Goodreads Monday is a weekly meme where we randomly select a book from our Goodreads To Be Read list and share it with the world. It’s hosted by Lauren’s Page Turners, so be sure to link back to her site so that we can all see what everyone plans to read!

The Gilded Wolves
by Roshani Chokshi
Fantasy
388 pages
Published January 15, 2019, by Wednesday Books

From Goodreads: 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.

I have to admit it. I wasn’t interested in The Gilded Wolves when the buzz first started to grow around it. I read Chokshi’s book, The Star-Touched Queen in 2017, and while I had no particular issues with it, I didn’t find it all that memorable. Indeed, I often forget that I’ve read it. Given that and the fact that the first buzz I saw around The Gilded Wolves made it sound like a Six of Crows knock-off set in 1890s Paris, I just wasn’t interested.

Then I read Alex Brown’s review from Tor.com, and it completely changed my mind. Instead of just talking up the diverse cast, she discusses the book’s deeper story- of how the diverse cast deals with being outcasts from their own societies or with being members of an oppressed culture in an age of British and American colonialism, and how these characters band together to rise up in opposition to their oppressors. That sounds fascinating.

It also shows why, in the age of endless hype, it’s still a good idea to read reviews by professional book people who know how to break through the hype to find out if a book is worth the time.