Review: The Silvered Serpents (The Gilded Wolves #2) by Roshani Chokshi

The Silvered Serpents (The Gilded Wolves #2) by Roshani Chokshi

Wednesday Books

Publication Date: September 22nd, 2020

Hardcover. 416 pages

About The Silvered Serpents:

"They are each other’s fiercest love, greatest danger, and only hope.

Séverin and his team members might have successfully thwarted the Fallen House, but victory came at a terrible cost — one that still haunts all of them. Desperate to make amends, Séverin pursues a dangerous lead to find a long lost artifact rumored to grant its possessor the power of God.

Their hunt lures them far from Paris, and into the icy heart of Russia where crystalline ice animals stalk forgotten mansions, broken goddesses carry deadly secrets, and a string of unsolved murders makes the crew question whether an ancient myth is a myth after all.

As hidden secrets come to the light and the ghosts of the past catch up to them, the crew will discover new dimensions of themselves. But what they find out may lead them down paths they never imagined.

A tale of love and betrayal as the crew risks their lives for one last job."

The Gilded Wolves was an extremely hyped fantasy release last year that I was personally a bit disappointed with. However, the ending of The Gilded Wolves was enough of an interesting cliffhanger that when I was presented with the opportunity to read a copy of The Silvered Serpents, I knew I wanted to check it out. Fortunately, I can say that I thought The Silvered Serpents was definitely an improvement from the first, though it still lacked a little something to completely draw me in. 

The Silvered Serpents picks up not too long after the events of The Gilded Wolves with all of our characters moving on from and trying to pick up the pieces of some of the more tragic fallout. Now the group of friends are somewhat reluctantly coming together to hunt down an ancient artifact that both Séverin and Laila are after, though both for vastly different reasons. This book really felt like a departure from the first book for a variety of reasons, including the differing relationship dynamics, location, and motivations for each character. 

As mentioned, a majority of the events of The Silvered Serpents take place in one new location, the ice palace, which I think added a new and interesting dimension to the series. I really enjoyed exploring this new setting because it sounds stunning and I found it to be one of those places that simply embodies a sense of intrigue and mystery, and I also thought that the singular setting allowed for Chokshi to really spend more time focusing on character development and plot, which she did really well. There was one particular place within the ice palace known as the Menagerie that was filled with a variety of rather...foreboding animals made of ice that was easily one of the most captivating components of the palace. 

I once again seemed to struggle with connecting to the characters as a group, but individually I felt that their development and Chokshi's descriptions were strong and effective in showcasing the internal struggles that each one faced. However, I feel like I once again struggled with enjoying the group as a whole. The camaraderie feels forced, and one of the my favorite characters from the first book was no longer which only added to the sort of disjointed feeling. There were a lot of conflicts between the characters, which of course is only natural when faced with high stress situations and pasts full of secrets, but it did sort of take away from the experience that the first book had where everyone seemed to mostly work together. There were also a few newer characters that we got to know and that I thought added some particularly interesting new dynamics to the story and friend group. I liked parts of these new characters, but I found some of the ways in which Chokshi incorporate them felt slightly awkward at times. 

Much like in The Gilded Wolves, this book was full of puzzles that our characters had to solve throughout the course of the book. Some of these were enjoyable and interesting, but I also lost interest in a lot of them and the explanations and/or descriptions of the characters figuring out how to solve them. On the one hand, I appreciate how much thought and effort Chokshi always puts into these components, but on the other hands I often feel that they drastically alter the pace of the story and cause things to start dragging a bit. There was also still a small issue with info-dumping and what seems to be a desire to include so much that just overwhelms the plot and story. Despite this, it was still a mostly entertaining read and I genuinely enjoyed the imaginative creations and plot that Chokshi developed. 

Overall, I've given The Silvered Serpents 3.25 stars! If you read and enjoyed The Gilded Wolves, then you'll definitely enjoy The Silvered Serpents as well. 

*I received a copy of The Silvered Serpents in exchange for an honest review. This has no effect on my rating of the novel.*

Buy: Amazon | Book Depository | IndieBound

Review: The Gilded Wolves by Roshani Chokshi

*The Gilded Wolves will be published Tuesday, January 15th, 2019!*

The Gilded Wolves by Roshani Chokshi

Wednesday Books, 2019

Hardcover. 464 pages.

