I have NO IDEA why I waited so long to read this book, and it was only when I was lucky enough to received an ARC of The Silvered Serpents that I knew I needed to get with the program!
Roshani Chokshi has the most beautiful way with words and her world-building was just wonderful in this book. It took me a few chapters to get everything in place in my head, but by then I was fully immersed in the world. Imagine a mix of all the best parts of The Da Vinci Code, Indiana Jones and Ocean's 11 (and 8, 12 and 13!), with a smidge of Harry Potter thrown in for good measure, plus the amazing imagination of the author in creating so many plots and subplots and more plots within those plots. Then put all of that together with the most incredibly diverse, lovable, flawed, misunderstood characters, with so many interwoven, overlapping, angsty relationships and you have some idea of what you're getting with this book.
There's a CH ending (and certainly no HEA for any of our favourites just yet, but there is hope so don't despair), and if fantasy is your thing, The Gilded Wolves a MUST READ recommendation from me😍.


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The Gilded Wolves Audio CD – Unabridged, 15 January 2019
by
Roshani Chokshi
(Author),
Laurie Catherine Winkel
(Reader),
P J Ochlan
(Reader)
&
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Roshani Chokshi
(Author)
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Product details
- Publisher : MacMillan Audio; Unabridged edition (15 January 2019)
- Language : English
- ISBN-10 : 1250319420
- ISBN-13 : 978-1250319425
- Reading age : 12 - 18 years
- Dimensions : 2.54 x 2.54 x 2.54 cm
- Customer Reviews:
Product description
Review
A gorgeously layered story, with characters that make you laugh and ache and cheer. - Renee Ahdieh, New York Times bestselling author of The Wrath and The Dawn
This is a book to swan dive into, swim around in, luxuriate in. Trust me, you won't want to come out" - Laini Taylor, New York Times bestselling author of Strange The Dreamer A masterpiece of imagination. You will want this book to steal your heart so that you will never have to leave this story. Stephanie Garber, New York Timesbestselling author of Caravale A gorgeously layered story, with characters that make you laugh and ache and cheer. - Renee Ahdieh, New York Times bestselling author of The Wrath and The Dawn This is a book to swan dive into, swim around in, luxuriate in. Trust me, you won't want to come out" - Laini Taylor, New York Times bestselling author of Strange The Dreamer A masterpiece of imagination. You will want this book to steal your heart so that you will never have to leave this story. - Stephanie Garber, New York Times bestselling author of Caravale The Gilded Wolves is part political misadventure, part puzzle and thoroughly charming, with a band of rapscallions and a string of surprises! - Holly Black, New York Times bestselling author of The Cruel Prince The Gilded Wolves is the smart, dark adventure YA readers have been waiting for." - Adrienne Young, New York Times bestselling author of Sky In The Deep The Gilded Wolves has it all: magical Belle Époque Paris, dark and glittering prose, a cast of characters that will steal your heart inside their other heists. This is a book I wish I'd written. - Ryan Graudin, award-winning author of Wolf By WolfAbout the Author
Roshani Chokshi is the author of commercial and critically acclaimed books for middle grade and young adult readers that draw on world mythology and folklore. Her work has been nominated for the Locus and Nebula awards, and has frequently appeared on Best of The Year lists from Barnes and Noble, Forbes, Buzzfeed and more. Her New York Times bestselling series include The Star-Touched Queen duology, The Gilded Wolves, and Aru Shah and The End of Time, which has been optioned for film by Paramount Pictures.
Customer reviews
4.4 out of 5 stars
4.4 out of 5
429 global ratings
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Reviewed in Australia on 1 March 2020
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Reviewed in Australia on 11 February 2019
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I adored each and every character in this story. The plot was unnecessarily convoluted at times, and some of the 'stage managing' had me very confused (who was walking behind whom?), but still an enjoyable journey. I'd be happy enough if the entire next book was just about Zofia, although I loved them all.
Reviewed in Australia on 22 September 2019
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I love the way this author wrights. This story has beautiful magical prose humour and the most amazing story and world building. Loved it and can’t recommend it enough.
