The Gilded Ones (2020)
The Gilded Ones is a 2020 new york times bestseller book written by Namina Forna.
Deka wants nothing more than to belong to her village, so she dreads the blood ceremony that will judge her. Her blood runs gold instead of red, the color of impurity, and her place among her people gives way to something far worse. Namina Forna draws on West African myth to build a walled empire where certain girls prove near-immortal, gifted, and useful as soldiers. Offered a choice between submission and the emperor's army, Deka leaves the only home she has known for the capital and a war that will test what she really is. Fierce and unsparing.
Quick answers
What is The Gilded Ones about?
Deka wants nothing more than to belong to her village, so she dreads the blood ceremony that will judge her. Her blood runs gold instead of red, the color of impurity, and her place among her people gives way to something far worse. Namina Forna draws on West African myth to build a walled empire where certain girls prove near-immortal, gifted, and useful as soldiers. Offered a choice between submission and the emperor's army, Deka leaves the only home she has known for the capital and a war that will test what she really is. Fierce and unsparing.
When was The Gilded Ones published?
The Gilded Ones was published in 2020.
Who made The Gilded Ones?
The Gilded Ones was written by Namina Forna.
Similar books
Explore The Gilded Ones guides
The Gilded Ones in our writing
- Companion guide: YA Fantasy & Science Fiction: The Complete Guide
A few thoughts on The Gilded Ones
Readers moved by an army of gifted young women should try Warrior Nun, which shares the sisterhood-in-arms and the buried history that keeps rewriting the rules. For West African world-building on the largest scale, Black Panther brings the same pride of place and design, a kingdom built from real cultural weight rather than borrowed set dressing.
Girls conscripted into an empire's private army
Deka is handed a choice that isn't really a choice: submit or fight in the emperor's army built from girls like her. Iron Widow drafts its heroine into a war machine the same way, An Ember in the Ashes and A Torch Against the Night draft scholars and rebels into a martial empire's ranks, and Black Panther's Dora Milaje wear that same conscription with pride instead of force.
Fantasy built on myth from outside Europe
The Gilded Ones draws its empire, its blood ceremony, and its gold-blooded girls straight out of West African myth instead of the usual medieval template. Children of Blood and Bone and Children of Virtue and Vengeance build Orisha on that same foundation, We Hunt the Flame roots its desert rebellion in Arabian myth, and Legendborn folds African diaspora history into a hidden magical society.
Marked as impure for a power you didn't choose
Deka's gold blood brands her as impure before anyone bothers to ask what she can actually do. The Young Elites marks its malfettos the same way, with scars instead of blood, Graceling and Fire both treat an obvious, involuntary sign of power as something to fear on sight, and Three Dark Crowns splits its queens by a gift none of them asked to be born with.
Chosen for a destiny she never wanted
Deka never asked to be gold-blooded or near-immortal, and the short companion stories in The Girl of Fire and Thorns pick up Elisa before she's grown into her own unwanted Godstone destiny. Strange the Dreamer's Lazlo and Daughter of Smoke and Bone's Karou both get pulled into a war they never chose, and Shadow and Bone hands Alina a title she spends the whole book trying to outrun.