Reviews with content warning for Death - The Gilded Wolves

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Reviews tagging 'Death'

The Gilded Wolves by Roshani Chokshi

81 reviews

thoseoldcrows23's review against another edition

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adventurous funny fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.75

I've read this book twice now and my experience has been the same both times. I find it to be fun, funny, and engaging when I'm actually reading it; however, I struggle to pick it back up once I've set it down. For me, this book is kind of like cotton candy: enjoyable at the time but intensely fleeting. I want to continue with the series, and I'm hopeful that, since I actually own the second book now, I will make progress in the new year; however, if I find myself forgetting about it again, I may just DNF the trilogy and call it done.

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scarlettskyes's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

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discworldwitch's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional informative mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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hazychapters's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? N/A
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.75

This review is EXTREMELY long, sorry not sorry :) but the headings of the topics have been highlighted if you want my opinion on a specific thing. I also remind you that English isn't my mother tongue, so sorry for the mistakes.

I had high hopes for this book, which is unfortunately a disappointment. I know a lot of people compare this book to Six of Crows but I'm still looking for the similarities. We certainly have a group of young people who are leaving for a heist, it does not go further, and I find that many dreams are sold for, in the end, little material in reality. But let's start with the positive:

The writing :

I have to admit, Roshani Chokshi has a nice pen, and on a purely stylistic approach, I really liked the way she brought it about, the way she described what surrounded her characters. It was not the writing that made my reading difficult, and if I had had less trouble with other points, I sincerely think that I would have liked this book a little more and that I would have read it much faster.

The diversity :

We really feel that this happened naturally in the author's choices, that there is nothing to force. The characters live in an era in which colonialism and racism still have a great place, that they are anchored and develop in the society of the end of the 19h century, becoming whole parts of the functioning of the European States, in particular in the economy. And as it has been for other countries in other times, and this since Ancient Greece. We follow these characters living in this society that attacks them from all sides, every day, whether through cultural appropriation or colourism. And since we have the points of view of these characters, we understand how much they are dispossessed of what belongs to them, how much they are erased by society, how much it hurts them without them being able to do something about it. There is this moment when Laïla explains how she feels about all this, and that even if she knows who she is deep inside, it's difficult to move forward. It's the same for Enrique, as a Spanish-Filipino person.

I would have liked to see a bit of the same in Zofia, to whom I felt very attached (my family fled Poland in the early 1930s, like many Polish Jews). But there wasn't as much depth, other than a few sentences here and there to remind us that she was Jewish, and that was why she had been rejected and found her way to Séverin and the group. Likewise, a very little backstory on this subject also with Séverin, I find, since it is only mentioned once that his mother was Algerian.

I really enjoyed seeing so much diversity among the characters. Although I remain a little sad that the two bisexual (and pansexual?) characters were the more outgoing, the less "serious" and that one of them find themselves playing the unfaithful one during a part of the heist.

"She meant nothing to me" cried ***, dropping to his knees.
"She?" repeated ***. "I was talking about a he."
"Oh." *** winced. "Him too?"

This leads me to the characters in general, first negative point:

The characters :

Other than Zofia, I didn't feel any chemistry for any of the characters. They seemed empty to me, too superficial, and like in many YA plots which want to be mature, they don't look their age. They're all 18 (I thought they were 16 at first) and they can do it all, they're incredibly smart, to the point of beating the bad guys who look like they're in their 30-40s. The thing that pissed me off the most is that the author describes Enrique as a historian. No. He may be a history enthusiast, but he's not a full-fledged historian at just 18. I will be 20 years old in a few months, I will be entering my second year of history studies, and that does not mean that I am calling myself a historian. I will be when I have validated my doctorate in history research, so when I am at least 25 years old, and if I succeed in my studies.

As for the relationships between the characters, I found them meaningless, like pulling out of a hat. We are informed that two of them had a relationship but I find that there is no chemistry between them. (view spoiler) at the end of the book for no reason. The only relationship that could have made sense is the one between Séverin and Tristan but it is completely relegated to the background at the same time as Tristan, who we do not know that much since he does not appear for long.

