3.75/5 stars

I'm EXTREMELY picky with YA historical fantasy novels. I either love them or hate them. Every once in a while though, there's one that catches my attention just enough for me to keep pushing through, but it probably isn't my favorite. Enter "The Gilded Wolves", which is precisely the type of book I described. Very slow at first, but I kept pushing because some of my 4+ rated books happen to start off slow. While it picks up, there were many MANY instances where I thought to myself "ok if something doesn't happen in the next 20 pages I'm done", but then something so interesting would happen that I'd decide to keep going. I don't love this, but I don't hate it either. There's more good to bad, and I feel that maybe a little bit more oomph in between the more talkative points of the book could've benefitted for many people. People compare this to Six of Crows, which I can see why, but I definitely disagree that it's not exactly like that at all. Six of Crows didn't make me feel like dropping every few chapters and I just felt the world and characters were more lush. The Gilded Wolves is a good novel, but not a great one. It could've benefitted from a bit more editing.

All thoughts are my own and are in no way biased. ARC given to me for free by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

"Everywhere he looked, he was surrounded by gilded wolves. And for whatever reason, it made him feel perfectly at home. Wolves were everywhere. In politics, on thrones, in beds. They cut their teeth on history and grew fat on war. Not that Séverin was complaining. It was just that, like other wolves, he wanted his share."

I am officially addicted to the Gilded Wolves!

Roshani Chokshi holds a special place in my heart. From the moment I read her Star-touched Queen, I knew her prose was for me. When I read A Crown of Wishes I knew it's true love. Though The Gilded Wolves is nothing like its predecessors in style and writing, it proves that Roshani's talent is limitless and she is capable of many wonderful magical things.

The Gilded Wolves is a story about Severin - the exiled heir of a dying House of Vanth. To earn back his inheritance Severin has to find and give to the omniscient Order of Babel society one ancient artifact they have been looking for. But to do so Severin requires a help of five different friends who have their own stakes in the game and their motives are not as simple as it seems. Together with his team of outcasts, Severin will have to penetrate powerful secret societies, to stop one ancient force from resurrecting, to stalk Paris's catacombs and not to lose their lives or hearts in the process.

To give more information about this book would be a crime as it gradually unravels its secret nooks and hidden passages giving any reader a hell of a shock in the end and making you cry for the next installment. Well, this is what true adventures are made of.

The Gilded Wolves reminded me of Six of Crows but the comparison is only in the setting: we have a team of outcasts and a heist to complete. Add to that magic and humor and you have a similar recipe to Six of Crows. But rather than common topic, books are nothing alike. The Gilded Wolves is a story in its own right, having a unique voice, you will not forget after finishing the book.

I absolutely adored a cast of characters. They have diverse and unique voices. For sure you are going to pick your favorite characters and couples, but all of them working together as a team was so endearing that they became one of the cutest book families I've encountered in a book. My heart aches for all of them.

As I mentioned before The Gilded Wolves is very different from Roshani's previous books. This story lacked the prose author is so famous for in her previous works. There were no lengthy but beautiful descriptions and imaginative epithets. Some people like to adhere to it as purple prose, but for me, it's just the beauty of language. The Gilded Wolves are more restraint in language but no less imaginative and complete in the richness of a word. And when Roshani uses some of the epithets to describe characters and their feelings, those words bloom and fill whole passages with possibilities beyond imagination.

The only problem I had with the book was infodump at the beginning and lengthy descriptions of science and mechanical actions that can go on for pages and often confuse more than enlighten. Don't get me wrong, I am a nerd and adore smart characters and this book has plenty of them. But when you read a book you build all images in your head and some things were so confusing it was hard for me to imagine them properly.

I would highly recommend The Gilded Wolves to those readers who love similar to Six of Crows stories, but unique in their own way, with rich diverse characters and a mystery worth dying for or at least worth turning the last page and crave for more.

Heist, secret societies, friendship, star-crossed lovers, humor - a perfect remedy from Autumn melancholy. Highly recommended!

Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press Wednesday Books, for the read of Roshani Chokshi’s, The Gilded Wolves.

Imagination, magic, the decadent settings of Paris in 1889 with a contemporary twist, clever characters: The Gilded Wolves has it all – including a gorgeous cover.

Treasure-hunter Séverin has the chance to reclaim his true inheritance but he needs the help of a unique group of skilled characters to succeed in the risky mission.

It is a fantastic YA novel, and I know our students will be thrilled with it.

Highly recommend.

I recently discovered Roshani Chokshi as an author and I'm thrilled that I did . This is another beautifully written story that will appeal to a variety of different genre lovers. Chokshi is able to combine elements of fantasy with history and make the reader fall into the worlds she creates! Thank you netgalley for this arc in exchange for my honest opinion.

This book is a mixture of religion, history, math and science which was both interesting and confusing

What I liked
- The plot is unique from your typical ya plot. It’s inspired by the biblical story of the Tower of babel. It’s basically about a group of misfits in France, I believe, who collaborate to find a precious artefact that needed to be kept safe because of the dangerous thing it can reveal about the babel fragments.

- the characters: Like alot of other people have said, they reminded me of SoC.

- We have the ‘leader’ Severin who lost his birthright and was promised to get it back if he found the artefact. We have Laila, who has a secret and has her own purpose apart from finding the artefact. She’s like the mother of the group, always feeding them and making sure they’re okay. Then there is Tristan who is like the baby of the group. He and Severin kinda grew up together and they’re basically brothers! There is Enrique, who is the historian and also the flirt of the group , there is Zofia, an awkward, math nerd who is great at solving logical problems but terrible at anything social related. Lastly, there is Hypnos, who is the outsider and a part of the elite society, ‘the order of babel’, but he’s half black so he doesn’t fully belong. I loved the interaction between the characters and they had some funny moments.

- I liked the fantasy elements; A few people are blessed with affinities that I think has to do with the tower of babel. There is matter (solid, liquid) and there is mind affinities. People that have these affinities can forge items that contain them so this book had alot of animated objects which was pretty cool. There is also a character that can ’read’ items by touching them, meaning she can tell the history of the item; who used it, what it was used for, etc.

What I didn’t like
- To say I was confused alot is an understatement. I was lost from the beginning. Overall, I knew what was happening in general but it was the little details I was confused about. This book had alot of puzzles that needed to be solved and I found myself having to read the same pages over again just so I can make sense of how the puzzles are being solved. Some of them included math theories which I found myself zoning out to bc its math… Like I said above, the book mixed alot of subjects (religion, math, fantasy, history, etc) so it was sometimes a burden to read about how they all related to each other. As I am writing this review, I’m starting to even forget how some plot points went about.

General Commentary
There isn’t really romance in this, but it was kinda hinted at. Two of the characters had some type of romantic past but it’s kinda complicated now lol. I found that I didn’t care about romance in this and was more interested in the friendship so the lack of romantic love didn’t bother me.

Overall, it was a good book, albeit rather confusing and yes I would recommend if you liked six of crows. It’s like the less savage version of that.

I received an arc of this from both the publisher and Netgalley simultaneously and it was only because of the physical book that I plodded through as far as I could, but unfortunately, I had to DNF at around halfway through. The story wasn’t engrossing and the characters were not engaging. I encountered this while trying out Six of Crows, which several reviewers have compared it to so it’s no wonder I couldn’t get through it. I don’t feel as though this a bad book, it simply was not for me.

I loved this book! The characters were well-rounded, and the plot was innovative and kept me on my toes through the entire book. Devoured it in just over 24 hours!

It took me a bit to get invested, but once I did, this story had me completely. Great characters, interesting plot with just the right amount of romantic angst thrown in to get me hooked. Conclusions yet setup for book 2, which is something many authors struggle with. Here it was done beautifully.

