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A review by nickoliver
The Gilded Ones by Namina Forna
adventurous
dark
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.25
I have been excited for this book ever since I first heard about it. Though admittedly, that had less to do with the plot - most fantasy books on my TBR are books whose synopsis I couldn't tell you even with a gun to my head -, and mostly to do with the cover. It's just so pretty ! Nevertheless, when I spied it at my local library, I was thrilled and picked it up rather quickly. Unfortunately, I found it a little bit disappointing.
I did like some things about the plot. The idea behind it was decent, and some of the concepts that showed up in the story were interesting as well. It was about a girl named Deka, who lived in a world where every sixteen-year-old girl had to partake in a blood ceremony. If her blood ran red, she was pure and could stay in her village. If it ran gold, she was impure and unnatural and had to undergo the so-called "Death Mandate" - a torturous practice where the gold-blooded girls, called alaki, were killed over and over again until their Final Death was found, for they were near immortal now with only one specific way to die.
Deka was terrified of that ceremony, because she was terrified of being impure. The world Forna built was also based on a misogynistic religion where girls had to wear masks, always had to have a male chaperone, and were pretty much forbidden to do anything but have babies and raise them. So Deka was deeply religious and had been fed all her life stories about what a "good woman" had to do and why.
When it turned out that Deka did, in fact, have golden blood, she was subjected to the Death Mandate, but they didn't find her Final Death and instead just kept killing her for months. Then one day, a mysterious woman showed up and offered her an alternative: come with her to be part of an army full of girls like her to ride into battle in the emperor's name and finally eradicate all deathshrieks - horrible monsters that have been plaguing the land. Obviously, Deka agreed, and so that's where the story finally took off.
Like I said, I liked this premise a lot. Admittedly, there were certain things about the plot that made no sense to me and that Forna didn't bother trying to explain. For example, it was said that girls weren't allowed near knives until their blood ceremony at sixteen because they didn't want them to find out the colour of their blood beforehand. But how do you stop a kid from hurting themself at all for sixteen years? What kid doesn't stumble and tear open their knee at some point? And it also wasn't properly explained how girls' periods worked. There were mentions of girls whose blood colour was found out because they'd gotten their period, but you'd think that happened a lot more. Did girls in this world normally get their period a lot later than sixteen? Because if it worked like in our world, most girls would find out what they were bleeding years before the actual ceremony. It was really bothersome that Forna just brushed over that.
However, I did really like the beginning of the story. Going into it, I already dreaded reading about the ceremony and Deka's village learning about her blood running golden, in part because there was a bully that got introduced and I wasn't really looking forward to reading about her reaction to it. But Forna turned my expectations on their heads and wrote it differently, and I quite liked the alternative! And while I admit that a lot of the actual plot happening wasn't that thrilling and rather slow-paced without gripping my interest, there were a few plot twists that happened later in the book that I genuinely didn't see coming (though there were hints, so I think that might've just been me being oblivious). And despite the ending being written like a true ending, knowing there was a sequel did make me suspicious of even the people I was supposed to root for, which made the story a bit more intriguing than it would've been otherwise.
Plus, there was a lot of unexpected gore in the story that started pretty much from the start, with characters being ripped apart and dismembered and beheaded. I think especially because the girls were near-immortal, Forna didn't hesitate to make a lot of their "deaths" brutal, which I'm definitely not used to in YA books like this. If you're squeamish, I'd recommend knowing that going into the novel.
What I disliked the most about the plot, though, was how a lot of development was either not there or happened off-page, especially in terms of relationships and friendships. The girls that Deka was on the training grounds with were just suddenly her bloodsisters without really letting me see them develop into being tight-knit. And then there was the topic of Deka's faith that just stopped being mentioned and stopped being a problem for her. Since she'd always been told that golden-blooded girls were demonic and impure and unnatural, she struggled a lot about being an alaki and she prayed a lot to Oyomo for guidance, but that just suddenly ceased happening, without the progression being visible on page. It could've been a strong moment for Deka if I'd been shown the development, but I wasn't, which made it quite unrealistic.
The writing in the book was sometimes a bit odd. There was sometimes a sentence or two that made me stop in my tracks. For example, eyebrows would "gather", or a grin would "slice lips". It's possible that this is just me not being aware of what words work well together - English isn't my first language -, but there were several moments when the choice of words just didn't make sense to me completely.
