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Sometimes the beginning is the best place to start, and since we’re talking about The Bronzed Beasts (The Gilded Wolves #3) by Roshani Chokshi today, I want to start at the very beginning.  The Gilded Wolves, which was one of my favorite reads from 2019 that I convinced Ashley to read with me in August 2020, was the beginning of this journey. It ticked so many readerly boxes – ensemble cast, found family, family saga, a touch of magic, and set in Paris, amidst the world fair!  (And it was upon the writing of this that I realized that is also the month when we brought you the first two titles in Lyssa Kay Adam’s Bromance Book Club Series…which is a strange delight as we’re bringing you that comfort read next week.)  The summary is we both gave The Gilded Wolves five stars, and then the cast had a new adventure in Russia, in The Silvered Serpents, which also got double five stars from us!  All that said, this is a trilogy, so don’t skip around.  It won’t make sense, you’ll spoil things that you really want to experience on the page, and we’ll be so sad for you.  

And now, this fall, The Bronzed Beasts picks up where The Silvered Serpents leaves off, like immediately, and then our cast goes to Venice to finish the adventure and drama they started way back when (but it was really only weeks ago for them).  For this book, I want to start at the end – I love this ending.  It is so perfect for the story and the adventure these characters have been on throughout the trilogy.  There’s an epilogue that is just shy of perfection (which Ashley may say is me being extra, we’ll see).  I don’t want to talk about the action in this book, because #nospoilers but I do want to talk about some of the themes in the book.  As with the others, there is found family, and family saga, as well as a bit of a shifting dynamic in our group that started in book two and is so tragic and amazing at the same time, as well as continuing the exploration of good and evil, how Forging (this alternative world’s magic) impacts the world, exploration of the cultures of the characters and how their appearance impacts their treatment, and what it means to hope.  As with many of my favorite books, this tale is layered.  On the surface it’s part adventure and part mystery, both of which do wrap up really nicely, following some fun, grotesque action that is just gorgeously described and scripted.  (This sounds bad, but let’s review – part of book one takes place in the catacombs of Paris, so, yes, grotesque.)  If a reader wants to dig in, we have issues of feminism, colonialism, ambition, vulnerability, living into our best selves, and what it means to be alive.  There is so much for an engaged reader to access amidst lush descriptions, smart, snarky characters, and fast-paced action.  

I feel like I read The Bronzed Beasts slower than I usually do because I didn’t want it to end.  I didn’t get the full trilogy reread I wanted, although I did reread about the last 100 pages or so of The Silvered Serpents, just to really remember where our characters were when last we saw them.  It was helpful and I’m not sad I did, only sad I couldn’t binge the whole thing, but December is a hard month for getting time to sit and binge read, at least the first few weeks are, but I have hope for the last week.  I’m giving The Bronzed Beasts 4.5 stars and rounding up to five, and I do wonder if I would have read it in a slower season with a full trilogy reread if I’d rate it higher, but this is life.  It was a solid ending to a great trilogy, and I’m very excited to read whatever Chokshi writes next, and perhaps catch up on some backlist before her next title comes out (and it was 100% already brought up in blog planning).  It was such a joy to be with these characters again, and I’m only sad I can’t read it again for the first time, and there is no expectation of new pages to spend with them.

What’s a book that was action packed, yet most definitely a comfort read for you?

~Nikki 

The last time we discussed a book by Roshani Chokshi was September of last year and not much has changed in her bio: her parents still talk about how their daughter works in her pajamas, she still has a cat helping the writing process, she is still an award winning and critically acclaimed author, and we are still waiting for a date from Paramount Pictures for when the Aru Shah and the End of Time will be released – it’s still in development. I wonder what studio scooped up the rights to The Gilded Wolves Trilogy  because this whole story is so, so, so, so delicious. I’ve already mentally casted Nicolas Cage. My first highlight speaks right to that casting choice as the book’s dedication reads: “For my friends, who didn’t stop me when I said I wanted to write something like National Treasure meets Faust with a dash of existential crises…but make it sexy. Y’all owe me drinks. And therapy.” I’m so glad for Chokshi’s friends not poo-pooing on her dreams. Chokshi delivered.

Even though Nikki didn’t talk about it, I feel like I can because it’s in the marketing copy: The Bronzed Beasts takes place in Venice! The Floating City is what I would consider a romantic city, similar in appeal to Paris, but I have never traveled there so I just don’t have any lived experience to pull from. Regardless, I’m going to go ahead and mention my favorite Forged item is the gondolas that enclose riders when they become too amorous for public view. How amazing is that? It gives new privacy possibilities to the tunnel of love, so don’t rock the boat.

As Nikki stated above, there are layered themes that if you wanted to dissect you could spend many a book club discussing. The one theme that stood out to me from the very beginning comes from this quote at approximately 8% (the digital book doesn’t give page numbers): 

“I am craving boredom, as if it is the rarest vintage of wine in all the land,” [Hypnos] said. “Such depravity.” Laila nearly laughed. In the past week, she had seen riches that rivaled kingdoms and witnessed the kind of intoxicating power that could unravel the world with a song … but nothing compared to the luxury and allure of being able to waste a whole day and think nothing of it. If she could fill a box with impossible treasures, that was what Laila would hide away: luscious, sun-ripened days and cold, star-strewn nights to waste in the company of loved ones.

How simple and yet profound. If we were to suddenly know how many days we had left to spend on this planet, what would we do with that time we had left? Most people I know would spend it with the people they love, of course, participating in life’s greatest pleasures, good food and good company. It is a reminder to us, especially during the hectic holiday season that the time we have is finite, and time spent doing the things which bring you joy is never wasted. It is also a reminder that habitually doing things you do not enjoy is a waste of the precious and limited time and emotional energy that we have. (I’ll probably talk about this more in the post on The Lazy Genius Way later this month, so let me not digress further.) The moment at a later part of the book where Laila realizes what brings her the most joy made me teary eyed. Email or DM me for details on which part of the book that was, but only after you’ve read it!

What brings me joy, dear readers, is sharing my reading life with you, especially this 4.5 rounded to 5 star read! The epilogue of The Bronzed Beasts did leave me with some unanswered questions, but sometimes we as readers need that mystery to keep our imagination working and thinking about the book long after we’ve finished reading. Now that the series is over, I can’t tell you when I will fit in a re-read, but I will certainly be buying a digital copy once it goes on sale to finish out my collection!

What activities bring you the most joy in life, and how can I help you create the time and space to continually do them?

~Ashley

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