Reviews with content warning for Physical abuse - The Gilded Wolves

Reviews tagging 'Physical abuse'

The Gilded Wolves by Roshani Chokshi

13 reviews

pinkupengu's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous dark emotional mysterious reflective sad 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

4.75

Content Warnings

thelittleoddling's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous medium-paced

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

3.75

While overall I found the diversity done quite well. Though as an autistic reader I was quite disappointed with how stereotypical the autistic representation felt. The best part was the way the others accommodated her needs but otherwise it fell flat.

The magic system is very interesting and unique if a bit confusing, though being the first in a trilogy we have time to dig into it more later, loved the visuals for some of the puzzles, though I wish there were more. Some scenes I struggled to imagine layouts of rooms.

I think this is a good book that is fun if you’re into found family and heist narratives.

It also includes some YA age appropriate discussions of the racism found in 1800s Europe which I think are done well.

Content Warnings

bergha1998's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous challenging dark emotional 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

3.75

If you liked Six of Crows I would wager you would enjoy this book. I did, though Séverin pissed me the fuck off in the end. I loved the diversity of this book, plus all the LGBTQIA+ characters. A book where everyone felt bisexual.

Found Family, LGBTQIA+, Romance Subplots

“He wished he didn’t know what he had lost. Maybe then every day wouldn’t feel like this. As if he had once known how to fly, but the skies had shaken him loose and left him with nothing but the memory of wings.”

“Fear grew in places unlit by knowledge.”

Content Warnings

barda's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous mysterious fast-paced

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

2.75

This book was a frustrating read.

It had all of the elements of a great read - a unique setting (19th Century alternative history Paris), cool magic system, intricate heists, and a likeable cast of characters. It was very much like Six of Crows, which I adore, in spirit. But in the end it just couldn't come together in a cohesive way.

The author clearly put a lot of thought into the puzzles and heist elements, as well as the world-building; however, much of it was written in a confusing way, such that I couldn't really picture in my head what was happening in a scene. The characters were broadly likeable and very diverse (Hypnos in particular was hilarious), but much of the characterisation was done by telling the audience what they were supposed to be like (such as it being banged over your head repeatedly that Severin and Laila slept together once and had residual feelings) rather than letting the backstories and personalities of their individual characters be revealed gradually through the text.

One element in particular knocked back my rating quite a bit, and that was the ending. Without spoilers, what I thought was the ending was a pretty good cliffhanger, and had huge emotional ramifications for the characters which could be explored in the next book. But then...there's more pages. And any emotional impact of the ending is completely wiped away as the characters deal with them over the space of a single chapter. This all leads up to a second cliffhanger, which in itself was fine and could have easily stood on its own, but it felt like the author had two ideas for how their book should end and just took the worst of both worlds and put them together in the same book.

I can appreciate what the author tried to do with this book, with the richly detailed setting and magic system, and I really liked the inclusion of neurodiversity among the main characters and the critiques of colonialism in the context of the setting. However, it was let down by confusing writing, the lack of "show not tell", and the ending.

Content Warnings

friendly_neighborhood_grandma's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

The vibes. I loved reading it and wanted to come back every time. It isnt 5/5 just because I didnt understand where we were in the space sometimes and I did not understand their age. When I started the book i thout that they were adults but they're like 18. Overall love love highly reccomand will definitly be continuing.

Content Warnings

bluebreex's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous 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

5.0

This book has everything I look for in a fantasy book and I can't believe I didn't pick it up sooner! I love all of the characters, they felt so real and their banter never failed to make me laugh. The alchemical style of the sort of magic system in the world was very intriguing and I cannot wait to see how it is expanded on in the next book! (I also have to mention I loved how a lot of the puzzles that the characters were challenged with were included in diagrams)

If anyone is looking for a diverse heist plot filled with mystery, drama and fun characters I would highly recommend picking up The Gilded Wolves!

Content Warnings

lisa_m's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous challenging dark funny inspiring mysterious tense medium-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? Yes

4.75

I usually don't like comparing books to other books because most times they can't live up to the expectations.
This book however reminded me so much of some of my favourite books:

It has:
- a found family that reminded me a lot of Six of Crows (especially Kaz & Séverin!)
- a magical Order reminding me a lot of the Shadowhunters
- tattooed vows that reminded me of ACOTAR
- great unique gifts that reminded me of Raybearer

and somehow while reminding me of so many other books and series this book managed to stay unique.

I really enjoyed reading this book and I can't wait for the sequel. The only reason I'm not quite giving it 5 stars is the ending & Séverins behaviour in the end.. Careful: BIG SPOILERS AHEAD!

I get that he is hurt and grieving but what he said to Laila is in my opinion pretty unforgivable.. He knew how insecure she was about that and still he said it and didn't even apologise.. so so shitty!! The are both hurt but she did they right thing and overcame her fears while he was just an asshole.
I generally really liked Séverin throughout the book but this just didn't stick right with me..

Also what happened to Tristan was so unexpected and super sad. I usually get emotional very easily while reading but I didn't cry this time. I was sad but not THAT sad. That is also one of the reasons I decided to not give the book 5 stars. It didn't manage to ruin me..

I guess I did like the characters but I wasn't really attached to any of them. I do like though that the other is not afraid of killing of her main characters.

Also I really liked Laila and I think her POV was also always the most interesting to me. I really hope she will stay kind even after what happened because in one of the last chapters we get to see the new her and I have to say I don't like it. She carries her hurt around like a blade and that is so unlike her.

What I probably enjoyed most about this book was the scenery. Paris 1889 but with magic and secret societies.
I still have a lot of questions about the magic system and general world building but I hope that will all be clearer to me when I read the sequels.

I also really enjoyed the Authors Note at the end. What the author said about the Exposition Universelle and "La Belle Epoque" was really interesting. I like that she said you cannot just take the good and ignore the bad and I think you can definitely see that in the book as well. It has the glamour but also the seriousness which you already know I love in my books :)

Content Warnings

oliverreeds's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous emotional tense medium-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? Yes

3.75

i liked it. i just felt like the book lacked that extra step of vibrancy that really brings books to life. i felt as if something important- some greater substance was necessary for me to truly love this book

Content Warnings

astoryofpages's review against another edition

Go to review page

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.

Content Warnings

aseel_reads's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous mysterious 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

4.25

2023: 4.25. unfortunately bringing down the rating :( while I still love the premise of the world, having a rag tag team of characters perform a hiest, and it being a historical fantasy that talks about racism/colonisation, I felt that the book itself wasn't as tight in execution. The pacing was choppy, some of the action scenes were long and confusing to read + we would get random descriptive paragraphs that were a bit excessive, and the arc of some of the characters is a bit confusing at times, just to name a few things. The final chapter still is a great plot twist and I'm still keen for the next book, it's just that the last 100 pages weren't as gold as the first 200.

2021: 5 stars I was hooked by page 50, I am OBSESSED with this book, this world, these characters omg. this has everything: cool magic system, fantastic historical element, a heist, a group of cool characters, omg I'm in love.

Content Warnings

More...