Maryam Rz.'s Reviews > The Silvered Serpents

If The Gilded Wolves was a gentleman pickpocket slipping through the luxurious aristocratic parties of Paris, The Silvered Serpents is an anguished ghost dreaming of godhood, haunting the corridors of a palace of ice, hunting myths.

“I wish my love was more beautiful.”

Sometimes you read books for page-turner, grand action and fast-paced, epic twists and turns, yes, but sometimes, you read them for carefully plotted brilliance and mystical mysteries; sometimes you pick them up for delicate sleights of hand, secret recluses, and immersive writing that unveils the need in your heart. Sometimes, you seek a book that is more adverb than action—as Roshani Chokshi puts it.

This series is of the latter kind.

“Sometimes ghost stories are all that is left of history,” he said. “History is full of ghosts because it’s full of myth, all of it woven together depending on who survived to do the telling.”

With this second installment, Roshani takes a step further than science and magic forged as art, history and fiction entwined in puzzles. With The Silvered Serpents, she walks beyond history and into myth—the truths covered in cobwebs whispered and twisted and hidden behind forgotten doors, the truths that horrify and intrigue—embracing stories of all corners of the world, from Greek goddesses to Middle Eastern origins of Rapunzel. And more than myths, Roshani tells the tale of humanity, of belonging and being scorned, of murdered girls and stolen women, denied motherhood and gripped power, of malice cultivated between girls who were not allowed to dream, and of dead girls forced to guard treasure in invisible palaces.

The Silvered Serpents is in many ways the opposite of its predecessor; where TGW was light, TSS is gloomy, grief and guilt and transfixing agony bordering its edges. So it can also be said that this is a tale of pain, unflinching in its foray into darkness, of found families falling apart and loss tearing bonds into pieces, of love that does not always wear the face you seek, love that is not beautiful and peaceful and easy, love that wounds with its cruel, silent face in its desire to protect and save. This is a tale that plays with your heartstrings.

Maybe for girls made of snow, love was worth the melt. But she was made of stolen bones and sleek fur, grave dirt and strange blood—her heart wasn’t even hers to give. Her soul was all she had, and no love was worth losing it.

So put your shields up around your heart, because goodbyes are in order. For now, there is one more acquisition and five people headed their own ways who come back, each for different reasons, to complete one last treasure hunt. But “In debating the merits of pursuing hidden treasure, one must weigh the risk of whether it was never meant to be found and if so, why?” Because someone...someone wants to play god.



❆ First, Let’s Get the Criticism Out of the Way ❆

“I saw what I wanted to see,” he said, hoarse. “Only a desperate man trusts a mirage in the desert.”

In the spirit of honesty and even though I hate complaining, I will have to admit that, while I loved TSS, the writer and critic in me can’t stop thinking of all the ways this gem of anguished longing and impossible dreams could have been more than just a fave—it could have been an all-time fave! Sigh, me and my obsession with books being the best versions of themselves will one day kill me but, for now, on the matter of equally cutting the book into three to rate and proceeding to address the elephant in the room:

First ⅓ ⤑ ★★★★✯
Second ⅓ ⤑ ★★★☆☆
Third ⅓ ⤑ ★★★★✯

Here’s the thing: one reason why The Gilded Wolves had me enchanted from page one to page I-don’t-remember-how-many-pages-it-was-and-I’m-too-lazy-to-check-just-assume-I-wrote-the-number-of-the-last-page, was the lush and aristocratic, atmospheric setting which caught and trapped me in 1889 Paris so thoroughly I all but became a willing prisoner and fell in love with my captive (Stockholm syndrome right there)—the setting and the wonder and artistry of L’Eden that The Silvered Serpents does not have.

What he felt now was a different kind of incredulity. The kind where one has released a dream into the world, only to rediscover it on the ground, trampled and stained.

Don’t me wrong, Roshani’s writing is still breathtakingly immersive and I walked every path alongside my tragic gang of mischiefs, absorbed every landscape, breathed in every smell. And even as I was aware that the Parisian atmosphere would be missing in this sequel, I expected it to be replaced with a chillingly Russian one. It was not—well, it was, but for only a few chapters. What’s more, the characters spent a long time wandering around an abandoned ice palace trying to solve mysteries and taking too long to figure out what’s right in front of them. I am not saying the puzzles and clues were not clever, they always are with Roshani, what I’m saying is that so are the characters.

Knowledge was coy. It liked to hide beneath the shroud of myth, place its heart in a fairy tale, as if it were a prize at the end of the quest. Perhaps whatever knowledge was here was similar. Perhaps it wished to be wooed and coaxed forth.

What I’d have loved is for the plotting to have been entirely different, with plot points moved earlier/later in the book to bring out the full potential of this tale. What I’d have loved is for the Winter Conclave to have been a weeks-long event and for the cast to take residence in Russia (letting me drown in my requested setting vibes) and attempt to crack the mystery even as they have to navigate the politics of European Houses and soak in intrigue because oh the lost opportunity for politicking, world expansion, and dive into the dirty laundry of the greedy, imperialist Order! What I’d have loved is for the gang to then slip away with their supporters to the discovered location, the other Houses on their tail, and explore the haunted palace faster with less unnecessary procrastination. What I’d have loved is a confrontation upon the Order’s arrival and then everything that happened at the end.

I did not get what I’d have loved. I loved what I got (mostly) but while everyone declared book one to be confusing in plot (I did not) I found book two to be too simple in plot (no one else did).



❆ Now Allow Me to Fall Apart for the Characters ❆

“We need to separate Vasiliev from his bodyguards,” said Séverin. “Something that can pull men apart—”
“Money?” asked Enrique.
“Love!” said Hypnos.
“Magnets,” said Zofia.
Laila, Enrique, and Hypnos turned to stare at her.
“Powerful magnets,” Zofia amended.

