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jessicaludden's review
funny
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
“Make yourself a myth and live within it, so that you belong to no one but yourself.”
I loved this so much. The characters immediately grabbed my attention with their unique personalities. I love Roshani’s writing style when it comes to characterization. I would read the words and think “that was the perfect way to say that.” It would just make so much sense in my brain. She managed to give every character little quirks that helped shaped them into realistic people. She also put so much care into their interactions that I very quickly began caring about their relationships and friendships and understood how deeply they all care for each other. I also love the setting of this book and think the historical and fantasy aspects blended really well together, while also touching on the racism that existed at this time. Exploring the glamour and horror of this time period. As someone who is half Filipino, it was so exciting for me to learn that one of the characters was also half Filipino. That has never happened to me before and it was just really nice. I do think some of the action sequences were a little bit hard to follow and some settings were difficult to imagine. Overall, I love these characters, this world drew me in immediately, and I’m excited to read the rest of the series.
I loved this so much. The characters immediately grabbed my attention with their unique personalities. I love Roshani’s writing style when it comes to characterization. I would read the words and think “that was the perfect way to say that.” It would just make so much sense in my brain. She managed to give every character little quirks that helped shaped them into realistic people. She also put so much care into their interactions that I very quickly began caring about their relationships and friendships and understood how deeply they all care for each other. I also love the setting of this book and think the historical and fantasy aspects blended really well together, while also touching on the racism that existed at this time. Exploring the glamour and horror of this time period. As someone who is half Filipino, it was so exciting for me to learn that one of the characters was also half Filipino. That has never happened to me before and it was just really nice. I do think some of the action sequences were a little bit hard to follow and some settings were difficult to imagine. Overall, I love these characters, this world drew me in immediately, and I’m excited to read the rest of the series.
Content Warnings
Minor: Blood, Death, Child abuse, Grief, and Racism
tuesdaye's review
adventurous
dark
emotional
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Blood, Death, Racism, and Torture
Moderate: Xenophobia
arsenelouppain's review
adventurous
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death
Moderate: Racism and Animal death
rtaire's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
mysterious
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? It's complicated
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Violence, and Child abuse
Moderate: Antisemitism, Homophobia, Racism, and Ableism
antonique_reads's review
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Murder, Blood, Colonisation, Racism, and Racial slurs
nannahnannah's review
2.0
Oof, I hate giving super diverse books (especially by authors of color) lackluster ratings, but this book just didn’t do anything for me.
The Gilded Wolves is a heist story much like (and I can’t help but compare it to) Leigh Bardugo’s Six of Crows. The difference being that The Gilded Wolves seems to be made up of several smaller heists (and then suddenly the climax is there and you don’t notice it because it seems exactly like the smaller heists! But more on this later). Otherwise this book has what makes the duology enjoyable: a diverse cast of somewhat eclectic characters, dialogue made up of a lot of bickering, and people bound together by a plethora of bonds, debts, and other things that force them to work together.
So that sounds pretty great, right? What makes it sound better is the setting: 1889 Paris, with elements of steampunk (-ish) and science fiction. The book’s Kaz figure, Séverin, was cast out of the super powerful Order of Babel, which basically runs the world in this parallel history. What I believe is that people tried to actually build the Tower of Babel. When the tower fell, the fragments that lie buried in the earth now are all-powerful. The people in the Order of Babel are patriarchs that have some sort of magical bloodline that’s Holy and link back to the fragments (which some believe can “awaken” the fragments true power and let them play God). Sound a little confusing? I felt like I was one step behind the Entire Book. Even now I still don’t understand how any of this works.
Anyway, Séverin is from one of these bloodlines, and during the official “tests” to inherit his patriarchal status, he got tricked and received a false negative. Since then, he’s been vowing his revenge -- and to get another test, of course. So here’s our big heist: get some thing for another patriarch so that patriarch can blackmail another patriarch so Séverin can get another test. And to do all this, he needs his band of friends.
So that’s the exposition. Sounds like a wild ride; however, the book’s execution really fell flat. The characters that seemed like they would shine became one-note and their diversity seemed to be there just to tick a box -- many of their facets were mentioned only once or twice, and had nothing to do with their lives or personality other than these mentions.
