Wednesday, March 13, 2019

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Gilded Wolves by Roshani Chokshi



I'm going to start this review a little differently than normal, because it's necessary to explain a bit about what colored my opinions of The Gilded Wolves.  Followers on twitter or of this blog (like the 5 of them) know I read a books at a pretty crazy fast rate these days, averaging over a book every 2 days since the start of last year.  The result of this is that well, it's hard not to compare more recent books I read to older ones I've read, if not in my reviews, than in my head.  This is not really fair - while books may repeat ideas, concepts and tropes, they deserve to be generally reviewed based upon their own merits, as even the same ideas, concepts, tropes, or whatever can be put together in new and interesting ways, resulting in new interesting works that are equally valid forms of expression as the old.

All of this is to say that as I read Roshani Chokshi's "The Gilded Wolves," there were a few books that immediately came to mind as trudging through the same spaces, and I couldn't help comparing the books as I read.  This is unfortunate, because some of the books The Gilded Wolves called to mind are some of my favorite books over the past 2 years, and The Gilded Wolves just couldn't hold up to such lofty competition.  The book is definitely solid and ends on a solid sequel hook, but I was a bit disappointed with how it wound up in the end, and I worry that my review is too negative due to the comparisons, rather than due to the book's own merits.

More specifics after the jump:

------------------------------------------------Plot Summary---------------------------------------------------------
In an alternate version of our world in 1889, a magic known as "forging" is known to be powered by artifacts known as "Babel Fragments,"  of which there are only a few in the world.  The West's - aka Europe - Babel Fragment was taken from the Middle East in the crusades and hidden somewhere in the continent, with its location safeguarded by the powerful houses that control each Country.

In Paris, those Houses - known together as the Order of Babel - used to be four: House Kore, House Nyx, House Vanth, and one more.  But the Fourth House reached for some mysterious power and fell, becoming forgotten to history and known only as the Fallen House.  And as for House Vanth....., it supposedly died when its last leader died without an heir.

Severin knows that last truth isn't quite true - he is the heir to House Vanth, cheated out of his birthright due to his biracial heritage.  He has spent the past few years gathering friends with talents - an actress with the power to discern objects' histories, a brother-figure with the ability to forge solid objects, a Jew expelled from university with the ability to forge liquid matter, and a mixed heritage historian - and has obtained many Forged objects and collectibles to obtain prominence once more.  But he has always dreamed of being restored to his birthright as master of House Vanth.

And when the leader of House Nyx - the creepy young man named Hypnos - promises to restore Severin if he will steal an artifact from House Kore in order to safeguard the Babel Fragment, Severin cannot resist the chance.  But to successfully pull off the plot, Severin will be forced to make decisions that could jeopardize all of his friendships....and forces even beyond those either Severin or Hypnos could've thought of also have their eyes on the object, and on all of Europe.
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The Gilded Wolves is essentially a YA Heist Novel in a fantasy world based upon late 19th century Paris, and for the most part it works quite well at that.  Like many a good heist plot, it features a wonderful cast of characters, who benefit as well from being particularly diverse in race, gender, and sexuality.  The dialogue is well done - quite often witty and amusing - and the heist plotting is generally excellent, although it kind of feels a bit like a Dan Brown novel at times, but the book pulls it off with the skills of the characters making it all work out.

And like I said, it's a fun cast.  Severin is kind of the least interesting and he's the lead - the mixed-race charismatic leader of the crew who guides them through everything.  Then there's probably our secondary lead and his love interest, the Indian Girl Laila, whose double life as a famous performer covers for a dark past and dangerous magical ability and a deadly future, which leads her to be a bit fatalistic toward her own desires and makes her quite interesting to read.  Then there's the historian Enrique - who's light skin but foreign heritage makes him out of place in both worlds - and the mathematics genius (and somewhat on the spectrum) and forger Zofia, who got thrown out of university due to being ostracized for her Jewish heritage.  The story jumps around between these four's point of view, and then of course there's a fifth member of the gang in the forger and childhood friend Tristan, who suffered intense childhood trauma, as well as the mysterious untrustable Hypnos, who insists upon joining the gang.  It is for the most part, an excellent cast who I enjoyed quite a bit.

The setting is also rather well done, clearly showing for the most part how the world looked like in Paris 1889, but with the changes of magic being in this world.  But those changes are real and based upon real history, with magic being essentially stolen from the middle east by the Crusaders for the sake of Europe, and disdain being felt towards outsiders and people of color feeling incredibly real.  Too much of classic fantasy, based upon historical eras, pretends such people didn't exist or that if they did they'd get along fine, but The Gilded Wolves never goes for that and it's all the better for it.

Still a problem for me was that The Gilded Wolves evoked very clearly one particular book for me: Robert Jackson Bennett's Foundryside.  The magic system of forging is similar to Foundryside's scriving, one character has a background that includes both a magical power and origin that is very very similar to Foundryside's heroine, and the book has heist-novel structure with a twist of antagonists coming out of the woodwork in the final act seeking similar end goals (although with very different motives).  Foundryside is one of my favorite novels of the past year (it made my Hugo Nominee ballot), so that's a rough standard for comparison.  The Gilded Wolves' Paris setting also reminded me a bit of Aliette de Bodard's "Dominion of the Fallen" - which also takes place in an alternate early 20th century Paris - which is another rough comparison, as I loved the last book in that series. 

Even where there are differences between these books, I found myself seeing The Gilded Wolves rather unfavorably in comparison.  The Gilded Wolves, as I mention above, uses aspects of our real world (the Negro Village Exhibition in Paris of 1889 makes a direct appearance) and real world people are referenced quite a bit, unlike those books, allowing for Chokshi to make reference to real world discrimination against peoples outside the "norm - aka White Europeans.  The very notion of the Babel Fragments and how they were taken is a fascinating magical version of the evils of colonization, but none of these ideas ever really go beyond the background setting of this book.  You could take all of these ideas away, and you'd basically wind up with the same novel, so these differences don't really add anything overall even if they're interesting.*

*This is not to say that books shouldn't try to showcase that such peoples did exist and have ALWAYS existed throughout history - of course they have, but it's just kind of weird that these circumstances are so clearly noted and yet have no effect on the novel.  

 And then there's the book's other issues.  For example, the antagonist(s), who the reader will guess at fairly early due to all the hints and any amount of genre savvyness.  It's never really clear why they're doing what they're doing, and what they want to do just isn't that interesting (whereas Foundryside's surprise final antagonist is far more compelling because they have strong reasons for what they're doing).  Another issue is that the book's central plot oddly ends about 70% of the way through, with the final 30% essentially being entirely epilogue.  It's weird pacing, not helped by some truly bizarre character choices in the final portion of the book, with the main character making some awful character decisions that make him feel like an asshole and an ending cliffhanger on one character getting their heartbroken by a shift in a romance that just felt cruel and unnecessary.

I don't want to judge this book solely on its comparison to Foundryside, but the pacing issues, meh antagonists, and odd assholish moments by the main character hurt it quite a bit on its own.  It's a solid start to a trilogy/series and definitely shows promise, but it has some issues that make it hard to wholeheartedly recommend - even if I worry I'm being too negative due to the comparisons. 
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