About The Gilded Wolves:

"Set in a darkly glamorous world, The Gilded Wolves is full of mystery, decadence, and dangerous but thrilling adventure. 

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

To find the ancient artifact the Order seeks, Séverin 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."

The Gilded Wolves is one of those books that I've been anticipating for so long now and have been seeing so many wonderful things about that my expectations were pretty high. I always try not to let the hype influence my expectations too much, but I still had high hopes and honestly, they weren't quite met with this one. 

This book follows a diverse group of characters who regularly embark upon a variety of 'acquisitions' (aka heists), in which the leader's main goal at the end of everything is the reinstatement of his inheritance. The Gilded Wolves is a lot of a fun and makes for a highly entertaining story, but it's also one that felt oddly paced and a little difficult to get through at times. I found the beginning of the book in particular to be exceptionally slow and difficult to get into. It wasn't until at least a hundred or so pages in that I really started to be able to enjoy the story more and follow along with the world. The magic and world felt rather confusing to me at many times, almost as if we'd been dropped into a sequel or part of an already-established world. There was also a lot of info-dumping in the beginning (I assume to help with the more confusing bits), but it was a beast to plow through and frankly just made it harder to get into the story. There was way too many things going on, and I feel like if it had been narrowed down to be slightly more focused in scope it might have been easier to follow.

One of the strongest points of this book, however, is the cast of characters. Chokshi truly did a remarkable job of including well-developed, vastly diverse characters, from race to sexuality to religion and more--and all with fantastic personalities and great humor. There are racist elements discussed in productive manners, sexist elements (this is 1889 Paris, after all), and many people consider one of the characters to be on the autism spectrum (I don't feel knowledgeable enough to fully comment on that, but I feel it is important to note that that seems to be a common thought). All of this really made for interesting and authentic experiences. My only struggle with the characters was that it seemed like some (not all!) of the witty dialogue and banter was a little forced, as if Chokshi wanted her group of characters to be so amusing that she ended up trying too hard and was left with some unnatural dialogue and interactions. 

Our main character group consists of Severin, Laila, Zofia, Enrique, and Tristan. Severin is basically the leader of the group and is a very determined, passionate person. He likes to act as though he's tough and hard-hearted, but he's also pretty vulnerable as well; he also makes a lot of extremely frustrating decisions that annoyed me quite a bit throughout the book. Laila is a lovely person who is exceptionally considerate of others and always feeding them, and I particularly loved the close attention she paid to Zofia's preferences and how she always did her best to always accommodate them. A+ as a good friend and person! Zofia is a character I really liked. I think her personality was expertly done and I found it interesting to see her experiences with all of the different characters, especially in regards to her intelligence and struggle to understand some types of humor. Enrique is the wittiest of the bunch and is the type that is always around to make jokes and make things more light-hearted--or complain about things. Lastly is Tristan, the more serious brooding one of the bunch at times, but who also has a soft spot for animals, particularly large spiders, and who can easily turn up his charm and big eyes to win people over.

If you like solving different puzzles and riddles (especially ones including math), then you are going to love this book. If you don't, well, there might be a lot of places you'll want to skim. I unfortunately happen to be in the latter half. I love a good puzzle, but I don't love reading about people solving them and doing math so much, so those extensive sections tended to be a bit much for me. 

Before I end this review, I want to touch on one very minor thing that bothered me (there will be no spoilers, but this is very mildly in general spoiler territory, so if you want to know absolutely nothing about this book then skip over this one paragraph--but I promise I won't give away anything major): In the beginning of the book's setup we are told that Severin and his gang do so many acquisitions all the time and are experts at it by now. That's all fine and dandy, but in The Gilded Wolves just about every single plan they undertake goes awry in some way or another. I like seeing that people are human and make mistakes, but honestly, if you're going to say a group is excellent at what they do, you're going to have to prove that to me at least once. From what I can tell, they mess up a lot. This is a minor quibble on my end, but it did frustrate me.

Overall, I'm really unsure what to rate this book. Part of me thinks of this book with fondness for how entertaining and imaginative it was, but part of me is also bored and frustrated with a lot of it as well. For now, I'm giving it 3.75 stars. The characters and diversity inclusions were awesome, the sheer imagination in this world and magic system was fascinating, but the execution was all a little unimpressive. I do still highly recommend this to you if it sounds interesting because so many people seem to be adoring it and I wouldn't want you to miss out on that potential!

Buy the book: Amazon | Book Depository

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