I think the biggest example of this is Zofia, the Polish, Jewish, and autistic character. I love her, even though she annoys me the most. I’m sorry, girl. Zofia being Jewish is mentioned maybe one or two times in the book. And they’re just that: mentions (“Oh yeah, Zofia is Jewish”; “I’m Jewish, so Christmas is weird”). It’s possibly the most random and unnecessary thing, and it’s probably only there to make the book more “diverse” without any work on the author’s part. Aka, the worst way to try to make something more diverse. I know some people like to have characters whose diversity isn’t like … “a huge thing” all the time in books or other media but like … something mentioned once or twice isn’t diversity. It’s just lazy.
Speaking of Zofia, though, I have to mention the autistic representation. Both me (autistic) and my (autistic) friend agreed this is probably a good standard of how not to write an autistic character. Zofia is an extremely annoying stereotype of an autistic person who exhibits typically male traits (and yes, I understand not all autistic men have these and that many women also have these, but e.g. being extremely good at math or science, has absolutely NO idea how to behave in social situations, and similarly, having no idea what jokes or sarcasm are, being awkward in general, and hyperfocusing on interests - in this case it’s engineering [an interest to do with science, which goes along with her talent]). And in Zofia’s case, she has all of these traits to the extreme, as if all these features are switches to turn off or on instead of a sliding scale.
I guess I just want to say there’s more to us autistic people than these above characteristics (usually shown by men). We really are faceted people, and if you’re writing an autistic girl, just take a second to look up autistic traits unique to girls (usually, of course). I say this because I’ve never ever seen autistic girls presenting characteristics in media other than the ones mentioned above. Ever. And this is what prevents us women from being diagnosed until maybe later in life, when we’re wondering why things are/have been so difficult for us.
Okay, but enough about that. About the book as a whole:
It’s written in multiple PoVs, exploring all of the main characters’ points of view, and even one of the villains-turned lovable enemy (- Hypnos - who’s probably now one of my favorites). The only problem is that Roshani Chokshi wrote everyone’s PoV with the same exact voice and just different words. The thing about PoVs is that they explore entirely different minds - they shouldn’t sound the same! But if I read a passage and ignore names/personal information I couldn’t be able to tell who’s narrating.
Not everything is bad, though! I LOVED that there were little add-ins about colonialism and how it affected native people’s homes, etc., because there is so very little discussion about that in YA -- actually little to none in any young adult media, to be honest -- where the villains are (mostly) white and rich “colonizers” (not a slur, btw!). But then the book failed to really delve into that further, so I’m hoping it will in the next installments, and that this was a setup for it. Because having a biracial lead dreaming of revenge and getting his seat as a horrible patriarch himself isn’t a very fulfilling protagonist goal … I often didn’t feel like cheering him on, lmao! The MC isn’t very likable, and him becoming one of those evil patriarchs would make him worse! He claimed to say he’d be different, so I can see this being a struggle for him later. It’s a very mature plotline, one I wished was larger in the scope of things!
There was, however, a mention of something called the “Esplanade des Invalides”. Something that’s a larger attraction than the Eiffel Tower. In the book, according to newspapers, it contained a “N*gro village with almost 400 Africans in their natural habitat”. It’s mentioned maybe one other time, and is never expanded on again. I understand the author wanted to mention how different this parallel world is from ours, but if she’s not going to explore this or do something about it, just mentioning this horror for the sake of … I don’t know, shock value or something is kind of disgusting. It made me want to stop reading.
Things also seemed to resolve and happen too easily, just to keep the plot going. Each heist seemed too easy (even when things got difficult!). It just all seemed too planned, too rehearsed, like a play done too many times before its opening. Maybe it’s just me. Or maybe it’s like … in those action movies where they have one sexy woman among a bunch of men, and because she’s the only woman she just HAS to be super strong and amazing and perfect at what she does, right? Well that’s not the rep we want; we still want women to be women, and to struggle and to find things difficult, etc. I think that’s what I wanted from each character at their designated “thing”.
