Monday, August 17, 2020

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Gilded Ones by Namina Forna


Full Disclosure:  This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on February 9, 2021 in exchange for a potential review.  I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.

The Gilded Ones is the debut novel by author Namina Forna and the start of a new YA fantasy trilogy, although it works perfectly well as a stand alone novel.  It's also a novel set not only in an West-African inspired world, but also one that is strongly feminist in its themes.  I knew nothing about this book going in, having requested in from NetGalley after I think I saw some mention of it on twitter and after I was drawn in by its strong cover, so I had no expectations going in at all.  And while The Gilded Ones has some flaws and isn't perfect, what I found is a novel that was impressively strong with its main character and themes and left me excited to find out that there will eventually* be more.

*This book was originally supposed to come out this summer, but was pushed back for some reason (COVID I guess?) to next year, so I suspect I'll have to wait a while for the sequel*

 TRIGGER WARNING:  While no abuse is shown on page - brutal dismembering yes, abuse no - it is implied or talked about with regards to young women in this novel.  There's good cause for this, and it is not gratuitous (like I mentioned, the book doesn't show any of it), but just fair warning.

----------------------------------------------Plot Summary--------------------------------------------------
At age 16, Deka is soon to undergo the Ritual of Purity - a ritual where every girl is cut for the first time to see if their blood runs red....or deadly unnatural gold, in which case the girl will not be suffered to live.  Deka fears the ritual because she's always felt like an outsider in her village - both because her mother being an outsider from a different part of the country has given her looks like no one else and because she's always had a strange intuition that she can't quite put a finger on.

And when the demons known as Deathshrieks attack her village just as the ritual is about to begin, Deka's fears turn true, when her blood runs gold, and the people she love turn on her with blades in their hand and cruelty in their eyes.....over and over and over.....

Until a strange woman with no name comes to Deka claiming to be from the Emperor himself with an offer: to survive and leave the town and join the Emperor's military fighting against the Deathshriek threat.  For Deka is what is known as an Alaki, and her "unnatural" blood makes her near-immortal and super strong, gifts the Empire needs if it is to survive.

With no other choice but pain, Deka accepts the offer and soon finds herself training amongst a number of other similar girls.  And yet as Deka learns more about her Alaki blood, she discovers truths that separate herself from all the others, and make her question not just who she herself is, but what she is, and what that says about the very world she grew up in.....
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In an intro to this novel (which I'm not sure will be in the final book), Namina Forna notes that when she grew up in Sierra Leone, the land was "deeply patriarchal" and that when she moved to America, she hoped "things would be different, but [she] quickly realized they were the same."  It's that theme, and the need to fight back against that, which carries full weight in The Gilded Ones, in which a similar overt form of this patriarchal society and latent sexism is a part of the world.  The religion that the country practices preaches that women should be subservient, and girls have to undergo an actual ritual of "purity" - which brings to mind some real world ideas almost certainly intentionally, even if here it actually can reveal if girls are fully "human" or not.  And yet those who fail the ritual aren't anything more than super capable - super strong, hard to kill, with beautiful looking blood....and yet men can only see such a thing as a threat (and the gold blood a resource to be exploited) to be destroyed in as gruesome a way as they can imagine.

Into this world comes Deka, a girl growing up with a mother who passed away a year ago and who has always tried to be the best daughter possible for her remaining relative, her father, even as her different colored-skin/looks has led to her being ostracized from others in her town her entire life.  She truly believes in the patriarchal culture and religion and doesn't question it - until her fears come true and she becomes directly its target for the color of her blood.  The Gilded Ones does a terrific job with Deka, showing how her thoughts transform from that of being subservient, and then to feeling guilty when she starts feeling otherwise, to truly deciding to hell with them all that she is who she is and she is proud of it.  She's a very bright girl, quick to realize things aren't right and yet she was once captivated by a culture that pushed her down and this book does a great job showing her break out of it, and then to similarly question all of her other assumptions as more and more events - her strange unusual powers, what she sees and what happens - don't seem to align with what she expects.

As is the case often with any book in which the narration is done in first person by the same character throughout, the other characters in this novel don't get quite as much attention and aren't quite as interesting (particularly the love interest, who's just sort of....blah).  But there are a few highlights, particularly the brash angry young woman Belcalis - who is angry for a very real reason and maintains her brash exterior throughout even if she does mellow towards our protagonist a bit.  Deka's best friend, her companion Britta, is also a solid loyal companion whose caring nature and loyalty makes her a solid sidekick, but I also wish we could see more of her - and really any of the girls, outside of their interacting with Deka.

But all these characters work well enough and help form a plot that really works for the most part (see below), with it constantly subverting expectations and moving at a mostly nice pace, with revelations coming to both the characters and the readers at the same time, so you're never really getting annoyed at Deka for not realizing things before she actually does.  It all builds up to an ending that is particularly enjoyable and could really work on its own as if this was a stand alone novel.

That isn't to say the plot is perfect - the whole book builds to a revelation that you can sort of see coming - parts of it at least - which occurs in the final act, and then things move insanely quickly, with other characters apart from Deka making a major decision that the reader will expect, but I didn't expect it to come that easily with so little prompting, as if the author needed to get this book over with as soon as possible at that point (it kind of needed like another 50 pages to lead up to that decision).  The love interest as I mentioned above is kind of meh, and well he's just sort of there and while I appreciate his decisions and can buy his acts, it just is kind of blah.  But still, these issues don't really detract from the whole that much.

Overall, I look forward to seeing more from Forna in this series or elsewhere, and highly recommend this novel to young adults and others when it finally comes out.
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