I have a lot of mixed feelings about this book that I think I can distill into three major points:
1. This isn't a problem with the book itself but the formatting was suuuuuuper jacked up and made some passages difficult to read.
2. The thing I love about a lot of fantasy, scifi, and alt history books written in the past few years is that authors are afforded an opportunity to introduce diversity, but it's often done heavy-handedly or with great difficulty. Chokshi does not have that problem; minority characters are not delegated to secondary roles, but are major players with meaty storylines and unforced motivations. The worldbuilding of fantasy/alt-history Paris is done so well that the ways in which these characters' paths cross is BELIEVEABLE. I'm Filipino, so I had a personal interest in the introduction of a Filipino character, and I'm impressed in how Chokshi got that character to Paris. Nothing feels shoehorned, it all just works.
3. I didn't not enjoy the book--Chokshi's writing is lovely and the story is well-paced--but how many heist books do we really need? I got major Six of Crows (and Locke Lamora, etc.) vibes the entire time. To be fair, I enjoyed this much, much more than Six of Crows, but it just wasn't the most original story.

The Gilded Wolves by Roshani Chokshi was a great story! Well written and amazing story with great characters

First of all, you cannot quote something and have that quote be incorrect. I stopped reading at 13% because adding in a quote from the Bible (literal quotation marks in the text and reference to the verses) and have the last part of the quoted text NOT be in the Bible. I searched different versions, googled the phrase I was looking for, and even asked my sister who is going through Seminary School about the quoted text in the book. The last few lines do not exist, I understand it serves the purpose of the novel but what the heck...total turnoff. I'm not even very religious and it annoyed me. If you want to add in what happened after a quote for your story then I get that but end the quote where it should end. Ugh.

I also wasn't a fan of all the really short sentences, they occurred way too often.

So im already a huge fan of Roshani Chokshi, and i knew i would have to have this book! This book is beautifully written and has such amazing prose! The alternating points of view between the rag tag group were well done and easy to follow. The dynamics were well hashed out! i also enjoyed the magic elements called forging and how some people can view an objects past, present, etc. This book packs a lot of fun action and i really loved every second of it!

A DRC was provided by NetGalley for a fair and honest review.

Ah, is there any more romantic place to envisage than Belle Epoque Paris? Not for Roshani Chokshi, a skilled world builder who delights in mixing the fantastical with historical details of late 19th-century France. Here the magical ability of Forging, changing objects at will and viewpoint, is the most coveted skill in the land, but increasingly, those with other worldly gifts must conceal their arts from an increasingly industrial age. Chokshi writes like a dream, from the lush imagery she employs with ease ‘The corner of his lips tipped into a smile as he raised his fingers. At once, a glass from the champagne chandelier floating above him broke off and sailed into his hand.” to the snark of the characters’ dialogue.
“You’re doing it again,” said Enrique.
“What?”
“That whole nefarious-whilst-looking-into-the-distance-thing. What are you hiding, Severin?”
“Nothing.”
“You and your secrets.”
“Secrets keep my hair lustrous,” said Severin, running his hand through his curls.”
Oh, Severin is hiding alot, not least that aside from running the most fabulous hotel in Paris, L’Eden, he is also the dispossessed heir of the disgraced House Vanth, in a Paris that is dominated by the remaining two houses, House Nyx and House Kore. Through fair means and foul, Severin is going to get back the objects that defined Vanth, and then regain its past glory. And perhaps find out what happened to that other ruined power, the Fallen House, and their lost treasure. And potentially make himself a target for the sinister House of Babel, which secretly rules the world. For this end he has put together a merry band of con artists, who all have their own reasons to score the ultimate object by planning a brilliant treasure hunt. What could go wrong?
Yes, this book is strongly reminiscent of Leigh Bardugo’s work, but any diverse group of misfits up to no good is a trope that has worked from Robin Hood to Ocean’s Eleven to Bridesmaids. Gilded Wolves has as much in common with Les Miserables, La Traviata and the Scarlet Pimpernel in its immersion in a tumultuous Paris where different factions struggle for power despite the cost, and the romantic young are crushed by their machinations. Aside from the superficial glamor and pursuit of power and riches, Chokshi examines themes such as the sins of colonialism and cultural appropriation. Traditions sacred to one society are borrowed and bastardized by another. The brutally efficient Order of Babel gives only two choices to the countries they subjugate, “ally or die.” Zofia, the Polish Jew, faces anti-semitism and accusations that her forging skills are stolen from Gentiles, but also daily stress from managing her autistic savant nature in a world that, however magical, is as suspicious of difference as our own. Laila, a Tamil Indian, who can read an object’s history with a touch, struggles with prejudice, sexism and her tendency to use her feminine wiles as a default for any situation (baker, dancer, showgirl, and seductress?) while also facing down a possible death sentence. Enrique longs to be a revolutionary in his native Philippines but also to be a serious scholar as the group’s Historian. Tristan pines for Severin whilst making objects that break magical rules and nursing his pet tarantula. And Hypnos, heir to House Nyx, who hires the band to make a heist while playing his own games, turns out to as interesting and even more complex than the French/Algerian Severin, whose massive shoulder chip and Chosen One complex drives the plot.