Moreover, there was one character - a girl Deka befriended named Britta who came to the training grounds with her - who spoke with an accent, and it confused me a bit. Not only because she was written to have an accent - which could've been disregarded by pointing out that all the girls came from different regions, but then why did none of the other girls have some kind of accent? -, but also because Forna wasn't always entirely consistent with it.
Deka was a protagonist that I had some problems with. Throughout the entire book, she always needed answers to be practically spoonfed to her. Never did she come to conclusions on her own. That lead to situations that were supposed to be shocking for both her and the reader, but it had been easy to pinpoint those twists a lot earlier already; to be honest, a lot of the time I hadn't even been aware that Deka hadn't caught on yet. While it could've been refreshing to have a protagonist who wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed, it happened so many times that it just got annoying. Deka was the definition of "lights are on but nobody's home," and that made her a very frustrating main character at times.
Additionally, I really disliked the romance. On the training grounds, the girls were paired up each with a male partner in battle - so-called urunis. Deka's uruni was a boy named Keita, and the romance in this book was with him.
First of all, just like with the aforementioned friendships and Deka's faith, this relationship was barely built up properly. It seemed to be founded mostly on the fact that they had to work closely together and happened to be a boy and a girl who were both straight. At first, they were very chilly with each other, especially on Keita's end, so I would've preferred to see them as friends first and then proceed to being in love from there. Instead, they pretty much went straight to being in love, so when Forna spent a lot of time talking about how Keita meant to Deka, I didn't really care to read about that.
Secondly, Keita was a very underwhelming, boring love interest. He was what I assume watching paint dry would look like in a person. He could've just as well have been a cardboard cutout. My complete disinterest in him was obvious to me when another boy, who appeared in approximately two scenes in the whole book, had me more intrigued than the literal love interest . Reading about that other boy going home devastated me more than the idea of Keita dying or betraying Deka, and wasn't that just the oddest feeling.
Overall, I was a bit disappointed in the story. The characters were severely underdeveloped - or developed off-page -, and the romance was mostly just grating my nerves. But I did like some of the plot twists and the overall premise of the story. Plus, I haven't mentioned this yet, but Deka ended up getting an animal sidekick, which was definitely my absolute highlight. More books should have those, me thinks.
I did like some things about the plot. The idea behind it was decent, and some of the concepts that showed up in the story were interesting as well. It was about a girl named Deka, who lived in a world where every sixteen-year-old girl had to partake in a blood ceremony. If her blood ran red, she was pure and could stay in her village. If it ran gold, she was impure and unnatural and had to undergo the so-called "Death Mandate" - a torturous practice where the gold-blooded girls, called alaki, were killed over and over again until their Final Death was found, for they were near immortal now with only one specific way to die.
Deka was terrified of that ceremony, because she was terrified of being impure. The world Forna built was also based on a misogynistic religion where girls had to wear masks, always had to have a male chaperone, and were pretty much forbidden to do anything but have babies and raise them. So Deka was deeply religious and had been fed all her life stories about what a "good woman" had to do and why.
When it turned out that Deka did, in fact, have golden blood, she was subjected to the Death Mandate, but they didn't find her Final Death and instead just kept killing her for months. Then one day, a mysterious woman showed up and offered her an alternative: come with her to be part of an army full of girls like her to ride into battle in the emperor's name and finally eradicate all deathshrieks - horrible monsters that have been plaguing the land. Obviously, Deka agreed, and so that's where the story finally took off.
Like I said, I liked this premise a lot. Admittedly, there were certain things about the plot that made no sense to me and that Forna didn't bother trying to explain. For example, it was said that girls weren't allowed near knives until their blood ceremony at sixteen because they didn't want them to find out the colour of their blood beforehand. But how do you stop a kid from hurting themself at all for sixteen years? What kid doesn't stumble and tear open their knee at some point? And it also wasn't properly explained how girls' periods worked. There were mentions of girls whose blood colour was found out because they'd gotten their period, but you'd think that happened a lot more. Did girls in this world normally get their period a lot later than sixteen? Because if it worked like in our world, most girls would find out what they were bleeding years before the actual ceremony. It was really bothersome that Forna just brushed over that.
