Ask any feminist, but acknowledgment of pain is powerful, especially when the accused party actually takes the blame without if ands or buts. 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. 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.įor 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. 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 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. However, if you’d like to check out my Tiktok Review- you can do so right HERE.

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. Nothing and no one are quite what they seem to be–not even Deka herself. 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. Knowing the dangers that lie ahead yet yearning for acceptance, Deka decides to leave the only life she's ever known.

And they are the only ones who can stop the empire's greatest threat. They are called alaki–near-immortals with rare gifts. 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. Already different from everyone else because of her unnatural intuition, Deka prays for red blood so she can finally feel like she belongs.īut 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. 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.

The gilded ones namina forna