In a world where sensual pleasures are celebrated and commodified to a stifling level, Chokshi shows the danger of losing oneself to their pursuit, abandoning romance for politics, love for power, innocence for experience. This is a big ambitious book that hopefully will maintain its allure with the sequel.

Did not finish. It was just too slow paced for me. I thought the characters were great and I loved the intertwining of math and science within. It was just a bit over my intelligence level that I was confused some of the time. The author is obviously very intelligent. It just wasn’t my cup of tea.

I had to DNF this one at 10%.

Too many names and places I was having a hard time keeping track of.
Too many characters in the beginning. I had a hard time feeling invested in any of them.
The magic system did not interest me.
I had a hard time melding the idea that the story took place in Victorian Paris with what I was actually reading, which felt far too modern (especially the interaction amongst the characters).

Overall, definitely not for me. It will certainly find eager hands, though. So if the synopsis sounds like something you'd enjoy, I would not discourage you from trying it out!

This is an awesome mix of classic heist books; mixed with a supernatural science that some might call magic, mixed with classic young adult angst. A joy to read!
Severin, a wickedly clever young man, has been exiled from his rightful place as the head of his House. With his closest friends, and his closest enemy, he plots to get back what was stolen from him.
That is the synopsis in a sentence, but Chokshi goes so much further within the book - with multi layered plots and individual heartbreaks and mysteries galore.
I love how all of the crew are so sharp - so clever. Sharp enough to cut themselves and others. I loved the emotion within the book. I loved the bond they shared.
If I had to make a criticism, I would say that I found it unbelievable that they were all so young; being teenagers. I'm sure you could argue that as prodigies, they have matured early, but I felt the characters would have been better served if they were in their mid twenties.
I would happily recommend to all readers of YA, and especially those that like Maas, Laani Taylor, and other such authors.

My relationship with YA has been very rocky over the past few years. There have been significantly more misses than hits for me. So, needless to say, my hopes weren’t very high coming into this book. I was so pleasantly surprised, though!

This book tells the story of Severin, a young wealthy hotelier who desires to earn back the inheritance that was stolen from him, and his unique and compelling band of friends/adversaries. I won’t go into details about the story beyond this because I don’t wanna spoil anything.

Things I Liked About the Book:

1.) The setting - The book takes place in 20th century France in the days leading up to the Exposition Universelle. It was such a rich setting to choose and the author really took advantage of it!

2.) The writing - I found Chokshi’s writing to be incredibly beautiful. I’m eager to check out her other books now!

3.) Inclusivity - The author incorporates characters with a variety of backgrounds, ethnicities, sexual orientations, abilities, etc. and she does it in a very natural way that doesn’t feel forced.

4.) Laila - Definitely my favorite character. I saw many aspects of myself in her and the mental struggles that she goes through. I thought the author did a great job of making her accessible to an audience that may or may not have had similar thoughts/difficulties in their own lives.

Things I Didn’t Like About The Book:

1.) There were a few times when it felt like the author had an afterthought or came up with an additional plot point and, instead of going back and adding them in at points in the story where they would make more sense, she just added them randomly later on. That being said, I read an early ARC of the book and these things may be fixed in the finalized edition!

