3/5 stars
The Gilded Wolves is a wannabe Six of Crows but Six of Crows is one of the most perfect books to ever exist, so The Gilded Wolves could never.
The Gilded Wolves is a fine enough book. Roshani Chokshi's writing is excellent, as always (and less purply than The Star-Touched Queen if that was a turn off for you). The half-historical, half-magical world has very cool vibes and was really interesting. There was SO MUCH detail and the magical elements were so unique, and blended well with the historical setting. And it's a heist, which I love.
But here's the thing. It was so boring. This book has no excuse for being as boring as it is. It's an ELABORATE HEIST BY A RAGTAG GROUP OF PEOPLE WITH VERY PARTICULAR SKILLS TO STEAL A MYSTERIOUS OBJECT IN MAGICAL 1889 PARIS. How could this be boring???
To be honest, I'm at a bit of a loss. The characters are definitely big in contributing to the boring-ness. They just fell so flat. Roshani Chokshi threw all this information at us about the crew and their pasts, personalities, relationships, etc. but their voices all sounded exactly the same (not good in a book that is quickly alternating between 6 perspectives). They also sounded older than they're supposed to be (they're all 18-ish), not believably young at all.
The relationships seemed forced - none of the characters had very much chemistry together, and so the important romances that I was supposed to care about, I felt nothing for.
Plus, the heist just wasn't very interesting at all. The whole plot was very confusing, and considering how much tedious explanations there were, it shouldn't have been confusing at all. I don't even know what those tedious explanations were explaining, because they never cleared up any of my confusion. The plot went a little like this:
1. nothing
2. a confusing thing
3. long and dull explanations of things that were not about the confusing thing
4. nothing
5. repeat
The confusion about parts of the plot, along with the boring explanations/nothingness made me pretty apathetic about the happenings in the book in general.
I'm very sad that I can't read a book with fascinating characters who pull off a really cool heist set in THIS EXACT WORLD. This book was just kind of a bummer, because it could have been so much more.
If you liked The Gilded Wolves (or honestly even if you didn't like it), read...
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