A review by nomibadomi
The Gilded Wolves by Roshani Chokshi
2.0
The Gilded Wolves by Roshani Chokshi was several kinds of bad.
Not quite irredeemably bad, but it was a near thing.
I originally bought this book because I love Six Of Crows. After I heard the comparisons pretty much everywhere, it was an instant buy. After learning more about the story, I was completely hooked. Heists? Alternative history? Unique fantasy setting? Revenge? Secret societies, friendships between outcasts, vivid descriptions? It seemed to check all of my boxes.
But then I actually started reading it and my amazing-book-dreams were crushed.
Immediately, I disliked the writing style and was extremely confused. I hoped it would get better, but it didn’t. In case you don’t know what it’s about, this book stars treasure hunter and wealthy hotelier Séverin Montagnet-Alarie and his group of mismatched outcasts. Together, they must work together to reclaim Severin’s true inheritance as an heir to a Great House in the reclusive Order of Babel. The main problem with this book is that everything is good in theory but executed very poorly, which is the most upsetting kind of bad book. The characters, the plot, the setting— nothing was as fleshed out as it needed to be.
Each of the characters was given a “tragic backstory” consisting of some sort of trauma or oppression or exclusion which was established very early on in the book. I’m a sucker for a tragic past. I love characters who have been to hell and back and have emerged stronger for it, but only if these backstories have actual bearing on the story. In The Gilded Wolves, they rarely influence the characters’ actions, motivations, or the plot. Most of these backstories don’t have a purpose after the first 100 pages. Aside from this, these characters have zero natural chemistry. They rarely have conversations that are not arguments or poorly written banter (lots of poorly written banter). Both romances felt forced. Many of the characters also lack consistency. Big time. I found this extremely confusing. For example, when the character Hypnos is first introduced, he is spoiled and petulant. Then, he’s mysterious and dangerous and cruel, threatening to murder everyone Séverin loves. Finally, he desperately wants to befriend all of them and be accepted into the group. I normally love enemies-to-friends or enemies-to-lovers, but there were so many gaps in the development between him and the other characters. Confusing. To top it all off, I really didn’t care about any of these characters. Some were too perfect and lovely to feel real. Some were snobby. Some were just boring.
The next thing to disappoint me was the world building. What I expected was a vivid reimagining of Paris set to a backdrop of unique technological advancements and the opulence of high society. What I got was a confusing jumble of locations, myths and histories that did not piece together into any sort of cohesive world. I found that as a reader, I not given enough explanations to put together a bigger picture of how Forging affects the world outside Paris, even though the characters’ origins span multiple different countries and continents. We aren’t even really given a picture of Paris itself outside the limited lives of the six main characters and their usual haunts. The more I read, the less I understood. New concepts are being continually introduced but not explained properly, leaving the reader with no real concept of their impact or significance. As the book progressed, the more confused I became about the society, the social classes, the mythos behind it all, etc.
Here are a couple of assorted things that I disliked about this book:
Everything felt too convenient for the protagonists. Whenever there was an issue, it seemed like there was magically a Forged object that could solve their problems. They always just happened to have the perfect tool or object to get them out of any fix.
The writing was clunky. Upon reading some of the sentences out loud, they all sat on my tongue wrong. The word choice never quite fit with the message the sentence was meant to be conveying. Sometimes I would read a sentence and just stare at it there on the page and wonder why it was worded that way.
I frequently had to Google words in this book. It seemed as though the author was trying to show off how impressive her vocabulary is rather than telling the story efficiently. Usually, if it can be said with a simpler word, that means it should be.
There were gaps in the writing. A character would be holding something and then, inexplicably, another character across the room would be holding it. The book lacked “stage direction”-- what the characters were physically doing at any moment or how things got from point A to point B.
Even though the book was pretty much non-stop action, it felt like nothing actually happened until the final 25 pages. None of the characters went through any personal development or development as a group. Nothing new was revealed about these characters’ pasts after the beginning of the novel.
The main problem with this book, even worse than the flat characters and mediocre writing, was that this book simply asks too much from the reader. We’re expected to keep up and completely suspend our disbelief at all of these fantastical things that happen within the story. And yes. I get it. It’s fantasy, and things sometimes don’t have to make sense. But I read this piece of writing advice somewhere that said that you can only make your readers believe one unbelievable thing. This book is engaging in all of the wrong ways. As a reader, I spent too much time trying to decipher the world, trying to understand the characters’ motivations, and trying to figure out what was happening in each scene to thoroughly understand the overarching plot and events. I couldn’t think about the mystery or try to solve the puzzles alongside the characters because I spent most of this book being confused.
There were a couple of things that I did like about this book--it was diverse and inclusive (LGBTQ characters, mixed race characters and characters of colour, disability rep), it dealt with topics of racism and colonialism--but these issues were not nearly as present as they could have been in the larger arc of the story. In the authors’ note, the author talks about how these topics heavily influenced the story and yet they have little real bearing on the actual plot.
This book was really sad for me, because I wanted and expected to really love this story. Despite my disappointment, I think that I will read book two. None of these issues are unfixable. The world can be better established, the characters can be developed. Wherever the next book takes us, I have hope that this story will pull through.
