Rating: 4.5/5
Spoiler Warning! I know this is quite a new release at the time of reviewing, so I'm going to break up my review into two parts - if you want a spoiler-free review only read up to the page break!
Trigger Warning - Before getting into the review, I think it's important to note that The Gilded Ones contains graphic violence, torture scenes, and mentions of rape and child abuse. Forna doesn't turn away from the more violent and bloody descriptions of life as a warrior or as an "impure" woman.
So The Gilded Ones. I can't remember where I first came across it but I'm almost certain it was recommended to me because I read Daughters of Nri. It is definitely the same vibe as that book and I'd say if you like the one you will like the other, but it's much more fast-paced than Daughters of Nri.
Set in Otera, The Gilded Ones is a story of religion, control, womanhood, and friendship.
I've seen mixed reviews about the world-building in the book, but I felt that Forna found a fantastic balance between introducing a new world filled with fantasy creatures without filling the pages with extraneous detail. Some of the creatures were clearly named from real-life animals, giving you an idea of their shape or size without needing to explain too much about them. The settings are described in minimal detail, allowing the reader to see the world as they see fit - something I much prefer in books as too much detail often makes it harder for me to imagine a scene in my head, hindering the natural way I picture it as I try to fit the author's description into what I see.
There is definitely more I want to know about the world, but most, if not all, of what we learn is from Deka's point of view so it makes sense we don't see everything. Where she starts in a small Northern village means that we discover the world as she begins to explore it. This allows you to piece together the mystery from what she sees which was especially well done towards the final third of the book.
In fact, the whole story is told so smoothly. The pacing was brilliant, introducing new twists and giving you time to digest them, but never making you sit through any "filler content". The Gilded Ones takes place over at least 5 months, maybe more, so it would have been easy to make the book long and show the reader more of the training or day-to-day life, but there was no reason to. We saw important bits, moments that developed the characters and provided important clues as to the bigger story, but everything was interesting and added to the experience of reading it.
The final thing I want to touch on before going on to some spoiler content is the beautiful display of female relationships in The Gilded Ones. From the beginning, it's clear this world is not for females and yet the book goes to prove that even in times of hardship, even pitted against each other, women will find ways to lift each other up. Everything about the friendships felt real and relatable. Each female was different and therefore each relationship was. We see so many relationships; from sisterhood to mentorship, allyship to lifelong friendship, The Golded Ones really does have it all.
If you're thinking about reading this, go for it. It's a dark, fast-paced fantasy, based firmly on the idea of female empowerment and finding your own power.
** THERE ARE SPOILERS BELOW HERE **
Okay so I only have a couple of things I want to touch on that I think require spoiling the plot, and even then I'm not sure there major spoilers for the storyline.
The first is Keita's role in the story. He and the other recruits are fine. They aren't very developed characters but that's fine, it's not really about them so they don't have to have well-rounded personalities (at this point in the series, at least). However, Keita is kind of important. Certainly, he becomes important toward the end when he helps to save Deka, but their relationship and the love story...felt really under-developed. I loved the language used around their relationship, but I felt we didn't see enough of them developing feelings. It went from dislike on sight, to allied as partners, to full-blown love without really showing much of the in-between. I get that a battlefield is a place of intense feelings but...it didn't quite work for me. I'll be interested to see where it goes now that everyone knows the truth about the deathshrieks, but it's pretty low on my list of important relationships within this book (almost every female relationship would come above it in fact...).
Finally, I've been searching for the right way to say this and the closest I've found is that the plot isn't entirely unpredictable but that doesn't take away from it. Sometimes when you can guess what's going to happen, the book becomes less interesting, but for The Gilded Ones there was enough mystery left even after I figured out some of the major parts. The direct connection between the deathshrieks and the alaki, the temples to the four demons/goddesses, all felt fairly obvious from the clues in the text and Deka's abilities. That being said, these were there to be worked out. Maybe some people won't understand them, but I feel these larger clues meant that I didn't work out other things, such as White Hands' role. It's an incredibly well-executed plot that predictable moments didn't take anything away from the story.
I can't wait to read the next book in the Deathless series and I can see it becoming one of my favourite fantasy series!
Have you read The Gilded Ones yet? What are your thoughts about Namina Forna's debut?