It was not bad but also not amazing. I guess that my expectations were way too high because it was so hyped. It’s easy to read but some parts of the book seem kinda undeveloped. Despite that I still liked it

„The Gilded Ones“ by Namina Forna 2.5⭐️ Let me start with what I actually enjoyed about this book… The writing itself is very easy to read and allowed me to flow through the book as if no time had passed while I flipped the pages. This was probably the best part of the book, because the author managed to make me forget that it is written in present tense and that usually throws me off, but not here. Also, I thought the first third of the book was very well done. I like the set up with the purity ritual, even though it was completely obvious that Deka would fail, but that didn’t bother me as much. The religious indoctrination and oppression of women give Deka an incredibly interesting starting point for the story, so no critique there. Then there are the deathshrieks, murderous monsters, predators which threaten to eradicate the empire. Also a nice, yet flawed first attempt at an adversary. Yet, I have a lot of issues with this book. Beginning with some language aspects that range from annoying to weak world building. The use of Latin and German words (yes didn‘t happen often, but well) was quite annoying and there was also a phrase, that just kept coming back up. „We who are dead salute you“ is the English translation of „Morituri te salutant“ which was famously spoken by gladiators in Roman arenas before the fighting started and they might most likely die either in battle for the amusement of the People or afterwards succumb to their injuries. In the context of this book, speaking this sentence does not make any sense to me, since they literally cannot die 99% of the time (and considering what happens in the end, not even this 1% seems to work, if Deka commands against it). Also, why would a standing army, that is supposed to successfully defend the country and not die trying, speak these words? I don’t get it. An aspect I really missed in this book was on page character development. It would have been very interesting to read about how Deka deconstructs her beliefs over the course of time, but instead she‘s seemingly instantly cured and badasses her way through training. She switches from a frightened and beaten girl to a fearsome aggressive warrior and peptalks all the other girls into dumping all their learned behaviour within moments of the book. I would have loved to just see them struggle more with this, since we got told in the beginning, that women are being oppressed for ages. Indoctrination like this probably takes a long time to deconstruct. I would have loved to see that happen. Additionally, most side characters lacked any sort of personality. Most of them were only there to serve Deka, Britta first and foremost. Also, the male part of their team didn’t really play any sort of role at all. Why they were needed eludes me (apart from the romance of course) They serve no other means than to show us, how much more awesome the girls are, despite that was more than obvious in the first place. The deathshrieks also simply served their purpose of being the first antagonist and ugly monsters, that show up for shock value when ever the author seems to have written herself into a corner. Yet, how they are described already gives us a hint, as to what they actually are. (Having spikes on their backs is usually an indicator for a prey animal.) Then I generally have a problem with overpowered characters and making them turn out to be Anakin Skywalker in a woman’s body doesn’t help much. She is just one more main character who has extra special powers, that don’t seem to be flawed or inconveniencing. That simply isn’t my thing. Yet, one of her character flaws is, that she’s not the brightest when it comes to remembering clues and putting them together… It was very painful to watch her find more and more evidence, yet always forgetting about it and not putting 1 and 1 together up until the very last part of the book. And now the worldbuilding issues. I just couldn’t wrap my head around the golden blood, that somehow actually consists of enough gold, to make armour out of it… I don’t understand the physics behind this. How hot and heavy must these girls be, when their blood consists of liquid gold? Or are those nano particles, but then the colour would be off… And, why make an armour out of such a weak and heavy metal? I don’t quite get the practicality other than shielding their ears, but golden earplugs would have sufficed there. Also, categorising people by the direction they come from (Easterners, Westerners, and so on) instead giving their home regions actual names just doesn’t do it for me. In an organically grown world, there will be names for regions, also after those regions are joined together in a larger kingdom. I love intricately built worlds with depth and history to them, where you see all the effort a person put in to flesh it out. This sometimes wasn’t the case here unfortunately. Another aspect also made me heavily doubt the purpose of this Alaki army. There are different training centers and the Alaki are trained differently in each one, so they also have a very large range of skill level, from barely able to hold a weapon to actually being trained to be one. Why not train them the same way? They can’t die most times and would therefore give you a massive advantage over any other troops. Why waste this potential? Yet, this army also doesn’t have any scouts to see if they are being attacked, but why bother? Some smaller issues were, that I would have loved to have an actual name for White Hands earlier, because it always sounded too suspicious that she went with this one. I would have loved to see all „northerners“ having an accent, not only Britta. And I would have loved to get more personality out of the side characters and teachers. So all in all, I can‘t say, I didn’t like it at all, but the further I got in the book, the more annoyed and frustrated I became and I don’t know whether I will read part two and three of the series… I still have to decide that.

All I have to say about "The guilded ones" is that I really loved it. The world building in here is literally everything. It felt like I was there with Deka at all times, could see what she saw. Everything from believings to connections between eachother was so well structered. Deka was such a lovable but also strong character. From the first page on I was invested in her character and just wanted to know more about her story. And let me tell you there is a lot to it! The plot was also great. I could have never imagined how the story would turn out, how everything would go together so perfectly. In my opinion Namina Forna also made a very good job in showing the injustices of the world she created by still connecting them to our world. Sometimes I was really angry at the people because it just didnt seem right to treat certain people like that. But at all times there was the realisation that in our world it isnt particulary better.. All in all I can really recommend this book and am really looking forward to the next book in the series that will gladly come out in april already.