Credit: Diana Dworak

✦ Séverin: Séverin Montagnet-Alarie, Paris’s most influential investor and owner of the grandest hotel in France, is an idiot. My emotions swung between wanting to hug him, punch him, kiss him, scream at him, and do more confusing things to him—I settled for Laila making him squirm.

“You always see so clearly into the darkness of men’s hearts, Monsieur Montagnet-Alarie,” she said, before adding in a softer voice, “But I remember when you used to see wonder.”
Séverin reached for his water goblet. “And now I see truth.”

This stubborn, irrational, beautiful boy filled with so much longing, this commanding, imaginative, observant boy who once saw wonder where he now sees pain, lets his grief and self hate drown him in the skeletons in Tristan’s closets and the demons beneath his bed, and refuses everyone’s hand, shunning his closest friends who have to step back lest the drowning man take them down as well. I can relate to his fear of being powerless, shutting himself away at the first sign of vulnerability. But what he does to escape his pain is seeking to escape humanity, practicing the cold, cruel tyranny of indifference because, “for the sake of what he needed to do, he had to be apart, not a part,” for the sake of gaining invincibility, he looks to leave mortality behind. “Ah, Majnun. The madman who lost himself to an impossible dream.”

He was like a cursed prince, trapped in the worst version of himself. And nothing she possessed—not her kiss freely given, nor her heart shyly offered—could break the thrall that held him because he had done it to himself.

✦ Laila: I was going to write a ballad for this empowering Indian gem of existence who would not let her death be in service to another’s character, her pain what he’d feed on to find his strength, this utter queen without a crown who reminds me of Nina Zenik after her glorious character development...but I’m too lazy so watch me pluck sentences out of the book and put them together because, truly, Roshani says it better than I ever could. “Laila was like a fairy tale plucked from the pages of a book—a girl with a curse woven into her heartbeat. A mirage glimpsed through smoke. A temptation in the desert that lulls the soul into thinking of false promises. The essence of her was walking into a room, and all eyes pinned to her, as if she were the performance of a lifetime. The essence of her was a smile full of forgiveness, the warmth in her hands, sugar in her hair.”

Laila was salvaged bones, and the snow maiden was only gathered snow. Love didn’t deserve to thaw their wits and turn their hearts to dust.

✦ Zofia: There are not many people who make me proud of my Gryffindor side, yet Zofia with her sympathies for a broken machine is one of them. She is my dangerously flammable Phoenix and favourite of the cast (next to Laila) not because of her autism (which is perfectly portrayed in her different way of processing the world, such as when the subtleties of language and art are lost on her) but because she strives to be brave even with fear of the unknown, to be independent and helpful even as she feels like a burden and knows that she needs others’ help. Zofia is a unique type of empowering female character and I relished seeing her shine in this sequel.

“If there were stairs to hell, would you venture down those?”
“It depends on what was inside hell, and if I needed it.”

✦ Enrique: This charming, adorable, biracial boy is longing incarnate. He is the longing for a home to call your own and a place to belong when both sides of who you are shun you. He is the longing to be heard and and seen for all you have done and can do when no one holds you worthy for your truth. He is longing, and how can one not relate to him, not feel for him?

“When a man cannot see a person as a person, then the devil has slipped into him and is peering out of his eyes.”

✦ Hypnos: You know that friend who wants to help but does more unintentional harm than good because he is so clueless and lonely and has no idea how to have friends? Yes, this is him. The reason him and Enrique bonded so easily was because Hypnos, too, is a biracial vision of reaching hands, wanting to belong and prove his worth. But the difference is that, in many things, Hypnos is more casual and fun-seeking and, to be honest, I cannot stop thinking of how great a drag queen he could have been. My heart bled in glee every time he contributed to the group and was recognised.

“Why isn’t he going in?” muttered Hypnos.
“Fear of dismemberment,” said Zofia. “If I were designing thief-catching mechanisms, I would have a device rigged to attack the first three people who entered.”
Hypnos stepped behind Zofia. “Ladies first.”

❆ And Then There Is the Curse That is the Relationships ❆

That was how friendship felt to her, an illumination too vast for her senses to capture. Yet she did not doubt its presence. And she held that light close to her as step by step, she ventured down the stairs.

The relationships in TSS were probably the best part for me. Because what this book gave me was layered friendships falling apart at the seams and being stitched back together. What it gave me was lovers parting peacefully with mutual understanding soaked in pain, and bonds blooming in opposites, two halves of a whole, completing one another and showing each other the side they could not see on their own. Oh what it gave me was two hearts drenched in rage-filled anguish (which I’ve found to be my fave emotion) playing at cat and mouse.

He first glimpsed her through the mirror, like a fairy tale where the hero crept upon the monster, risking only a glance at her reflection lest she turn his heart to stone. Only this was its inversion. Now the monster glanced upon the maiden, risking only a glimpse of her reflection lest she turn his stone to heart.

Credit: Gabriella Bujdoso

I ask you, is this not the most beautiful declaration of love you’ve ever read? “Perhaps, all goddesses are just beliefs draped on the scaffolding of ideas. I can’t touch what’s not real. But I can worship it all the same.” Yup, I died too. Until my next session of gushing, goodbye and try not to die.



Thank you to my superhero for providing me with an eARC through Edelweiss!

❆ Oh and the Playlist and Reviews and Whatnot ❆

Book series playlist: Spotify URL

Books in series:
⤳ The Gilded Wolves (The Gilded Wolves, #1) ★★★★✯
⤳ The Silvered Serpents (The Gilded Wolves, #2) ★★★★☆
⤳ The Bronzed Beasts (The Gilded Wolves, #3) ☆☆☆☆☆