The Gilded Wolves by Roshani Chokshi

The Gilded Wolves (The Gilded Wolves, #1)

by Roshani Chokshi

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, Severin Montagnet-Alarie. But when the all-powerful society, the Order of Babel, seeks him out for help, Severin is offered a treasure that he never imagined: his true inheritance. To find the ancient artifact the Order seeks, Severin 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.

Reviewed by Laurie on

2 of 5 stars

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Review posted on https://lauriesbookshelf.com
One of the most hyped and anticipated books of the first few months of this year was definitely The Gilded Wolves by Roshani Chokshi. I was a little on the fence about this book, but after seeing so much positivity about it I decided to grab a Kindle copy.















Expectations





As stated before, I was not that excited when I first heard about the release of this book. Most people compared The Gilded Wolves to Leigh Bardugo's Six Of Crows and I'm not a huge fan of Kaz Brecker and his dreggs. All those positive reviews set my expectations real high and I decided to buy this book. It was absolutely hyped, so it should be good right? Right?! No, not really. The Gilded Wolves did not meet my expectations at all.



Writing style





I have to admit that I don't know how to judge Roshani Chokshi's writing style. It's not bad, but it's not that mindblowing either. I found it okay. This was my first book by this author though.



Story





Well, here we are, the part of the review I have a lot to say about. The story. The Gilded Wolves is told from multiple points of view and so far, so good. Multiple POV's are no problem for me. I ended up getting an audio/ebook combination of this book and the thing I found really frustrating, annoying and unnecessary were the forced French accents in the audiobook. It was that bad that I had a tough time getting into the story and I ended up returning the audiobook to Audible with this feedback. Dialogues didn't capture me and I didn't feel any connection to the characters. This unfortunately did not change when switching to the ebook. I ended up reading mostly from the ebook because of the poor audiobook performance. The male narrator was also really monotone, the female one was decent.



Let's get deeper into the storyline. It was in a nutshell: confusing. At the 82% mark I was still confused and I didn't get the point of the whole thing. Well, if that happens, something is definitely going wrong. This had nothing to do with the language, the English is fine and easy to follow. The magic system was vague, the world building was lacking and it was slow. According to many people, the story was fast-paced, but I cannot relate. In my opinion, the plot could have been excecuted much better, especially regarding the previously stated things.



However, I am able to highlight one positive thing about this book: the diversity. The Gilded Wolves is a hell of a diverse book and it feels like it's coming naturally. It doesn't feel forced at all. All characters have a different background and this has been woven into the story so well. However, the history the group shared together could be highlighted some more. The only characters whose history together you get to know are Séverin and Tristan. You will get to know a bit of the past of the others, but you don't get to know them in depth in The Gilded Wolves.



Unfortunately this book didn't work for me and therefore I won't read the rest of the series.







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This review was originally posted on Laurie's Bookshelf

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  • 5 March, 2019: Reviewed