The Silvered Serpents eARC Review

         

GoodReads:

Returning to the dark and glamorous 19th century world of her New York Times instant bestseller, The Gilded Wolves, Roshani Chokshi dazzles us with another riveting tale as full of mystery and danger as ever in The Silvered Serpents.

They are each other’s fiercest love, greatest danger, and only hope.

Séverin and his team members might have successfully thwarted the Fallen House, but victory came at a terrible cost — one that still haunts all of them. Desperate to make amends, Séverin pursues a dangerous lead to find a long lost artifact rumored to grant its possessor the power of God.

Their hunt lures them far from Paris, and into the icy heart of Russia where crystalline ice animals stalk forgotten mansions, broken goddesses carry deadly secrets, and a string of unsolved murders makes the crew question whether an ancient myth is a myth after all.

As hidden secrets come to the light and the ghosts of the past catch up to them, the crew will discover new dimensions of themselves. But what they find out may lead them down paths they never imagined.

A tale of love and betrayal as the crew risks their lives for one last job.

My Review

You know it’s a good book and the author is amazing and evil when she makes you ‘yearn’ for the days of old…and by that I mean book one, The Gilded Wolves. Chokshi had my heart in her hands and sufficiently crushed it in like the first two chapters. It was highly impressive and devastating.

I love all of this found family and watching them all carrying their grief differently was beautiful to read if not sad, and most heartbreaking of all in their grief was Séverin and it wasn’t necessarily because he was the ‘saddest’ but because it was gut wrenching to see the change in him and how he was around the others. And, watching everyone react to him.

There were some super intense moments in this just like in the first book and I was on the edge of my seat a lot, especially the whole last part of the book.

We had some new characters introduced, we had more of other characters such as Hypnos (my bookish BFF lol) and this was less about the houses and working toward them as a goal, this is all about the possibility of revenge for Severin, renown for Enrique, a chance for Zofia’s sister, finding a sense of belonging for Hypnos, and life for Laila.

Each character had their own separate goal this time, but that doesn’t stop them from being a family and the way that they worked together despite losing their leader in so many ways.

This had the same pacing as the first book, the first part is setting the stage, the second part is putting the rest of the pieces in place for Chokshi to ruin us and start the ball rolling while part three is chaos and part for is where she lets the hammer hit your soul. It can feel a bit stilted at times, but Chokshi has a plan and everything is just getting into order. Also, it more than makes up for it and the chapters are quicker paced than book one as it’s jumping right from where we left off.

So, if you would like a book to emotionally ruin you while giving you a good treasure hunt, and the amazing cast of characters that is the found family of Severin, I highly recommend this book.

5/5 Cups of Coffee! I’m off to go collect and bottle my tears to remind myself of the pain, yay.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an eARC in exchange for my honest review.

““You see that, my Zosia?” he had asked. “That is the devil. When a man cannot see a person as a person, then the devil has slipped into him and is peering out of his eyes.””

― Roshani Chokshi, The Silvered Serpents