Week 9

I’m deeply uneasy about the fact that it’s already the end of February.

Like, holy crap.

Welp.

#12) THE GILDED ONES by Namina Forna

Wow, what an absolute ride this story was.

I mean that in a good way (mostly), I am kind of astonished by the amount of things that happened and the progression of events. Mostly, this worked for me, and I found myself increasingly excited with every new element added to the books. “Slowburn plotting is for cowards,” I imagine the author saying.

“The Gilded Ones” follows Deka, a teenager in a fantasy world in which women and girls are looked down upon and at risk of being abused or killed for being “impure”. When Deka bleeds gold - a mark of impurity - she is swept into an army of deathless “alaki”, impure girls with powers, to fight against the deathshrieks that terrorize the lands.

I liked a lot of things about this book. I liked the characters and the found family dynamics within, the bond that Deka forms with the other alaki. I liked the depiction of how the alaki powers worked, particularly the gruesome healing from near-deaths. I also liked how the plot developed, how it continually shifted what I understood and what the expectations I had were.

If there was one drawback, it would be that I found some of the latter plot developments to be a bit confusing. Perhaps if I were to read the book again with full knowledge of the associated lore, things would make more sense. I actually went back and reread a few key scenes to see if I had been mistaken in my original reading, but that didn’t necessarily grant deeper insight.

Also, while I was onboard for the whole universal sisterhood angle, and felt it made a certain degree of sense in this world, I do wonder at the ways in which it tended to also excuse the abuse that women can (and do in this book!) inflict on each other. If there had been a little more time to explore the complexities of cycles of abuse, I think it would have worked a bit better, but as it is some of it comes off as “this person has suffered and therefore cannot be criticized for harming others.”

All in all, though, I did quite enjoy the experience of reading this, and I’m really interested to see where the author goes next with this world.