Enter A New Squad Goals: The Gilded Wolves – Blog Tour Review

I have given The Gilded Wolves by Roshani Chokshi a ☆☆☆☆ rating. It is Book 1 of The Gilded Wolves series. It is Young Adult Fantasy with some Romance. Wednesday Books publishes it. It was published January 15^th, 2019.

The blurb reads:

Set in a darkly glamorous world, The Gilded Wolves is full of mystery, decadence, and dangerous but thrilling adventure.

Paris, 1889: The world is on the cusp of industry and power, and the Exposition Universelle has breathed new life into the streets and dredged up ancient secrets. In this city, no one keeps tabs on secrets better than treasure-hunter and wealthy hotelier, Séverin Montagnet-Alarie. But when the all-powerful society, the Order of Babel, seeks him out for help, Séverin is offered a treasure that he never imagined: his true inheritance.

To find the ancient artifact the Order seeks, Séverin will need help from a band of experts: An engineer with a debt to pay. A historian who can’t yet go home. A dancer with a sinister past. And a brother in all but blood, who might care too much.

Together, they’ll have to use their wits and knowledge to hunt the artifact through the dark and glittering heart of Paris. What they find might change the world, but only if they can stay alive.

• ISBN: 9781250144546
• Buy Now: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | iBooks | BAM| IndieBound
• Add to Goodreads
• Author Links: Website | Instagram | Twitter
• Follow Me On: Goodreads | Instagram | Twitter | Other Reviews

It’s been a hot minute since my last review and post. It always is! I’m a terribly busy bee and despite being a wedding planner, have no semblance of planning my life. A huge thanks for Rafael of The Royal Polar Bear Reads and Wednesday Books for making me a part of this tour. Always a pleasure to read and review for Asian authors! As always, my reviews may contain spoilers. I say may because what’s a spoiler to you may not be a spoiler for me.

Let me preface this review by saying that the moment I finished reading The Gilded Wolves, I headed straight out to get the rest of Roshani Chokshi’s books.

The Gilded Wolves is a dark, dark, dark work of art from the first word to the very last one, promising of more instalments to come. The moment I picked it up, I refused to put it down and spent every waking moment abandoning my life and dedicating it to these characters.

The Gilded Wolves tells the story of a world in which magic thrives, controlled and overseen by an Order and several major houses of magic. But, these Houses had been torn apart and eradicated in an uprising and unrest with only some of them remaining. But more importantly, The Gilded Wolves tells the story of a ramshackle band of misfits who all answer to Severin, treasure-hunter, hotelier and their overlord—I mean, boss—and work in perfect harmony in their chosen craft, thievery. There’s Laila, the put-together girl with a death date looming over her head, Tristan, the sweetest little brother with hands that craft and create, Enrique, the historian who is loyal, curious and saddled with a past and, Zofia, the engineer and mathematician extraordinaire who lost everything.

The Paris that Roshani Chokshi dreamed up was beautifully constructed and yet so utterly dreary that I both wanted to drown myself in it and stay far away where it could not touch me. It is chockfull of dark magic, people with secret and even darker lies and enemies that could stab you at any moment. It felt like a combination of steampunk (without the steam) and tarnished gold glamour and I wanted to be there.

I really loved that each individual character was given a story and plot line of their own but each one is underdeveloped because naturally, more time and book space was devoted to the main plot and Severin. But, it was enough that I fell in love with each character and want more! I particularly loved Zofia, maybe because she was the first character we meet and she stuck more clearly in my mind, but also because there was a lot for me to relate to, from her quiet strength to her struggle with finding her place in the world. And for some strange reason, I thought she would be Severin’s love interest but I’ll get to that in a bit.

While there is a lot for me to love, it’s hard to not compare The Gilded Wolves to Leigh Bardugo’s Six of Crows. It’s marketed in book boxes as “squad goals” and compared almost exclusively to the latter book despite having darker, more sinister vibe and reading a lot more like upper YA. Where Six of Crows feels a little light-hearted, young and fun, The Gilded Wolves is definitely meant for older readers of YA as the content feels mature, even for me…an adult.

My biggest gripe with The Gilded Wolves is the romance plotlines. Let’s face it, I’m a sucker for a YA with romance; in fact, I find it hard to read YA without any romance in it. While Six of Crows’ romance plotlines were fun and flirty from Matthias and Nina’s long and heartbreaking romance to Inej and Kaz’s quiet love and adoration, The Gilded Wolves puts Lila and Severin’s romance front and center.

Almost every turn of the page had Severin moping over Lila and their “what if”, including mentions of the singular time that they had bumped bits. Is The Gilded Wolves trying to stand apart from Six of Crows by being cool and edgy? Who knows. Personally, I didn’t feel that this relationship added any value to the story or plot, maybe because I detested it so much. I could not see how Lila and Severin would continue to pursue a relationship because they lacked significant chemistry.

The Gilded Wolves would have been better off without it.

Dark, sinister and dreary, The Gilded Wolves is an upper YA with an amazing plotline, characters that keep you awake at night and a beautifully constructed world of magic, history and even religion. I never wanted to put it down and I kept skipping to the back to see how it would end (it gave nothing away, trust me). I wish the marketing team would have done better to separate it from Six of Crows despite pretty much every element being distinct and unique from the magic system to even the characters themselves. But all I see, is SOC SOC SOC.

Highly recommend!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Roshani Chokshi is the New York Times bestselling author of Aru Shah and the End of Time, The Star-Touched Queen, A Crown of Wishes, and The Gilded Wolves. Her work has been nominated for the Locus and Nebula awards, and her books have appeared on Barnes and Nobles Best New Books of the Year and Buzzfeed Best Books of the Year lists. Chokshi lives in Georgia, but doesn’t have much of a Southern accent. Alas.

Thank you to The Royal Polar Bear and Wednesday Books for making me part of this tour and providing me with an ARC copy in exchange for an honest review. This review edition may differ from the final edition.