"No one believes in them. But soon no one will forget them."
The Gilded Wolves is a historical fantasy heist trilogy by Roshani Chokshi. The trilogy consists of The Gilded Wolves (2018), The Silvered Serpents (2020), and The Bronzed Beasts (2020).The trilogy follows Séverin Montagnet-Alarie, a Parisian hotelier and treasure-hunter, as he works to reclaim his true inheritance as the heir to House Vanth, a family line declared dead by the powerful Order of Babel.
When Séverin is offered the opportunity of restoring his inheritance in exchange for a priceless artifact that the Order requires, he assembles his team of allies in order to have a chance at getting back what rightfully belongs to him. Séverin and his friends venture into the heart of Paris, where the darkness of the city threatens to stop them from finding the most important treasure that they've ever hunted down.
This book provides examples of the following:
- The Ace: Séverin's team consists of experts in various fields
- Séverin is a skilled treasure hunter and thief, having led his team in multiple successful missions prior to the start of the trilogy.
- Laila has the ability to read peoples' histories while holding an object of their possessions. She also happens to be a virtuoso when it comes to baking, which is critical to the team's happiness.
- Enrique Mercado-Lopez is the team's historian, and for good reason.
- Zofia Boguska's knowledge in mathematics and science, and has a knack for explosive inventions.
- Séverin's adoptive brother Tristan Maréchal is a highly intelligent botanist.
- A God Am I: Tristan's death causes Séverin to aim for more than just his inheritance.
- Anti-Hero: Technically, the main cast, since they're all thieves. Séverin ventures further into anti-heroic territory after the ending of the first book.
- Back from the Dead: Laila was a stillbirth, and was brought back after a magician bound her soul to her body. However, the magician warned her family that once Laila was nineteen, his work would undo and she would permanently die. Laila does end up dying at the age of nineteen, but in the epilogue of The Bronzed Beasts, Séverin finds her at the Palais des Rêves, alive and well.
- Bisexual Love Triangle: Consisting of Enrique, Zofia, and Hypnos. Enrique and Zofia may be the great-great-great grandparents of Mimi from Aru Shah and the End of Time, another series by Chokshi. However, the ending of The Bronzed Beasts confirms that Zofia, Enrique, and Hypnos are all together.
- Bittersweet Ending: All three books contain one, to a certain extent.
- The team successfully completes their mission, and things seem to be looking up… until Tristan is killed. Everyone is shattered from the loss, and none more than Séverin.
- The ending of The Silvered Serpents might almost seem like a downer, until it’s revealed that what Séverin has done had actually helped the group, and he begins referring to Hypnos in the same way he’d once referred to Tristan.
- InThe Bronzed Beasts, the world is saved once again, but the team isn’t able to save Laila from her fated death, though she says that she will return one day. The rest of the team lives the rest of their lives happily, with Séverin having gained immortality and adopting two children of his own. At the end of the book, he returns to his hotel, where Laila has come back to him once again.
- Gay Paree: The gang's base of operations, particularly in the first novel; it's where Séverin's hotel is based.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold:
- As well as Séverin in the second book, who puts on a cold exterior whilst still caring for his friends, deep down. Even if nobody believes him.
- Magitek: Several of the team's items and inventions count as this—for instance, a magical holographic projector used for "slide presentations", or enchantments that serve the function of Real Life security codes or measures. Their tech can perform a lot of functions only possible in the Real Life present (or even beyond).
- Majored in Western Hypocrisy: It's not so much the hypocrisy part of it, but several of the main cast are from the Global South (in this period mostly colonised by various European empires) and studying various disciplines in Europe: Laila's from British-colonial India at a time when few Indians (let alone women) would have the opportunity to study abroadnote , and Enrique is actually a Filipino ilustrado (intellectual), involved with other compatriots in Europe campaigning for expanded rights from the Spanish colonisers, as happened in Real Life. Séverin, meanwhile, has Algerian ancestry, whilst Hypnos has Haitian (and thus African slave) ancestry; in other words both of them have bloodlines rooted in French colonies.
- No Endor Holocaust: Averted near the end of The Bronzed Beasts. When the Unmaking begins, Forged objects start falling apart everywhere, risking a societal collapse due to how much of current society relies on forgery. When Laila gets control of it, however, she changes it to a gradual process with the oldest Forged objects going first, giving society plenty of time to adjust as Forging fades away.
- Old Flame: Séverin and Laila had slept together prior to the beginning of book one, and have promised that it would never happen again, and that they should never be together. Thanks to a scene in The Silvered Serpents and the ending of The Bronzed Beasts, we can safely assume that they broke that promise.
- Playing with Fire: Zofia's skill, which got her thrown out of school on accusation of arson after she defended herself from bullying students. It gives her the moniker "Phoenix" among her friends, as well as a fire/light motif.
- Steampunk: Perhaps to be expected of a late-1800s European setting, some of the various magical artifacts and inventions the gang use border on this in aesthetic and design despite being explicitly magical in power source and origin.
- Teen Genius: The whole team pretty much qualifies, since they're all teenagers good at various fields (both magical and non-magical).
- Urban Fantasy: It's fantasy set in Paris and other bustling metropolitan capitals in the late 19th century, so this certainly counts.