Reviewed in Australia on 4 March 2020
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If you loved Six of Crows you'll love Gilded Wolves. Brilliant world building and compelling characters
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Reviewed in Australia on 22 February 2019
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Great read, beautiful imaginative world created in Old time Paris. Love all the characters too. Would love for the Audible to be available in Australia, it would be a fun audiobook.
Reviewed in Australia on 7 February 2019
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Absolutely LOVED this story. Gave me such Six of Crows vibes. If you are a Leigh Bardugo fan than you will love this book.
Top reviews from other countries

Jess Gofton
2.0 out of 5 stars
Not the historical heist novel I hoped for
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 17 May 2019Verified Purchase
Oh, I so wanted to love this book.
First thing’s first, I’m in the minority here. So many people loved this book, and for the most part I think this might just be a case of me not quite gelling with Chokshi’s writing style, but I had a few issues with this book that I’m going to unpack here.
I don’t think Chokshi is a bad writer, but I found it really hard to clearly picture pretty much anything in this book. I didn’t think the magic system – known as Forging – was explained all that well; I’ve just read an entire book where it was used a lot, and yet I couldn’t tell you what its rules are. It seemed to have a (literal) magical solution to all of this story’s problems, which meant this was a heist novel in which I was never worried that this group of characters wouldn’t succeed, and because I wasn’t worried I didn’t care if they succeeded or not.
In fact Forging didn’t really seem to fit in with this setting. The Gilded Wolves takes place in an alternate late 19th century Paris, but this is still an alternate France that has seen the French Revolution, the reign of Napoleon and the growth of the French Empire, and yet I never quite got a sense of all that history. There were a few French words here or there, but the dialogue and even Forging itself felt so modern that I couldn’t help wondering why 19th century Paris needed to be the setting at all. At no point did I feel like I was in Paris.
I wish that Chokshi had either written a straight up historical fiction heist or that she’d set it in a fantasy world of her own, because the times when she did explore the characters’ personal histories were really interesting. Having said that, the writing style also meant that I sometimes forgot whose point of view I was reading from even when the characters’ names were mentioned at the start of each chapter. Laila and Zofia, in particular, I was always mixing up and I shouldn’t have been – they’re very different!
This is a set of characters that I was hoping to fall in love with, and I didn’t. I did like them; Zofia, in particular, I liked a lot. She’s a Jewish girl on the autism spectrum and I did really like how Chokshi explored her autism (though I’d like to read some reviews by own voices reviewers to see what they thought!) and how she finds logic so much easier to understand than people and their small talk. Enrique I ended up liking a lot, too; as someone who is mixed race, he’s not Spanish enough for the Spaniards but he’s not Filipino enough for his fellow countrymen either. Their stories are what made me yearn for more history than fantasy in this story.
I really liked how this is a very diverse group of characters, and I loved how Chokshi explored how the French Empire stocked its museums with stolen objects from other cultures and turned those cultures into titillation for white, wealthy Parisians. Unfortunately, I felt a little beaten over the head with that message. It’s such an important message, I just wanted a little more nuance.
I think there was an attempt at this with Séverin, who is the main character of this group and is mixed race himself with a white, wealthy father and Algerian mother. He was discouraged from acknowledging his mother, particularly in public, and that was heart-breaking when we learn how much he adored her.
But I still thought Séverin was kind of a dick.
It could very well be that that’s the point of Séverin as a character – I don’t want my characters to be perfect people by any means – but I couldn’t help feeling a little uncomfortable about how he treated the others, who we’re led to believe are his friends before they’re his employees, considering he’s the most privileged of all of them in terms of his finances and his place in society. He is mixed race and it’s that part of him that’s led to him missing out on the true inheritance he’s seeking to regain throughout this novel, but he’s hardly struggling. He still has his late father’s money and he runs a very, very successful hotel in the centre of Paris.
In other words, I never quite got why he was so desperate to reclaim his true inheritance other than that he’s a rich boy who doesn’t like to be told ‘no’. I know there’ll be people who loved this book hissing at that summation, but he’s a character I never warmed to because I could never quite place him. He was friends with these people and he’s the leader of this gang, but he could never quite decide whether he was a friend or a leader first, which ultimately meant he was weak in both roles.