Laila was perfect at baking and dancing and being her “public figure”. She’s never failed at any of this - it’s only outside events that throw a wrench into things. Same with Zofia. When things go wrong, it’s “unexplainable” or due to outside events. Etc., etc., etc. I know they’re experts in their respective fields but it’s still kind of exhausting to see these six perfect people never really doing wrong! Enrique’s maybe the exception to this, and probably why I like him the most.
I also felt a step behind everything because some events were told in inner monologue, like “Séverin remembered when Tristan interrogated the man”, etc. He what now? When? Is this important? And it happened over and over in the book. I felt like things weren’t properly explained. The magic system, for example. What, exactly, are the Babel fragments, and how do they work? The characters all seem to know, but they never share it with me. There’s lots of details that pass me by and that just seem important but are lost on me because I feel like since the author knows her world so well, she doesn’t remember to explain it.
I’ll stop here. I’m not sure I understand all the rave reviews, when I wanted to stop reading in So Many Times. Toward the ending (--and that climax was a little wimpy, I think we all can agree it wasn’t a climax) the action picked up, but only to peter out. I hope the next books get better, but I don’t think I’ll read them. There are a lot of people here who love this world and these characters who can appreciate them a lot more than I will.
The Gilded Wolves is a heist story much like (and I can’t help but compare it to) Leigh Bardugo’s Six of Crows. The difference being that The Gilded Wolves seems to be made up of several smaller heists (and then suddenly the climax is there and you don’t notice it because it seems exactly like the smaller heists! But more on this later). Otherwise this book has what makes the duology enjoyable: a diverse cast of somewhat eclectic characters, dialogue made up of a lot of bickering, and people bound together by a plethora of bonds, debts, and other things that force them to work together.
So that sounds pretty great, right? What makes it sound better is the setting: 1889 Paris, with elements of steampunk (-ish) and science fiction. The book’s Kaz figure, Séverin, was cast out of the super powerful Order of Babel, which basically runs the world in this parallel history. What I believe is that people tried to actually build the Tower of Babel. When the tower fell, the fragments that lie buried in the earth now are all-powerful. The people in the Order of Babel are patriarchs that have some sort of magical bloodline that’s Holy and link back to the fragments (which some believe can “awaken” the fragments true power and let them play God). Sound a little confusing? I felt like I was one step behind the Entire Book. Even now I still don’t understand how any of this works.
Anyway, Séverin is from one of these bloodlines, and during the official “tests” to inherit his patriarchal status, he got tricked and received a false negative. Since then, he’s been vowing his revenge -- and to get another test, of course. So here’s our big heist: get some thing for another patriarch so that patriarch can blackmail another patriarch so Séverin can get another test. And to do all this, he needs his band of friends.
So that’s the exposition. Sounds like a wild ride; however, the book’s execution really fell flat. The characters that seemed like they would shine became one-note and their diversity seemed to be there just to tick a box -- many of their facets were mentioned only once or twice, and had nothing to do with their lives or personality other than these mentions.
I think the biggest example of this is Zofia, the Polish, Jewish, and autistic character. I love her, even though she annoys me the most. I’m sorry, girl. Zofia being Jewish is mentioned maybe one or two times in the book. And they’re just that: mentions (“Oh yeah, Zofia is Jewish”; “I’m Jewish, so Christmas is weird”). It’s possibly the most random and unnecessary thing, and it’s probably only there to make the book more “diverse” without any work on the author’s part. Aka, the worst way to try to make something more diverse. I know some people like to have characters whose diversity isn’t like … “a huge thing” all the time in books or other media but like … something mentioned once or twice isn’t diversity. It’s just lazy.
Speaking of Zofia, though, I have to mention the autistic representation. Both me (autistic) and my (autistic) friend agreed this is probably a good standard of how not to write an autistic character. Zofia is an extremely annoying stereotype of an autistic person who exhibits typically male traits (and yes, I understand not all autistic men have these and that many women also have these, but e.g. being extremely good at math or science, has absolutely NO idea how to behave in social situations, and similarly, having no idea what jokes or sarcasm are, being awkward in general, and hyperfocusing on interests - in this case it’s engineering [an interest to do with science, which goes along with her talent]). And in Zofia’s case, she has all of these traits to the extreme, as if all these features are switches to turn off or on instead of a sliding scale.