The only bad thing about reading this ARC is that I’ll have to wait even longer for the sequel!

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the advanced copy of this book!

THE GILDED WOLVES is a lush historical fantasy novel, set in a wonderfully rendered nineteenth-century Paris. And—there are #ownvoices elements!

Open these pages and you’ll find the historical puzzles of THE DA VINCI CODE paired with the found family and heists of SIX OF CROWS. It’s an enchanting combination, full of wise-cracking characters and daring adventures.

I am a huge fan of Roshani Chokshi’s novels and will happily sing their praises, but I will also say that those previous novels often had prose so purple as to be nonsensical, along with not much of a plot. If you have had similar feelings and are on the fence about reading THE GILDED WOLVES, I urge you to pick it up. The prose in this novel is more straightforward, but it also has plenty of Chokshi’s beautiful descriptions and signature turns of phrases. And there is most certainly a plot. So please do check it out, and immerse yourself in the wonders within.

The first few chapters and the last few chapters were definitely my favorites. The beginning was full of intriguing mysteries and charming new characters, and the end was equal parts glorious and devastating.

The middle, for me, got rather muddy. My main piece of criticism is the sheer breadth of information that pervades the novel. While Chokshi obviously did a massive amount of world-building, I think it could have been conveyed to the reader in a much clearer way. Even after finishing the novel, I am still confused about what’s technology vs. magic vs. inherent abilities vs. a combination of the above. I don’t have the best grasp on Forging, and what its history, capabilities, limitations, and exceptions are. That confusion led me to feel rather apathetic about aspects of the story that I’m sure I would have otherwise been riveted by, if I had been able to follow Chokshi’s thought process.

Overall, I absolutely recommend THE GILDED WOLVES. With its delightful banter, treasure-hunting antics, swoony romance, and ample diversity, you don’t want to miss it!

ARC provided by St. Martin's Press and Wednesday Books via NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review. Thank you!

A delightful mix of the friendship and camaraderie from Guardian's of the Galaxy and the heist/mission aspect of a Mission Impossible-esque tale, The Gilded Wolves was fun and exciting. Chokshi has woven an intricate and deeply involved story with this new approach to a supernatural/magical ability, Forging.

Forging is the ability to manipulate or enhance an object, either physically changing it or showing a manipulation through mind forging. It's complex but fresh, which is a commendable feat for Chokshi. Forging is part of an elaborate history tying to the biblical Tower of Babel and its remaining fragments, controlled by the Order of Babel. The Order is constructed from members of Houses of families, similar to a royal lineage and royal courts.

Forging is introduced a little heavily in the beginning, along with the history and entire set-up for the world, but it's completely worth the little bit of info-dump thrown into those opening chapters. I know no other alternative, so I get why it is all there early on.

Propped up against the Paris backdrop featuring a newly constructed Eiffel Tower, and coinciding with the Exposition Universelle of 1889, The Gilded Wolves is hard to put down (after that info-dump). Between the characters, the settings, and the detailed history, I was entranced by the atmosphere and intensity so well-written by Chokshi.

Séverin, the main narrator and head of the band of misfits he calls his crew and family, is both cold and removed while still practically vibrating off the page with his vulnerability. Revealed both through his interactions with his crew and through flashbacks that read like dark fairytales, I could not get enough of Séverin as the narrator.

This is what I wanted, and didn't quite get, from Six of Crows. So any fan of that one should be thrilled with the web Chokshi has constructed for this new world that melds perfectly with the real-life 1889 Paris in which it is set.

The Gilded Wolves was a lavish, dark, and terrifyingly beautiful novel, with dynamic and instantly loveable characters that you root for, along with a suspenseful plot full of heists and double crosses that keeps you on the edge of your seat until the final word.

I particularly loved the diverse cast. There was so much wonderful representation with these characters!

I will be highly reccommending this book as an addition for our Young Adult collection to my library manager.