I also found his relationship with Laila boring. I loved that this is a YA novel that acknowledges that teenagers (how old are these characters? No idea – I don’t think it’s ever mentioned) can and will have sex, and that these are a pair with a sexual history was compelling, but theirs wasn’t the kind of angst that made me root for them. I just wanted them to stop namby-pambying about and admit that they liked one another.
In fact a lot of this novel read as rather juvenile and silly to me. It almost read like an MG novel rather than YA – not that MG is juvenile and silly – and this would have been fine if I didn’t go into it expecting a YA heist novel. Whatever this novel was, it didn’t feel like that. The villain was disappointing and the ending was rushed despite the book as a whole dragging for me. I almost considered DNFing it but I forced my way through it, constantly hoping it would improve because I wanted it to be the diverse, historical heist novel I’d hoped for.
Ultimately, this book just wasn’t for me and I’m very sad about it. I loved Chokshi’s idea, but it was never fully realised for me here and I found the magic system took up too much of this story without enough information for me to fully understand it or care. I am very much in the minority here, though, so if you think you’ll enjoy this novel give it a try – I hope you enjoy it as much as I’d hoped to!
First thing’s first, I’m in the minority here. So many people loved this book, and for the most part I think this might just be a case of me not quite gelling with Chokshi’s writing style, but I had a few issues with this book that I’m going to unpack here.
I don’t think Chokshi is a bad writer, but I found it really hard to clearly picture pretty much anything in this book. I didn’t think the magic system – known as Forging – was explained all that well; I’ve just read an entire book where it was used a lot, and yet I couldn’t tell you what its rules are. It seemed to have a (literal) magical solution to all of this story’s problems, which meant this was a heist novel in which I was never worried that this group of characters wouldn’t succeed, and because I wasn’t worried I didn’t care if they succeeded or not.
In fact Forging didn’t really seem to fit in with this setting. The Gilded Wolves takes place in an alternate late 19th century Paris, but this is still an alternate France that has seen the French Revolution, the reign of Napoleon and the growth of the French Empire, and yet I never quite got a sense of all that history. There were a few French words here or there, but the dialogue and even Forging itself felt so modern that I couldn’t help wondering why 19th century Paris needed to be the setting at all. At no point did I feel like I was in Paris.
I wish that Chokshi had either written a straight up historical fiction heist or that she’d set it in a fantasy world of her own, because the times when she did explore the characters’ personal histories were really interesting. Having said that, the writing style also meant that I sometimes forgot whose point of view I was reading from even when the characters’ names were mentioned at the start of each chapter. Laila and Zofia, in particular, I was always mixing up and I shouldn’t have been – they’re very different!
This is a set of characters that I was hoping to fall in love with, and I didn’t. I did like them; Zofia, in particular, I liked a lot. She’s a Jewish girl on the autism spectrum and I did really like how Chokshi explored her autism (though I’d like to read some reviews by own voices reviewers to see what they thought!) and how she finds logic so much easier to understand than people and their small talk. Enrique I ended up liking a lot, too; as someone who is mixed race, he’s not Spanish enough for the Spaniards but he’s not Filipino enough for his fellow countrymen either. Their stories are what made me yearn for more history than fantasy in this story.
I really liked how this is a very diverse group of characters, and I loved how Chokshi explored how the French Empire stocked its museums with stolen objects from other cultures and turned those cultures into titillation for white, wealthy Parisians. Unfortunately, I felt a little beaten over the head with that message. It’s such an important message, I just wanted a little more nuance.
I think there was an attempt at this with Séverin, who is the main character of this group and is mixed race himself with a white, wealthy father and Algerian mother. He was discouraged from acknowledging his mother, particularly in public, and that was heart-breaking when we learn how much he adored her.
But I still thought Séverin was kind of a dick.
It could very well be that that’s the point of Séverin as a character – I don’t want my characters to be perfect people by any means – but I couldn’t help feeling a little uncomfortable about how he treated the others, who we’re led to believe are his friends before they’re his employees, considering he’s the most privileged of all of them in terms of his finances and his place in society. He is mixed race and it’s that part of him that’s led to him missing out on the true inheritance he’s seeking to regain throughout this novel, but he’s hardly struggling. He still has his late father’s money and he runs a very, very successful hotel in the centre of Paris.
