Review: The Gilded Wolves

The Gilded Wolves by Roshani Chokshi
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Gilded Wolves is an ambitious novel. I'm not sure it always lives up to its ambitions but it provides an astonishing array of diversity and perspectives on colonialism, cultural identity and erasure. I have seen quite a few reviewers compare it to a combination of Bardugo's Six of Crows and Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code and while I think the comparisons are correct, looking beyond that, I think that Chokshi has managed to make the themes of both those books (found family, and mysterious objects and elements with grave portents for humanity, respectively) and spin them into something uniquely hers. Her central characters are all eccentric individuals of various cultural and racial backgrounds, living and working together in L'Eden hotel in Paris. We meet Séverin, cast out as presumed heir to House Vanth, one of four powerful gatekeeper houses of the West, his arachnid-loving foster brother Tristan, Laila, an Indian dancer (really the least of her skills), Zofia, a Polish Jewish autistic math prodigy, and Enrique, a Fillipino/Spanish historian. They join forces with Hypnos, the part Haitian and deliciously queer head of House Nyx, one of the two remaining houses* of the Order of Babel to try, ultimately, to secure the so-called Babel Fragment, recover a missing Babel ring, stolen from the other remaining house, House Kore. (And if you're thinking that Babel, you're right- we are talking about five fragments from the biblical Tower of Babel.) The mystery that binds these six together is developed slowly, and is set in part around the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1889.

What is fascinating about this novel to me is its deft handling of prevalent antisemitism, racism, and the sense of isolation felt by those from perceived outsider/inferior cultures cultures. There are tossed off moments in this book that made me draw a sharp breath, like that when Enrique is handed an invitation under a false identity bearing a Chinese name, as if it was nothing, or when the whole intent of Laila's cultural dances is obliterated by demands and expectations of vulgar display. The normalcy of many small events, peppering the story, make the perceptive reader keenly feel all the ways cultural identity can marginalized, overwritten, ignored. While not a perfect book (if there is such thing) I'll eagerly pick up the second book in the series, which will hopefully release in 2020.

*The missing house in this scenario is the Fallen House and you'll be wanting to learn more about that one, to be sure.

I received a Digital Review Copy of this book from Wednesday Books/St. Martin's Press via NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.

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