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onceuponanisabel 's review for:
Wicked Saints
by Emily A. Duncan
NOTE ON 4/5/2021: I do NOT recommend this series or this author to anybody. This author has shown their true colors in the past but more and more keeps coming up about her (see here and here for starters) and I felt the need to include a warning on my reviews and a note that I will not be supporting them or their books in the future.
ORIGINAL REVIEW:
This. Book. Alright, now that I've gotten my thoughts back into some semblance of an order, let's get to it.
Wicked Saints is about a girl (Nadya) who has been blessed by the gods -- she can channel their power as a cleric and do magic unlike any other. Accompanied by new friends, she sets off to end the war between her own country (Kalyazin) and a neighboring one (Tranavia), one that practices blood magic, heresy.
As the main character, Nadya was kind of all over the place. She is at once immensely powerful and immensely naive. She is devout, yet willing to go however far it takes to accomplish her goals. However, Wicked Saints is told in alternating POVs, and our other main character, Serefin, is far more interesting. The prince of Tranavia, we watch as he transitions from a determined warrior to a suspicious and leary court member. While Nadya ultimately propels the story and Serefin's chapters sometimes felt a tad unnecessary, I felt like they balanced each other out nicely.
But let's talk about Malachiasz. Introduced early on as the mysterious love interest, I'll admit, I was intrigued by him. However, his character is largely static for the majority of the book, especially as Nadya is falling for him. It's an enemies-to-lovers trope, and while I'm an absolute sucker for those relationships, this one just didn't have a good payoff. I shipped them more when there wasn't really anything going on between them because of the potential than when things started to progress more. The reason is this: Malachiasz never really opens up to Nadya (and subsequently to us, the reader) and never actually gives her a good reason to trust him or to fall for him. While I know that this is because he's ~mysterious~ and also because of plot reasons, it made me get bored of him about halfway through.
This book was a roller-coaster in terms of quality for me. The beginning of the book? Absolutely stellar. I saw Melanie Parker (meltotheany) comment that it was the best first chapter of a book she'd read in a while, and I wholeheartedly agree. Wicked Saints started out very strong. However, it then began to drag a little, and the introduction of the Rawalyk, a [b:The Selection|10507293|The Selection (The Selection, #1)|Kiera Cass|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1322103400l/10507293._SY75_.jpg|15413183] esque competition to marry Serefin shocked me with its ridiculousness. This book is Dark, and inserting the Rawalyk and making it a major plot for a while felt bizarre and didn't fit the tone at all. The book began to pick back up when Duncan essentially abandons the Rawalyk in favor of the main plot, and I was pulled back in. The end though...again, it didn't hold up. It felt a tad rushed, and as the machinations of all of the characters played out, I couldn't quite muster too much investment.
This book felt like a TV show that had an amazing pilot that the rest of the show could never quite live up to. That's not to say that I didn't thoroughly enjoy this book on the whole, because I did. I (and reviewers in general) tend to harp on the negatives in the aftermath, but the truth is that I blasted through this book in an afternoon, having fun all the way and wishing I was reading it every time I wasn't. While there are certainly things that I might change, I highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys fantasy. Will it be the best thing you've ever read? Probably not. But will you be highly entertained and relish your time with Wicked Saints? I think so.
ARC provided via NetGalley.
ORIGINAL REVIEW:
This. Book. Alright, now that I've gotten my thoughts back into some semblance of an order, let's get to it.
Wicked Saints is about a girl (Nadya) who has been blessed by the gods -- she can channel their power as a cleric and do magic unlike any other. Accompanied by new friends, she sets off to end the war between her own country (Kalyazin) and a neighboring one (Tranavia), one that practices blood magic, heresy.
As the main character, Nadya was kind of all over the place. She is at once immensely powerful and immensely naive. She is devout, yet willing to go however far it takes to accomplish her goals. However, Wicked Saints is told in alternating POVs, and our other main character, Serefin, is far more interesting. The prince of Tranavia, we watch as he transitions from a determined warrior to a suspicious and leary court member. While Nadya ultimately propels the story and Serefin's chapters sometimes felt a tad unnecessary, I felt like they balanced each other out nicely.
But let's talk about Malachiasz. Introduced early on as the mysterious love interest, I'll admit, I was intrigued by him. However, his character is largely static for the majority of the book, especially as Nadya is falling for him. It's an enemies-to-lovers trope, and while I'm an absolute sucker for those relationships, this one just didn't have a good payoff. I shipped them more when there wasn't really anything going on between them because of the potential than when things started to progress more. The reason is this: Malachiasz never really opens up to Nadya (and subsequently to us, the reader) and never actually gives her a good reason to trust him or to fall for him. While I know that this is because he's ~mysterious~ and also because of plot reasons, it made me get bored of him about halfway through.
This book was a roller-coaster in terms of quality for me. The beginning of the book? Absolutely stellar. I saw Melanie Parker (meltotheany) comment that it was the best first chapter of a book she'd read in a while, and I wholeheartedly agree. Wicked Saints started out very strong. However, it then began to drag a little, and the introduction of the Rawalyk, a [b:The Selection|10507293|The Selection (The Selection, #1)|Kiera Cass|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1322103400l/10507293._SY75_.jpg|15413183] esque competition to marry Serefin shocked me with its ridiculousness. This book is Dark, and inserting the Rawalyk and making it a major plot for a while felt bizarre and didn't fit the tone at all. The book began to pick back up when Duncan essentially abandons the Rawalyk in favor of the main plot, and I was pulled back in. The end though...again, it didn't hold up. It felt a tad rushed, and as the machinations of all of the characters played out, I couldn't quite muster too much investment.
This book felt like a TV show that had an amazing pilot that the rest of the show could never quite live up to. That's not to say that I didn't thoroughly enjoy this book on the whole, because I did. I (and reviewers in general) tend to harp on the negatives in the aftermath, but the truth is that I blasted through this book in an afternoon, having fun all the way and wishing I was reading it every time I wasn't. While there are certainly things that I might change, I highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys fantasy. Will it be the best thing you've ever read? Probably not. But will you be highly entertained and relish your time with Wicked Saints? I think so.
ARC provided via NetGalley.