In other words, I never quite got why he was so desperate to reclaim his true inheritance other than that he’s a rich boy who doesn’t like to be told ‘no’. I know there’ll be people who loved this book hissing at that summation, but he’s a character I never warmed to because I could never quite place him. He was friends with these people and he’s the leader of this gang, but he could never quite decide whether he was a friend or a leader first, which ultimately meant he was weak in both roles.
I also found his relationship with Laila boring. I loved that this is a YA novel that acknowledges that teenagers (how old are these characters? No idea – I don’t think it’s ever mentioned) can and will have sex, and that these are a pair with a sexual history was compelling, but theirs wasn’t the kind of angst that made me root for them. I just wanted them to stop namby-pambying about and admit that they liked one another.
In fact a lot of this novel read as rather juvenile and silly to me. It almost read like an MG novel rather than YA – not that MG is juvenile and silly – and this would have been fine if I didn’t go into it expecting a YA heist novel. Whatever this novel was, it didn’t feel like that. The villain was disappointing and the ending was rushed despite the book as a whole dragging for me. I almost considered DNFing it but I forced my way through it, constantly hoping it would improve because I wanted it to be the diverse, historical heist novel I’d hoped for.
Ultimately, this book just wasn’t for me and I’m very sad about it. I loved Chokshi’s idea, but it was never fully realised for me here and I found the magic system took up too much of this story without enough information for me to fully understand it or care. I am very much in the minority here, though, so if you think you’ll enjoy this novel give it a try – I hope you enjoy it as much as I’d hoped to!
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Virginie Pithon
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fun adventure/heist with an endearing cast of characters
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 12 August 2020Verified Purchase
I genuinely don't understand some of the harsh reviews about this book. It was a very fun, fast-paced romp with an engaging cast of characters - and everything I ever wanted in a historical fantasy fiction that also addresses colonialism and has actual POC and mixed race characters front and center of the story. True, I wasn't always so clear on how forging worked, but I didn't feel like that detracted. Personally, I loved all the references to historical symbolism and numbers. Those were some of my favourite parts.
I also found the chemistry between Laila and Severin off the charts - but I have a weakness for broody protagonists who haven't fully understood what they're feeling yet and need to learn the hard way.
I read this in like, two sittings and can't wait for the sequel. Would definitely recommend.
I also found the chemistry between Laila and Severin off the charts - but I have a weakness for broody protagonists who haven't fully understood what they're feeling yet and need to learn the hard way.
I read this in like, two sittings and can't wait for the sequel. Would definitely recommend.
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Chloe Pope
5.0 out of 5 stars
Such an amazing book!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 18 June 2020Verified Purchase
I did struggle to get into this book at the start and I can understand why people thought the forging was confusing but I loved this book so much and it really was easy to understand if you gave it time.
The end of the book was so gripping and heartbreaking.
And then that cliffhanger ending! I cannot wait for the second book
The end of the book was so gripping and heartbreaking.
And then that cliffhanger ending! I cannot wait for the second book

Megan
5.0 out of 5 stars
IT'S GORGEOUS. If you're wondering whether or not to get this book, get it!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 10 February 2019Verified Purchase
This was a spectacular book. I hoped it would be but so often I'm disappointed at the end of a book I'm excited for, but not in this case, so for that, thank you Roshani!
It exceeded my expectations, perhaps because it went in ways I didn't foresee, I don't know. All I know is that these characters were so well crafted, the world incredibly complex, the tension - especially between Séverin and Laila, was exquisite - and the rich tone of the book left me feeling full and hungry at the same time.
I highly recommend it.
Enjoy.
It exceeded my expectations, perhaps because it went in ways I didn't foresee, I don't know. All I know is that these characters were so well crafted, the world incredibly complex, the tension - especially between Séverin and Laila, was exquisite - and the rich tone of the book left me feeling full and hungry at the same time.
I highly recommend it.
Enjoy.
3 people found this helpful
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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars
If you liked Six of Crows...
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 29 April 2020Verified Purchase
I read other titles by this author which led me to Guilded Wolves. Whilst the other titles were good enough to spur me on to find other books by her, this book was by far her best in my opinion. I loved the relationship between the various characters in the group and the time period/setting combination. If you loved Six of Crows and wanted another team to root for, I would definitely recommend this!
One person found this helpful
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