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memiuccia 's review for:
Wicked Saints
by Emily A. Duncan
1/5 🌟
In the year of 2011, the fanfiction "Masters of the Universe" was published under the name of "Fifty Shades of Grey" and enjoyed great commercial success. Following in E.L. James' footsteps, in the year of 2019 the fanfiction "My Immortal" was published under the name "Wicked Saints" and it somehow ended up in my hands. This is my story.
To be very honest and fair, I read very few books and end up thinking "if this can get published, so can anyone," because that's not actually true - but this is one of those books. I'm sorry. Send me to hell if you'd like.
Many reviewers are making parallels between Malachiasz and Kylo Ren, but I don't know jack shit about Star Wars, so I'll focus on what I do know: Dungeons & Dragons.
It does not surprise me at all to open the author's twitter page and see tweet after tweet after tweet about Critical Role. Because this is what this book is: a very bad, poorly thought out Dungeons & Dragons QUEST. It's not even a campaign, it's just a clichéd quest that every party eventually goes through: king yearns for more power than he has, let's infiltrate his court, sidestep his powerful mages and kill him. That's it, that's the entire book and also a quest I'd write up at two in the morning on the day before the session when I have nothing else to throw at my players.
There's zero world-building here, because we're only seeing a quest and not the big picture, so the book fails to engage you in its most basic sense. It relies heavily on religion without having a carefully constructed pantheon - which is something that is VERY difficult to write and that's why most fantasy works touch only very lightly on the subject - and never discussing the theme in depth. Why is religion like this in this world? Why is this pantheon like this? What constitutes heresy? Which side is right, if that's even possible? None of those questions are asked in the narrative.
The word "monster" is thrown around literally all the time with absolute no thought about what that means in terms of character arc or the plot. Honestly, Malachiasz can't say a word without someone going "YOU'RE SUCH A MONSTER" when in reality... what has he done tbh? He has fangs, sure, but go off I guess.
I don't have anything good to say about any of the characters, because both POVs have very few dimensions and everyone else feels like cardboard cutouts of NPCs who are only there to give the party information through exposition and explanations about a world they should know about because they live in it, so they can continue on in their quest to kill the evil king.
And as the cover of this book says: let them fear her (the writing).
In the year of 2011, the fanfiction "Masters of the Universe" was published under the name of "Fifty Shades of Grey" and enjoyed great commercial success. Following in E.L. James' footsteps, in the year of 2019 the fanfiction "My Immortal" was published under the name "Wicked Saints" and it somehow ended up in my hands. This is my story.
To be very honest and fair, I read very few books and end up thinking "if this can get published, so can anyone," because that's not actually true - but this is one of those books. I'm sorry. Send me to hell if you'd like.
Many reviewers are making parallels between Malachiasz and Kylo Ren, but I don't know jack shit about Star Wars, so I'll focus on what I do know: Dungeons & Dragons.
It does not surprise me at all to open the author's twitter page and see tweet after tweet after tweet about Critical Role. Because this is what this book is: a very bad, poorly thought out Dungeons & Dragons QUEST. It's not even a campaign, it's just a clichéd quest that every party eventually goes through: king yearns for more power than he has, let's infiltrate his court, sidestep his powerful mages and kill him. That's it, that's the entire book and also a quest I'd write up at two in the morning on the day before the session when I have nothing else to throw at my players.
There's zero world-building here, because we're only seeing a quest and not the big picture, so the book fails to engage you in its most basic sense. It relies heavily on religion without having a carefully constructed pantheon - which is something that is VERY difficult to write and that's why most fantasy works touch only very lightly on the subject - and never discussing the theme in depth. Why is religion like this in this world? Why is this pantheon like this? What constitutes heresy? Which side is right, if that's even possible? None of those questions are asked in the narrative.
The word "monster" is thrown around literally all the time with absolute no thought about what that means in terms of character arc or the plot. Honestly, Malachiasz can't say a word without someone going "YOU'RE SUCH A MONSTER" when in reality... what has he done tbh? He has fangs, sure, but go off I guess.
I don't have anything good to say about any of the characters, because both POVs have very few dimensions and everyone else feels like cardboard cutouts of NPCs who are only there to give the party information through exposition and explanations about a world they should know about because they live in it, so they can continue on in their quest to kill the evil king.
And as the cover of this book says: let them fear her (the writing).