The Gilded Wolves by Roshani Chokshi, a rant review

This book was bitten by Dan Brown and starts to transform! Please send help!

I mean this book definitely has Dan Brown vibe. Especially in the part where "a historian" starts to explain everyone in the room what Babylon tower is. Sorry, it is hilarious and has the same energy as the main character of the "Inferno" explaining who Dante is. I understand that was done for worldbuilding, but it was so unnatural because it's absolutely clear everyone in that room knew the story. 

The premise of this book looked like everything I usually like: fantasy in 19th century, eccentric characters of very diverse background, a team of criminals who steal things that were taken from other by force (and of course the theme of colonialism could give this book another dimension, making it deeper and more interesting). I expected the fantasy 19th-century version of The Leverage series, and I was so wrong... 

All I got are bland characters, badly explained worldbuilding, uninteresting plot, and extremely cringy dialogues.

Characters are just badly written. I've just finished the book and I can't tell anything about their personalities, except Hypnos being a petty goth child from 2007. I'm so confused, it's a long book, but somehow the author managed to say us nothing about characters, they even barely have any backstory except Severin, because he is a local guy with childhood trauma, and Laila, whose backstory could be super interesting, but wasn't developed enough. Anyway, the award for being the blandest bitch goes to Tristan (well, this was a fierce competition, because all the characters were bland). He feels like Tumblr OC, uwu quirky baby with no personality. It seems like Tristan only exist to be this cute little thing near Severin and a damsel in distress. Tbh initially I planned to rant about all the characters specifically, but I can't, because my complaints about each character would be the same. 

The heist plot didn't seem very engaging to me. I didn't care about characters so I didn't give a fuck if they are going to win. Also, the heist itself became uninteresting, because all the time characters conveniently pull new magical tricks out of their asses and conveniently stop doing this when the plot tells them it's time to lose. It looked like a game walkthrough. I don't want to spoiler but everything that going in after heist ended is pure garbage, It literally makes no sense to the plot and is need only to create a cliffhanger for a second book in the series. 

The most disconnect I feel with this story because of its lack of authenticity on different levels. There are tons of explanations for readers that seem to be unnecessary for characters (all the time I was like "well, maybe we should learn more about magic and characters instead of reading the retelling of wikipedia"). Riddles and puzzles look too convenient like they are a part of a quest game. Characters claimed to be misfits from the 19th century, but they often act like modern teenagers or modern adults. A wanted to say that it doesn't seem like their personalities were formed under the influence of racist, sexist, xenophobic society with huge class inequality, but to be honest, neither of them has enough formed personality. I can understand this if the author doesn't want to make any commentary on society, but Roshani Chokshi definitely makes a lot of commentary on it. I think it's just because characters aren't developed enough, they don't have their own voices and sounds like some random modern people. Modern American people, I guess? Because actually, 3 of 6 characters aren't French, they were raised in different cultures, but they don't feel like people from different cultures. 

In the end, this book became the exact thing it was supposed to fight. I've read the author's note at the end of the book, and I was like... what the fuck?! The author intended to deromanticize the 19th century and show it's problems, but her characters live in a luxury hotel, they don't need to work to feed themselves, girls can buy tons of beautiful dresses, they have creative freedom, all of their friends are super accepting and never said an insensitive thing in their lives. This shit is romanticized as fuck. Especially regarding sexism and gender inequality.

1 out of 5 stars.