A Fantasy Steampunk Ocean’s Eleven

Roshani Chokshi's The Gilded Wolves gives the heist movie a literary turn in a young adult fantasy that works for adults, too.

There's a reason why heist movies are so popular. They're equal parts fun and suspense, and--in the best cases--they take the time to develop characters worth caring about. The band of thieves in The Gilded Wolves is a group of friends who love each other and live together on the outskirts of society. They survive, because the same unusual talents and quirky personalities that earned them rejection from their peers just happen to make them very, very good at robbing the wealthiest houses of late 19th-Century Paris.

This Paris exists in a world of magical powers that are believed to be a gift from God, physically manifested in pieces of stone that remain from the fallen Tower of Babel. As a result, the young thieves are as likely to reference the Bible as they are books on mathematics, history, engineering, and botany as they plan the heist to end all heists--one that could upset the balance of civilization.

And maybe that balance should be upset, or completely overturned. Because each member of the group has borne society's prejudice, whether for race, religion, sexual orientation, or existence on the autism spectrum. These are young people who have been wronged, and they just might be able to force the world to make things right.

In horse-drawn carriages and magically starry-skied ballrooms, The Gilded Wolves delivers a mix of magic and steampunk science, shown through the lens of 20-year-old outcasts. And while the young men and women act their age--they are all confused about life and love--they face the world with an adult-caliber cynicism that broadens the appeal of this young adult fantasy.

Rich world-building comes from flashbacks as the point of view alternates by chapter and we get to know each member of the crew. The audio book's narrators do an admirable job of giving all six characters distinctive voices, though the narrative is fast-paced enough to make the characters blend together at times, especially in early chapters when we are still getting to know them. In fact, the complex relationships among the powerful magical houses that rule this world might be hard to follow for readers on the younger side of its declared age range of 12-18 years.

Read this trilogy soon, before Netflix tries to develop it as a series. (Another of Chokshi's books, Aru Shah and The End of Time, has already been optioned for film by Paramount, so get a move on.)