I guess I just want to say there’s more to us autistic people than these above characteristics (usually shown by men). We really are faceted people, and if you’re writing an autistic girl, just take a second to look up autistic traits unique to girls (usually, of course). I say this because I’ve never ever seen autistic girls presenting characteristics in media other than the ones mentioned above. Ever. And this is what prevents us women from being diagnosed until maybe later in life, when we’re wondering why things are/have been so difficult for us.
Okay, but enough about that. About the book as a whole:
It’s written in multiple PoVs, exploring all of the main characters’ points of view, and even one of the villains-turned lovable enemy (- Hypnos - who’s probably now one of my favorites). The only problem is that Roshani Chokshi wrote everyone’s PoV with the same exact voice and just different words. The thing about PoVs is that they explore entirely different minds - they shouldn’t sound the same! But if I read a passage and ignore names/personal information I couldn’t be able to tell who’s narrating.
Not everything is bad, though! I LOVED that there were little add-ins about colonialism and how it affected native people’s homes, etc., because there is so very little discussion about that in YA -- actually little to none in any young adult media, to be honest -- where the villains are (mostly) white and rich “colonizers” (not a slur, btw!). But then the book failed to really delve into that further, so I’m hoping it will in the next installments, and that this was a setup for it. Because having a biracial lead dreaming of revenge and getting his seat as a horrible patriarch himself isn’t a very fulfilling protagonist goal … I often didn’t feel like cheering him on, lmao! The MC isn’t very likable, and him becoming one of those evil patriarchs would make him worse! He claimed to say he’d be different, so I can see this being a struggle for him later. It’s a very mature plotline, one I wished was larger in the scope of things!
There was, however, a mention of something called the “Esplanade des Invalides”. Something that’s a larger attraction than the Eiffel Tower. In the book, according to newspapers, it contained a “N*gro village with almost 400 Africans in their natural habitat”. It’s mentioned maybe one other time, and is never expanded on again. I understand the author wanted to mention how different this parallel world is from ours, but if she’s not going to explore this or do something about it, just mentioning this horror for the sake of … I don’t know, shock value or something is kind of disgusting. It made me want to stop reading.
Things also seemed to resolve and happen too easily, just to keep the plot going. Each heist seemed too easy (even when things got difficult!). It just all seemed too planned, too rehearsed, like a play done too many times before its opening. Maybe it’s just me. Or maybe it’s like … in those action movies where they have one sexy woman among a bunch of men, and because she’s the only woman she just HAS to be super strong and amazing and perfect at what she does, right? Well that’s not the rep we want; we still want women to be women, and to struggle and to find things difficult, etc. I think that’s what I wanted from each character at their designated “thing”.
Laila was perfect at baking and dancing and being her “public figure”. She’s never failed at any of this - it’s only outside events that throw a wrench into things. Same with Zofia. When things go wrong, it’s “unexplainable” or due to outside events. Etc., etc., etc. I know they’re experts in their respective fields but it’s still kind of exhausting to see these six perfect people never really doing wrong! Enrique’s maybe the exception to this, and probably why I like him the most.
I also felt a step behind everything because some events were told in inner monologue, like “Séverin remembered when Tristan interrogated the man”, etc. He what now? When? Is this important? And it happened over and over in the book. I felt like things weren’t properly explained. The magic system, for example. What, exactly, are the Babel fragments, and how do they work? The characters all seem to know, but they never share it with me. There’s lots of details that pass me by and that just seem important but are lost on me because I feel like since the author knows her world so well, she doesn’t remember to explain it.
I’ll stop here. I’m not sure I understand all the rave reviews, when I wanted to stop reading in So Many Times. Toward the ending (--and that climax was a little wimpy, I think we all can agree it wasn’t a climax) the action picked up, but only to peter out. I hope the next books get better, but I don’t think I’ll read them. There are a lot of people here who love this world and these characters who can appreciate them a lot more than I will.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racism
Minor: Slavery
bdingz's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.25
This book has an ensemble of character and the principal protagonist, Séverin, is the least interesting of them all. I hope the future books focus more on the others because I like them far more.
