“The Gilded Ones” by Namina Forma is a debut fantasy novel and the first book in the series. Sixteen-year-old Deka lives in a society where all girls have to go through a purification ceremony.
If you’ve read any fantasy books, you’ll know Deka is in trouble. How much trouble is probably beyond what you imagine. Her trials are brutal. This book is not for the fainthearted. The story contains torture, mutilation, rape/sexual assault, child abuse, and human/child trafficking.
I grew to love some characters, especially Deka and hate others. The world building is marvelous. I thought I’d rave about this story because there are so many things to recommend it, but in the last chapters, there were problems I couldn’t get past.
That many societies fear women and often place terrible restrictions on them isn’t a new idea in life, history, or fiction. It’s easy to get people to fear others, simply claim they are evil/impure/unnatural, they’ll do horrible things to you and those you love, etc. Then repeat and repeat until people believe the stories.
Deka’s society embraces the propaganda, and Deka is no exception. She believes in the evil, even when the title applies to her.
As the cover says, “Outcasts by blood. Warriors by choice.” Offered the choice to become a warrior for the king or died, she’s smart enough to choose warrior. She will fight for the king, rid the world of evil monsters, and earn purification.
Despite the graphic violence, I loved this story until near the end. Deka is an innocent, trapped in a society that vilifies women, and she wants to be pure and has lived her life perfectly. As a reader, I loved her basic desire to do the right thing, and I worried about her naivety. She is courageous, and that quality makes her stand out.
Her world is believable, dangerous, and addresses bigotry, racism, misogyny, and brutality. The mysterious woman who saves Deka remains a mystery throughout. The reader gets the lovely experience of not trusting her, then maybe thinking she’s really trying to help, then second guessing that assumption.
Here are the three issues I had with the ending:
1) The end feels rushed. Plot elements and characters changes happen too fast and need more development. Even the last battle, which has some logic problems, seems rushed and too easy.
2. There is a scene that completely pulled me out of the story. It was so unbelievable it almost felt like a Monty Python skit, a bad one. Although heartfelt confessions and emotions dominated the scene, they made little impact because I couldn’t get past the silliness.
3. The ending and the big reveal took a horrible turn, using an abhorrent excuse to explain away lies, manipulation, violence, and genocide. The justification is common enough for “bad/evil” characters, but the protagonist and other major characters accept this repulsive fallacy.
Namina Forma is a talented writer, and the beginning of this story is marvelous. I was on my way to thinking this was going to be one of my favorite books. The end of the book changed that for me, and a reader would be wise to question the excuse for the violence and brutality.
The Gilded Ones: Deathless, Book 1
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Customer reviews
Thank you so much to the publisher for my ARC of The Gilded Ones in exchange for an honest review! All opinions are my ownThis is a nicely brutal tale about girls with demon heritage being tortured and worse. Women in general are relegated to male servants until Deka is brought to the Capitol city to train in the emperor's army of demons, alaki, which will defeat these Deathshrieks. There is a huge reverse info dump at the end of the book but we don't learn much about them, or the history of the empire until that time.There is the most excellent use of first person present tense, I didn't spot any crossing of tenses which is an anomaly.Here is an itemized list of the issues I had with the world building, in no particular order:1) The book started in a cold weather climate, but everyone is wearing delicate ceremonial dresses. Finally on the journey to the capitol the author remembers that it's cold and they need furs2)once the girls are brought to the Warthu Beta (training house) - things happen SUPER fast in the weapons and martial arts training. I'm supposed to believe that in two weeks they go from clueless to clever swordsmasters? Show us some of that training. It's like a ridiculous fast forward and magically they are all warriors.3) The Jatu recruits and female Alaki are supposed to pair up and be battle/life buddies. The whole book focuses on male to female/demon animosity - but- there is really no bonding at all shown between the pair, they just kind of become trusting fireside best friends one night after those mysterious training weeks pass4) instalove – a boy back home called her pretty, ONE TIME, and later looking back she said she loved him! Haha I can almost ship Keita and Deka but we needed that bonding time that wasn’t shown5) animal names – Ex: leopardan – it’s a fantasy world, either come up with fantasy names or call it a blue leopard. I did like Ixa the shapeshifting not-cat though6) if the One Nation is literally an entire hemisphere (I’m guessing Russia, Asia, irish&etc, and Africa), why so much land grabbing? The scale of land required to produce four separate races like that is essentially an entire hemisphere, now within one nation, and that should be shown on the map.7) feeding off #6 – I would have liked a brief explanation of life during the rule of The Gilded Ones – am I supposed to just believe that they were fair/awesome rulers and take it at face value? The jatu did manage to unite an entire hemisphere though, the goddesses might have created a women’s world with oppressed men for all we know, and they could have been right to fight back. Either way, uniting a whole hemisphere under one nation is pretty impressive and not addressing this is a huge plot hole.8) lack of setting – I get that describing sand dunes is boring but most of the descriptions were of people and animals. What about the jungle, the common areas, even the food? Some scenes had scents described. Setting is what connects to the atmosphere…of which there wasn’t much of one.It's not even a bad story, or a story you read every day. I like the idea of torturing someone to death nine times and teaching them to survive.The good things included female friendships, teachers (whose potential were mostly wasted as no lessons were really shown), shapeshifting pets, snarky horse-people, and… A not really happy ending. It’s an ending fitting for the story even though it got a little sappy for the tone leading up to it.I did like the main group of girls too, Britta and Belcalis were about as different as two people can get and they still made a fast group of allies, friends with Deka. There’s an unconventional amount of grimdark suffering and it’s kind of terrific.Overall? Honestly not a bad read just poorly executed at times. I am pretty neutral on recommending it as the good story and the lack of world building make it a wash
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