However, I did really like the beginning of the story. Going into it, I already dreaded reading about the ceremony and Deka's village learning about her blood running golden, in part because there was a bully that got introduced and I wasn't really looking forward to reading about her reaction to it. But Forna turned my expectations on their heads and wrote it differently, and I quite liked the alternative! And while I admit that a lot of the actual plot happening wasn't that thrilling and rather slow-paced without gripping my interest, there were a few plot twists that happened later in the book that I genuinely didn't see coming (though there were hints, so I think that might've just been me being oblivious). And despite the ending being written like a true ending, knowing there was a sequel did make me suspicious of even the people I was supposed to root for, which made the story a bit more intriguing than it would've been otherwise.
Plus, there was a lot of unexpected gore in the story that started pretty much from the start, with characters being ripped apart and dismembered and beheaded. I think especially because the girls were near-immortal, Forna didn't hesitate to make a lot of their "deaths" brutal, which I'm definitely not used to in YA books like this. If you're squeamish, I'd recommend knowing that going into the novel.
What I disliked the most about the plot, though, was how a lot of development was either not there or happened off-page, especially in terms of relationships and friendships. The girls that Deka was on the training grounds with were just suddenly her bloodsisters without really letting me see them develop into being tight-knit. And then there was the topic of Deka's faith that just stopped being mentioned and stopped being a problem for her. Since she'd always been told that golden-blooded girls were demonic and impure and unnatural, she struggled a lot about being an alaki and she prayed a lot to Oyomo for guidance, but that just suddenly ceased happening, without the progression being visible on page. It could've been a strong moment for Deka if I'd been shown the development, but I wasn't, which made it quite unrealistic.
The writing in the book was sometimes a bit odd. There was sometimes a sentence or two that made me stop in my tracks. For example, eyebrows would "gather", or a grin would "slice lips". It's possible that this is just me not being aware of what words work well together - English isn't my first language -, but there were several moments when the choice of words just didn't make sense to me completely.
Moreover, there was one character - a girl Deka befriended named Britta who came to the training grounds with her - who spoke with an accent, and it confused me a bit. Not only because she was written to have an accent - which could've been disregarded by pointing out that all the girls came from different regions, but then why did none of the other girls have some kind of accent? -, but also because Forna wasn't always entirely consistent with it.
Deka was a protagonist that I had some problems with. Throughout the entire book, she always needed answers to be practically spoonfed to her. Never did she come to conclusions on her own. That lead to situations that were supposed to be shocking for both her and the reader, but it had been easy to pinpoint those twists a lot earlier already; to be honest, a lot of the time I hadn't even been aware that Deka hadn't caught on yet. While it could've been refreshing to have a protagonist who wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed, it happened so many times that it just got annoying. Deka was the definition of "lights are on but nobody's home," and that made her a very frustrating main character at times.
Additionally, I really disliked the romance. On the training grounds, the girls were paired up each with a male partner in battle - so-called urunis. Deka's uruni was a boy named Keita, and the romance in this book was with him.
First of all, just like with the aforementioned friendships and Deka's faith, this relationship was barely built up properly. It seemed to be founded mostly on the fact that they had to work closely together and happened to be a boy and a girl who were both straight. At first, they were very chilly with each other, especially on Keita's end, so I would've preferred to see them as friends first and then proceed to being in love from there. Instead, they pretty much went straight to being in love, so when Forna spent a lot of time talking about how Keita meant to Deka, I didn't really care to read about that.
Secondly, Keita was a very underwhelming, boring love interest. He was what I assume watching paint dry would look like in a person. He could've just as well have been a cardboard cutout. My complete disinterest in him was obvious to me when another boy, who appeared in approximately two scenes in the whole book, had me more intrigued than the literal love interest . Reading about that other boy going home devastated me more than the idea of Keita dying or betraying Deka, and wasn't that just the oddest feeling.
Overall, I was a bit disappointed in the story. The characters were severely underdeveloped - or developed off-page -, and the romance was mostly just grating my nerves. But I did like some of the plot twists and the overall premise of the story. Plus, I haven't mentioned this yet, but Deka ended up getting an animal sidekick, which was definitely my absolute highlight. More books should have those, me thinks.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Physical abuse, Religious bigotry, Sexism, War, Blood, Racism, Death, Misogyny, and Violence
Moderate: Child abuse
Minor: Drug use, Rape, Sexual assault, Death of parent, and Sexual violence