BOOK: The Gilded Wolves (2019)

 Disclaimer: Spoilers of the book The Gilded Wolves, but only after the warning. All of this is just my opinion based on my experiences reading it. I hope you enjoy!

• Author: Roshani Chokshi
• Series: The Gilded Wolves #1
• Publisher: Wednesday Books
• Genres: Fantasy, Young Adult, Historical, Fiction

Summary: From New York Times bestselling author Roshani Chokshi comes a novel set in Paris during a time of extraordinary change--one that is full of mystery, decadence, and dangerous desires...

It's 1889. The city is on the cusp of industry and power, and the Exposition Universelle has breathed new life into the streets and dredged up ancient secrets. Here, no one keeps tabs on dark truths better than treasure-hunter and wealthy hotelier Séverin Montagnet-Alarie. When the elite, ever-powerful Order of Babel coerces him to help them on a mission, Séverin is offered a treasure that he never imagined: his true inheritance.

To hunt down the ancient artifact the Order seeks, Séverin calls upon a band of unlikely experts: An engineer with a debt to pay. A historian banished from his home. A dancer with a sinister past. And a brother in arms if not blood.

Together, they will join Séverin as he explores the dark, glittering heart of Paris. What they find might change the course of history--but only if they can stay alive.

(From Goodreads)

Intro and Short Review

After some months of very polarized reading experiences, in which I either hated or became obsessed with a book, it was surprisingly nice to read something that fell a bit more in the middle of the spectrum. I probably look like someone that expects masterpieces from everything I consume, but I actually don't see any problem with reading something that's just fine once in a while. 

Not everything has to be a complete new experience, with thrilling narratives and perfectly developed characters and a work of art in general — to be honest, I think I would go crazy if I had to do this. The Gilded Wolves fell exactly into that very average YA fantasy book category, and I definitely needed this after Caraval lol. 

This book is very similar to Six of Crows (sometimes a little too similar, but I can ignore that), so the characters are easy to like and perfect for those who love found family tropes like me, and the narrative is very simple and pleasant. The setting of 1889 Paris really helped tie everything together, and actually played a part in the puzzles and mysteries of the story. The magic system, Forging, is a bit unclear at times but a good way of merging supernatural elements with real world things without getting too convoluted.

There are some noticeable hiccups along the way, and I'm not the biggest fan of how the book ended, but it's overall a nice way to change the pace and unwind enjoying a good work of fiction. It also has a fair amount of discussion about topics such as colonialism and identity, way more than other teen books, and this adds another layer to the characters that made me like this better. 

The Gilded Wolves gets a solid 7/10 from me. 

Warning! Spoilers below!

Characters

Because the premise seemed similar to Six of Crows, I already imagined the main characters of The Gilded Wolves would be very charismatic in their own ways, and they mostly lived up to my expectations. This kind of cast is common in YA fiction, but I always dig it so it wasn't a bad aspect for me. 

First of all, Hypnos and Enrique completely conquered my heart within moments of being introduced, and I can't even be mad about it. What Hypnos lacked in clear motivation and development, he made up for personality and charm, and Enrique was just amazing in every way. He was funny, smart, kind and had some pretty interesting goals. It's clear that Chokshi based his character of her own heritage, so his struggles feel very real. I absolutely loved Laila, a mix between Inej and Nina that I didn't know I needed, and Zofia's character was fascinating to observe. I was thrilled every time she had a chapter. The six main characters had varying degrees of growth throughout the book, but I understand the ones who didn't change much will have the opportunity in future books. 

Séverin, of course, is the most developed of all and a good leader to his ragtag group of friends, but he was a bit bland to me. He was the most basic of the six, and while he reminded me a little bit of Kaz Brekker, he didn't have the characteristics that made Dirtyhands so iconic. He was just a mysterious, brooding guy with a tragic past and street smarts that lost shine amongst other people. At least this was actually a part of his internal conflict, so he seemed a bit more human after all. I liked his descriptions of his past parents and what he learned from them, but I feel he was lacking something. Even so, he wasn't a character that I hated or despised a little bit, so it wasn't at all boring to read his thoughts along the way. 

And now, we get to the mess. Tristan. I honestly still don't know what to think about him to this moment, and for many reasons. I was very interested in him at first, because I liked his affinity to plants, but his lack of chapters kept this interest superficial. He was just described by others as a kind guy and made one or two comments from time to time, so when he was captured I wasn't sad or whatever. In fact, I was kind of happy because at least he was going to do something useful to the plot for once. 

And then all those shenanigans happened and it was mentioned that he had a "broken mind", which no one understood because he was always so sweet, and he dies in the most unimpressive way and in the most random moment, and we're left to discover by Laila that he really was mad or whatever. What? How does that add up? Nobody noticed a single thing, not even Séverin, and then suddenly the guy has always been crazy, and that's it. 

Now, I have no clue if it's realistic or not, because I don't know much about psychology and trauma, but the whole sequence of events surrounding his character was just so weird and kinda out of place that I can't really appreciate it. This added with my indifference towards him just made the ending very odd to me. What Tristan's character did do was affect the others in one way or another, and he did that pretty well. Séverin is clearly not dealing well with his guilt after his death and this helps stir conflict between everyone, so at least it helped I guess.

And still comparing it to Six of Crows, of course the banter between the main characters was one of the more fun aspects of the book, as expected. Their relationships were very unique and the way their different personalities fitted together little by little was cute, and I'm always a sucker for this "found family" dynamic. I was specially delighted with the process of Enrique and Zofia's friendship/possible crush for each other; it feels as if there was special attention paid to their interactions. 

