situation where the more familiar I am with her work, the more I love it.
I gave this book three stars on Goodreads, which is odd because I loved so many things, but the boredom and predictability (in my opinion of course) coupled with the few things I didn't like made this seem like the correct rating.