Besides, I didn't like Séverin. He has no charisma and he's just selfish and full of himself (I hate people like that). I did not manage to identify Laïla, who seemed to change her personality at times, which was very unsettling and so I did not give her much interest, unfortunately. I had the impression that Enrique and Hypnos were just cut and paste of each other, so there was no originality in either of them. Again, only Zofia seemed whole to me and herself (I also wanted to add that it is implied she might be autistic).

The plot :

I found this book to be very long, and there weren't many surprises. I had guessed almost all the twists and turns, so I wasn't surprised when it came to the revelation. The promised heist plot is not really there, or at least it is not very obvious. We certainly have characters who sneak into a place to steal something, but it is not the whole plot, just a part of it, and it lacked depth. I found the story quite disjointed: the book is cut into several parts which are very uneven, and I did not understand this division so that I was a bit cut off in the few actions.

In addition, these parts were opened on extracts of documents of the Order of Babel, or things like that, with each time a piece of random information, a number, which seemed to me to be a date, and a historical mark presented like this:

Part II
Excerpt from Reports of New Caledonia
Admiral Théophile du Casse, French faction Order of Babel
1863, Second Republic of France under Napoleon III

First thing: the Second Republic of France is a regime that extends from 1848 until 1852. The Second Republic ends with the self-proclamation of Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte as emperor, thus becoming Napoleon III under the regime of the Second Empire (1852-1870). So no, there was no Napoleon III under the Second Republic (only the president Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte), and it would have taken a simple Wikipedia search on the part of the author to find out.

Part IV
From the Archival records of the Order of Babel
The Origins of Empire
Mistress Marie Ludwig Victor, House Frigg of the Order's Prussian 1828, reign of Frederick Wilhelm IV

I will pass on my incomprehension of why the author mixes the English and German names (Frederick William in English and Friedrich Wilhelm in German). I'm also wondering if the "1828" refers to a date (which would be normal) or the faction number. Because, if this figure does refer to the date 1828, know that Frederick William IV of Prussia reigned from 1840 to 1861. It was Frederick William III who was King of Prussia in 1828.

I'm not going to dwell on the mistakes in the Russian name of Catherine the Great at the beginning of parts V and VII, written "Yekaterine Alekseyevna" when it comes to "Yekaterina Alekseyevna".

Regarding the hypothesis of the dates, know that the figures indicated in parts V, VI and VII correspond to the dates of the reign of the persons mentioned below (Catherine the Great and King Umberto I of Italy). I think you'll understand that as a history student it made me cringe a bit.

The worldbuilding :

I didn't understand the worldbuilding, I found it too messy as if the author believed that we already knew everything when we had just discovered the universe. The idea of the Forged objects was interesting, but I had the impression that they were only there to facilitate the actions of the characters by making the thing more modern, like gloves that reproduce the traces of the hands, plotters, jammers or recorders. In my opinion, the only effect of Forged objects is to modernize the era and make it more alive, which means that we find ourselves in a universe that is too modern for the time and anachronistic. I can't even figure out if there is a real magic system behind it all, and if so, what is it? What's the point? And, the puzzles used in this book are very well-known puzzles, so there's no surprise, especially for someone who read this kind of book, like The DaVinci Code. For example, the Sator square which, as we know it today, is not that mysterious (the Sator square would be just a game).

But what annoyed me the most is that the author fell into the trap of the perfect Parisian aesthetic. Why is it necessary, from the moment when the action takes place in Paris, that the characters live in a private mansion to drown their sorrows in champagne? Why can't the author do a minimum of research to write the few French words that there are, without spelling mistakes? Especially when a few pages later it is written correctly? And when the author invents a legend about the honeybee as a symbol of Napoleon? No, Napoleon did not choose the honeybee as his symbol after having turned the fleur-de-lys upside down, it was one of his advisers who suggested this animal to him (as others advised him the lion, the eagle or others) because it was already the symbol of the Merovingian kings, and more precisely of Childeric I who had borrowed it himself following his trip to Thuringia.