The similarities end with the antagonists and other minor characters, and I honestly don't really care about any of them. The matriarch of House Kore and other Order members were mostly just mentioned, and Joux-Roubert was just another crazy guy with delusions of grandeur that was a victim to another crazy guy with delusions of grandeur. The Doctor seems a bit interesting and all, but his objectives are kind of cliché and I'm not that invested in discovering who he is.

The characters of The Gilded Wolves are not the most original takes I've ever seen, which is not bad per se, but I feel they could've been more developed in small ways. I missed the possible conflict between Hypnos and Séverin, for example, so I can only hope they interact more in the next books. Even so, I appreciated the diverse main cast and their solid characters, so it all ended up alright. 

Story and Worldbuilding

Before we enter the worldbuilding domain and things get a bit more complicated, let's talk about the narrative of The Gilded Wolves. The beginning felt a bit dragged, despite the action, and it was hard for me to really get excited to read more than a few pages a day. It's not that the story or the characters weren't intriguing, it's just that it was missing something to really grab our attention. 

The story was very straightforward, the characters already knew each other so there was little conflict in this aspect and while Forging and 19th century Paris looked interesting, they were never the true focus of the book. Even so, advancing the story, it seems as if the pacing is too fast, if that's even possible. It was just like Six of Crows, but instead of having an unexpected sequence of events to compensate for our superficial connection to the characters, everything happened more or less as I expected.

Things really start to get different after the heist, with Tristan's death (which kind of took me by surprise, ngl), but it wasn't set up in a way that elicited a major reaction out of me or in a clever way. The ending was very abrupt, like a forced stop; I didn't even have time to let Tristan's death and apparent, um, problematic behaviors sink in, and then Séverin and Laila were fighting and suddenly there was this Winter Conclave happening for some reason and in the last page we discover that Séverin wasn't the true heir to his house.

It was too much happening at once, like someone just threw a bunch of very important information and ran away like nothing happened, and because of that I couldn't really grasp the weight of everything. And the objectives of the main characters were too blurry by the end that I wasn't at all thrilled to continue reading. The only one that still interests me a lot is Laila, because her story is really unusual, but otherwise everyone has goals still far from reach and Séverin doesn't even know exactly what he's doing, so it could've definitely been better.

It was also weird how they explained very briefly the meaning of the book title at the end and it didn't have anything to do with the characters or the plot. It was just a vague metaphor about society or something that made me go "really? I can't believe it was just that!", even though it's a cool name. 

But if anything, the plot made good use of its settings and history. It wasn't the type of historical fiction that was set in some random time and location just to attract attention: it was undeniably Parisian and I liked it very much. The use of the 1889 Exposition Universelle and the Eiffel Tower, along with other famous touristic attractions, felt very grounding and a nice background to the story. Maybe a bit more detail and description was needed for it to really feel magical, but it wasn't a big deal at all to me.

What was indeed a big deal to me was the way Forging was integrated into the setting. It was never really explained the extents of Forging and its limits, just some vague descriptions and offhand commentary. I don't think I even saw someone actually Forge during the whole book, besides Laila's reading of objects that isn't actually Forging. I vaguely remember a description in one of Zofia's POVs or something like that, but you can guess how interesting it was based on my own memory of it. For all the characters said about Forging being a science and not "magic" it really didn't feel like that.

So because I didn't know the full extension of Forging power and whatever, the whole ordeal with the Fallen House felt underwhelming as hell. Even with a leader called Doctor, they looked like a cult, with brainwashed followers of a crazy ideology. The whole thing with Joux-Roubert's blood felt underexplained, and the fact that nobody even mentioned that after the incident implies that it was not some mystery to be unraveled by us along with the character.

The Forging also didn't blend very well with the "real world" sometimes. It was very unclear how much normal people knew about Forging until a lot later, and some things felt like flimsy excuses of worldbuilding. But I did like how the author blended mythologies and legends from the whole world into this ordeal, so there wasn't something like "only the myth x is correct and the other beliefs aren't valid". 

What really kept me going were the puzzles. They were the typical riddles one would expect from a Dan Brown book, with talks about Latin and the golden ratio and Horus Eyes, but I'm a sucker for history, mysteries and symbolism, so of course I was hyped. Some answers felt like a bit of a stretch, but I'm no scholar so I'm not going to complain about that either.

In the end, as much as I liked the worldbuilding and plot of the book, it didn't leave a huge impact on me. What the Gilded Wolves lacked in some things it balanced in others, and the final result was alright. Nothing amazing, for sure, but it could've been a lot worse.

Technical Details and Final Thoughts

Everything else was fine, I guess. I always like books with different POVs, so that was a bonus for me, and the descriptions were pretty solid. It was nothing too over-the-top or too lacking, but Chokshi definitely shone brighter in the quiet, introspective moments than in the action scenes. I feel like I needed to be a bit more awed or scared in some specific moments, because the impact to make me care for the plot just wasn't there sometimes. 

I liked the little touches here and there to break the same old formula, like the journal entries of old Order members in the beginning of each part and Séverin's description of his foster parents through the seven deadly sins. It helped me make tabs of where I was in the story and kept me interested to learn more and consequently read more too. The cover was also very pretty, and I loved the golden frame and the reference to Tristan with the plants. 

I did enjoy reading The Gilded Wolves even with the less than ideal moments and the slow start, after all. I feel like there's a bit of wasted potential with Forging and other details, but it's a pretty solid book. To be honest, I think I'm starting to like this specific subgenre of YA fantasy, so I'll read the sequel and hope things get better, because this series definitely has more potential than being just alright.