The Gilded Ones by Namina Forna: My Review
The Gilded Ones by Namina Forna:
My Review
ABOUT THE BOOK
The Gilded Ones
By Namina Forna
SYNOPSIS
Sixteen-year-old Deka lives in fear and anticipation of the blood ceremony that will determine whether she will become a member of her village. Already different from everyone else because of her unnatural intuition, Deka prays for red blood so she can finally feel like she belongs.
But on the day of the ceremony, her blood runs gold, the color of impurity–and Deka knows she will face a consequence worse than death.
Then a mysterious woman comes to her with a choice: stay in the village and submit to her fate, or leave to fight for the emperor in an army of girls just like her. They are called alaki–near-immortals with rare gifts. And they are the only ones who can stop the empire's greatest threat.
Knowing the dangers that lie ahead yet yearning for acceptance, Deka decides to leave the only life she's ever known. But as she journeys to the capital to train for the biggest battle of her life, she will discover that the great walled city holds many surprises. Nothing and no one are quite what they seem to be–not even Deka herself.
My Review
Rating: 5 Stars
I did a review earlier this week on TikTok for this novel but my reviews on this platform tend to be general quick summaries, so I thought I’d do a deeper dive into the book here on the blog. However, if you’d like to check out my Tiktok Review- you can do so right HERE.
The Gilded Ones by Namina Forna was exactly the kind of read I’d recommend to any young woman who is feeling uncomfortable in her own body, it’s also the exact kind of read I’d want my own daughter to be reading if I had one. It has such potency with regard to the treatment of women and their power, with the reflections of our own society and how it reacts to the power of female sexuality as stark and damning as you can possibly imagine. The main character Deka, goes through one hell of a change during the novel, from a quivering shame-filled shadow of a girl to a badass fighting warrior who has a destiny far greater and more divine than she could have ever imagined.
For many YA novels, I feel like the focus is mainly on romance, but not with this book and I LOVED the focus on the female relationships between Deka, Britta, and Belcalis. Belcalis in particular has a story that brought me to my knees, in that she didn’t want revenge for the pain caused to her, though it originally seems that way, but rather she wants her suffering acknowledged as being wrong. Ask any feminist, but acknowledgment of pain is powerful, especially when the accused party actually takes the blame without if ands or buts. I loved watching her use her rage throughout the book to take down the DeathShrieks, and I also thought it was incredibly clever how the Deathshrieks were used as a metaphor for the way women are made to turn on each other within our society, which frequently pitches woman against woman in a comparison contest deeming who is the most beautiful, the most desirable, and making those who don’t measure up feel like outsiders in every sense of the word.
This is not to say the book doesn’t have a romance component, because it does, but I appreciated the slow burn and secondary nature of the storyline between Deka and Keita because at no point in the novel does Deka compromise or give up any of the power she has inherited to appease the man she’s falling for. The fight scenes in this were epic, and I loved the lore whereby Men had demonised the very Goddesses who once gave them life. It seems resonant to me of the way men often abuse women, despite the fact that it is women who bring them into this world and raise them.
I picked up this novel not knowing it was a series, so I’m hanging on by the skin of my teeth waiting for The Merciless Ones which is promised next year. This is a definite five star read for me, and if you love YA fantasy with strong women, diverse representation, and simply stunning worldbuilding, this one is definitely going to be right up your alley.
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE…
When I told my Barista, Jess, that I was looking for a long series to hold my attention, she was flabbergasted to discover I’d never read the Sookie Stackhouse novels, or seen the show True Blood, which is based off them. In between customers who had come in for their daily dose of Botany and Beans magic, she got up google and started showing me some of the ovary-busting hotness that is the male half of the True Blood cast. Colour me intrigued. I found myself downloading the first book there and then, right in the coffee shop. This is my review of the first instalment, Dead Until Dark.