Not quite irredeemably bad, but it was a near thing.
I originally bought this book because I love Six Of Crows. After I heard the comparisons pretty much everywhere, it was an instant buy. After learning more about the story, I was completely hooked. Heists? Alternative history? Unique fantasy setting? Revenge? Secret societies, friendships between outcasts, vivid descriptions? It seemed to check all of my boxes.
But then I actually started reading it and my amazing-book-dreams were crushed.
Immediately, I disliked the writing style and was extremely confused. I hoped it would get better, but it didn’t. In case you don’t know what it’s about, this book stars treasure hunter and wealthy hotelier Séverin Montagnet-Alarie and his group of mismatched outcasts. Together, they must work together to reclaim Severin’s true inheritance as an heir to a Great House in the reclusive Order of Babel. The main problem with this book is that everything is good in theory but executed very poorly, which is the most upsetting kind of bad book. The characters, the plot, the setting— nothing was as fleshed out as it needed to be.
Each of the characters was given a “tragic backstory” consisting of some sort of trauma or oppression or exclusion which was established very early on in the book. I’m a sucker for a tragic past. I love characters who have been to hell and back and have emerged stronger for it, but only if these backstories have actual bearing on the story. In The Gilded Wolves, they rarely influence the characters’ actions, motivations, or the plot. Most of these backstories don’t have a purpose after the first 100 pages. Aside from this, these characters have zero natural chemistry. They rarely have conversations that are not arguments or poorly written banter (lots of poorly written banter). Both romances felt forced. Many of the characters also lack consistency. Big time. I found this extremely confusing. For example, when the character Hypnos is first introduced, he is spoiled and petulant. Then, he’s mysterious and dangerous and cruel, threatening to murder everyone Séverin loves. Finally, he desperately wants to befriend all of them and be accepted into the group. I normally love enemies-to-friends or enemies-to-lovers, but there were so many gaps in the development between him and the other characters. Confusing. To top it all off, I really didn’t care about any of these characters. Some were too perfect and lovely to feel real. Some were snobby. Some were just boring.
The next thing to disappoint me was the world building. What I expected was a vivid reimagining of Paris set to a backdrop of unique technological advancements and the opulence of high society. What I got was a confusing jumble of locations, myths and histories that did not piece together into any sort of cohesive world. I found that as a reader, I not given enough explanations to put together a bigger picture of how Forging affects the world outside Paris, even though the characters’ origins span multiple different countries and continents. We aren’t even really given a picture of Paris itself outside the limited lives of the six main characters and their usual haunts. The more I read, the less I understood. New concepts are being continually introduced but not explained properly, leaving the reader with no real concept of their impact or significance. As the book progressed, the more confused I became about the society, the social classes, the mythos behind it all, etc.
Here are a couple of assorted things that I disliked about this book:
Everything felt too convenient for the protagonists. Whenever there was an issue, it seemed like there was magically a Forged object that could solve their problems. They always just happened to have the perfect tool or object to get them out of any fix.
The writing was clunky. Upon reading some of the sentences out loud, they all sat on my tongue wrong. The word choice never quite fit with the message the sentence was meant to be conveying. Sometimes I would read a sentence and just stare at it there on the page and wonder why it was worded that way.
I frequently had to Google words in this book. It seemed as though the author was trying to show off how impressive her vocabulary is rather than telling the story efficiently. Usually, if it can be said with a simpler word, that means it should be.
There were gaps in the writing. A character would be holding something and then, inexplicably, another character across the room would be holding it. The book lacked “stage direction”-- what the characters were physically doing at any moment or how things got from point A to point B.
Even though the book was pretty much non-stop action, it felt like nothing actually happened until the final 25 pages. None of the characters went through any personal development or development as a group. Nothing new was revealed about these characters’ pasts after the beginning of the novel.
The main problem with this book, even worse than the flat characters and mediocre writing, was that this book simply asks too much from the reader. We’re expected to keep up and completely suspend our disbelief at all of these fantastical things that happen within the story. And yes. I get it. It’s fantasy, and things sometimes don’t have to make sense. But I read this piece of writing advice somewhere that said that you can only make your readers believe one unbelievable thing. This book is engaging in all of the wrong ways. As a reader, I spent too much time trying to decipher the world, trying to understand the characters’ motivations, and trying to figure out what was happening in each scene to thoroughly understand the overarching plot and events. I couldn’t think about the mystery or try to solve the puzzles alongside the characters because I spent most of this book being confused.
There were a couple of things that I did like about this book--it was diverse and inclusive (LGBTQ characters, mixed race characters and characters of colour, disability rep), it dealt with topics of racism and colonialism--but these issues were not nearly as present as they could have been in the larger arc of the story. In the authors’ note, the author talks about how these topics heavily influenced the story and yet they have little real bearing on the actual plot.
This book was really sad for me, because I wanted and expected to really love this story. Despite my disappointment, I think that I will read book two. None of these issues are unfixable. The world can be better established, the characters can be developed. Wherever the next book takes us, I have hope that this story will pull through.