Overall, I liked this book but didn’t love it. I started by listening to the audiobook, but I switched to a physical copy (The narrators of the audiobook gave every character a fake French accent. This was grating and at times impeded by understanding of the dialogue and therefore, the story). The ending dragged a tad bit. That said, I love the world Chokshi built and I may read further.
Overall, I liked this book but didn’t love it. I started by listening to the audiobook, but I switched to a physical copy (The narrators of the audiobook gave every character a fake French accent. This was grating and at times impeded by understanding of the dialogue and therefore, the story). The ending dragged a tad bit. That said, I love the world Chokshi built and I may read further.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death and Violence
Moderate: Child abuse
Minor: Racism and Antisemitism
gisblanketfort's review
adventurous
emotional
funny
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Injury/Injury detail, Ableism, Antisemitism, Racism, Child abuse, Colonisation, Death, and Murder
quillify_'s review
adventurous
challenging
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
0.5
Everything in this book is designed to appeal to a Western audience, make it easy for their comprehension: the barest exploration and impact of colonialism, easy to pronounce names, cookie cutter characters that fit your favorite tropes, a romance built purely on sexual attraction that an allosexual audience can consume without much critical thinking. And most of all, erasure of a significant chunk of history.
In Ms. Chokshi's own hypocritical words: "When we revise the horror and sanitize the grotesque, we risk erasing the paths that led us here."
No offence, but that is what this community does every day by promoting and recommending this book.
In Ms. Chokshi's own hypocritical words: "When we revise the horror and sanitize the grotesque, we risk erasing the paths that led us here."
No offence, but that is what this community does every day by promoting and recommending this book.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Self harm, Kidnapping, Grief, Gaslighting, Emotional abuse, Death of parent, Cursing, Misogyny, Colonisation, Classism, Racism, Toxic relationship, Toxic friendship, and Sexism
Minor: Sexual content
nadas's review
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.25
This is probably because I really had high expectations for this, but I feel a little let down by it.
It started of really interesting. I liked (most of) the character interactions , the world and its magic system and how it connects so many mythologies from around the world (even when it got really confusing to follow because of just how much information and details are introduced all at the same time that made it impossible to even remember what was going on 🙂). I loved the atmosphere there were times where it was so immersive I could feel myself in the characters place.
The heist that spanned most of the book was also so much fun and I loved it so much I thought this was going to be a new favourite.
The last 20% it completely lost me. I did not enjoy it one bit. Everything happened so fast and was somehow not interesting at all. I did not like how this ended and everything leading to this end felt rushed and not enjoyable to the least.
Also, even though I enjoyed the character interactions through out the book, I still found myself not caring very much for them??
when Tristian died I honestly could not care less....the whole scene made very little sense to me and we never get a chapter from his pov for some reason?? maybe I missed something but I honestly dont get why we never got a chapter from his pov
I will still be reading the next book in the series just to know what actually happens after the reveal at the end and because I'm very confused right now after that and I don't like that.
It started of really interesting. I liked (most of) the character interactions , the world and its magic system and how it connects so many mythologies from around the world (even when it got really confusing to follow because of just how much information and details are introduced all at the same time that made it impossible to even remember what was going on 🙂). I loved the atmosphere there were times where it was so immersive I could feel myself in the characters place.
The heist that spanned most of the book was also so much fun and I loved it so much I thought this was going to be a new favourite.
The last 20% it completely lost me. I did not enjoy it one bit. Everything happened so fast and was somehow not interesting at all. I did not like how this ended and everything leading to this end felt rushed and not enjoyable to the least.
Also, even though I enjoyed the character interactions through out the book, I still found myself not caring very much for them??
I will still be reading the next book in the series just to know what actually happens after the reveal at the end and because I'm very confused right now after that and I don't like that.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death and Child abuse
Moderate: Death of parent and Racism