If you want to denounce cultural appropriation, respect the culture of the country you are setting your story in, and in the case of The Gilded Wolves, the french culture: verify your dates and don’t make mistakes about french history; write french words/sentences correctly, and stop thinking France and Paris are just an aesthetic. Being French, being Parisian, doesn’t mean you drink champagne in your hotel particulier during the whole day! I know it's a very general problem, whether it's in books (romance or fantasy), in movies or series. But understand that when a French person sees/reads this, it's just exhausting and insulting. Just like it is for other cultures.

A little lesson of French historiography :

During my reading of The Gilded Wolves, I also rediscovered this obsession with the French Revolution that non-French people have. I would already like to announce that no, France did not go through one French revolution, but several. In everyday life, the French Revolution refers to the one of 1789, but when you do research (what is supposed to be done when writing historical fiction) it would be nice to know and spell it out. Especially since, during the Third Republic (the republic under which the plot of The Gilded Wolves takes place), the rooting of history was a political struggle over the interpretation of the French Revolution of 1789. Where some only wanted to recognize the revolution of 1789, many refused it and preferred the dates of 1792 (beginning of the Republics in France) or even 1793. The very debate of the national day, in 1879, at the very beginning of the Third Republic, divides on the fact of celebrating July 14, 1789 (the storming of the Bastille) or July 14, 1790 (the celebration of the Federation, where Louis XVI has sworn to the Nation), because the storming of the Bastille is considered too bloody by some to become a national day. And it is for this reason that the year is not specified in the law, and it shows to what extent there was also a refusal of the glorification of 1789. So no, everything did not revolve around the revolution of 1789 and the Storming of the Bastille. It is as if I came to say that the war for American independence boiled down to the Boston Tea Party in 1773.

In her author's note, Roshani Chokshi advances: "History is a myth shaped by the tongues of conquerors". The story has indeed long been told by the winners because, for most of them, they were the only ones to be still there. But to say that is, in my opinion, erasing the very nature of the work of a historian. In France, history is identified as a discipline and a true social science between 1860 and 1918 (the story of The Gilded Wolves takes place in 1889). The vision remains very political but the historians of the time are opposed to the idea that history is only a "simple eloquence"(Fustel de Coulanges). This professional turning point took place between 1876 and 1900, and it was from 1880 that history became a full degree at university. The multiplication of reviews and historical books is extremely important, the publications are multiplied. Methods of analysis and criticism are developed to avoid mistakes. Of course, history faces criticism, but it is becoming more and more impartial. In the second half of the 20th century, postcolonial studies developed, which aimed to go beyond the Eurocentric vision which continued despite the end of colonization. It is the very project of subaltern studies to give a voice to those who have not had the right to express themselves!

So no, as a history student, I won't let an American author who hasn't studied history say that sort of thing.

All of this leads me to conclude that The Gilded Wolves made me angry, and I think that's also why I struggled to like this book and give it a chance. Everything was ruined by preconceptions. If it hadn't been for so many mistakes and contempt (because yes, I perceive it as contempt) this reading might have been 3/5. And I am not sorry.

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4erepawko's review

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adventurous dark informative mysterious fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Worldbuilding / Characters & their individual arcs: ★★★★★

Plot / The 'heist' parts: ★★★

Overall rating: ★★★★

Roshani Chokshi created an amazing world for this story and introduced a set of extremely lovable characters. The lore and the mysteries of this alternative universe kept me very invested, and I loved how desceiptive and beautiful the prose was - I felt really transported into this magical world of the 19th century France. It also helped that i was buddy reading the book with a friend on Twitter and we continuously discussed all of the clues and our theories. (I can highly recommend TGW as a buddy read by the way — it is extremely discussable)

My only gripe with this book was the amount of various plot holes and questionable plot points. From introducing many clues and hinting at things that didn't end up paying off to some dubious conflict set ups that felt a bit naive and didn't match the emotional stakes, the plotting fell a little flat for me. And some of the 'heist' bits read more like middle grade adventures than a YA/new adult set up that the rest up of the book reads like.

But still, the characters and the world carried this story for me and got me hooked enough for TGW to be an extremely enjoyable read & to make me want to finish this trilogy now. I need to know how things end and if each character finds what they're looking for, so I will keep reading.

Overall, highly recommend, especially if you can find someone to read & discuss the book (and fanperson over Hypnos) with.

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