Grief-stricken and chasing a legendary artifact into the ice, the crew turns on itself as old wounds and new dangers surface.
- Score
- 77.8
- Spice
- 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️Sweet
- POV
- multi
- Ending
- HEA / HFN
Tropes
Content warnings
Curated signals, not an exhaustive guarantee.
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What readers think
Readers overwhelmingly praise the richer, more cohesive pacing compared to book one, and the way each ensemble character gets a meaningful emotional arc. Chokshi's lavish, lyrical prose and the icy Russian setting are consistent highlights. The romantic tension between Laila and Séverin — simmering and frustrated — earns strong praise for its emotional depth. The main criticism is that Séverin's grief-driven spiral makes him difficult to root for, with some reviewers finding him overly dramatic; a smaller complaint is that the Forging magic system remains underexplained. The heavier tonal shift away from the lighter banter of book one surprised some readers expecting more of the same.
Read it if
- · Readers who love ensemble heist casts with distinct, diverse voices and interpersonal tension
- · Fans of lush historical fantasy settings — Belle Époque Europe and Imperial Russia — with gothic atmosphere
- · Readers who want emotional, slow-burning romance wrapped in a high-stakes treasure hunt
Skip it if
- · You need a likeable, stable protagonist — Séverin is deliberately frustrating and self-destructive in this book
- · You want clear, fully explained magic systems rather than evocative but vague Forging mechanics
- · You dislike darker, grief-heavy sequels that shift the tone from a lighter book one
If you liked this
- · For fans of Six of Crows but craving more lyrical, ornate prose
- · Like The Gilded Wolves but darker, faster, and more emotionally brutal
- · For readers of Leigh Bardugo's Grishaverse who want non-European settings and richer diversity
- · For fans of Stephanie Garber's Caraval series who want more ensemble depth and less solitary heroine focus
In this series
Part of The Gilded Wolves — read in order:
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