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onceuponanisabel
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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.
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:
It disappoints me to no end given that I really did like Wicked Saints, but I just did not like Ruthless Gods. I wish I could chalk it up to a bad day clouding my judgment, but I can't. (I'm kind of a binge reader, so when it takes me almost two weeks to get through a book, it usually means something.)
Usually, I would provide a plot summary for my ARC reviews, but I actually kind of feel like I can't, in this case, say all that much. The gang from Wicked Saints (Nadya, Malachiasz, Serefin, and their crew of other secondary characters I remembered nothing about) work to deal with the fallout from the events at the end of the first book. Eventually, they all, for different reasons, begin a journey to a holy site. This journey takes them through a forest that tries to kill them.
Part of the reason I can't give much of a summary is that I don't want to spoil the end of Wicked Saints, but an equally significant reason is that I'm genuinely struggling with it. I'm not really sure how such a small amount of plot was stretched out to as long as this book was. A very good chunk of the beginning of the book just involves all of the characters...debriefing on the situation? and getting cryptic warnings from our resident ~creepy~ ~mysterious~ ~all-knowing~ character. And once! They left! And couldn't commune with her anymore! Duncan just threw in a new character! To fill the same role! Who somehow just knows a bunch of plot-driving information! Just...because, I guess!
The romances in this story continue to make absolutely no sense to me. Build up? Foundations? Don't know them. It's kind of like...Ruthless Gods took all of the parts of Wicked Saints that I didn't like but was willing to overlook and then...made those parts the entire book.
Overall, I'm disappointed. I'm sure people will like this book -- it's got a lot of cool elements, too. Duncan turns the horror and more grotesque elements up to 11, which I know will appeal to a lot of readers who've been looking for more horror YA. It just wasn't for me, I guess?
ARC provided by the publisher via NetGalley.
ORIGINAL REVIEW:
It disappoints me to no end given that I really did like Wicked Saints, but I just did not like Ruthless Gods. I wish I could chalk it up to a bad day clouding my judgment, but I can't. (I'm kind of a binge reader, so when it takes me almost two weeks to get through a book, it usually means something.)
Usually, I would provide a plot summary for my ARC reviews, but I actually kind of feel like I can't, in this case, say all that much. The gang from Wicked Saints (Nadya, Malachiasz, Serefin, and their crew of other secondary characters I remembered nothing about) work to deal with the fallout from the events at the end of the first book. Eventually, they all, for different reasons, begin a journey to a holy site. This journey takes them through a forest that tries to kill them.
Part of the reason I can't give much of a summary is that I don't want to spoil the end of Wicked Saints, but an equally significant reason is that I'm genuinely struggling with it. I'm not really sure how such a small amount of plot was stretched out to as long as this book was. A very good chunk of the beginning of the book just involves all of the characters...debriefing on the situation? and getting cryptic warnings from our resident ~creepy~ ~mysterious~ ~all-knowing~ character. And once! They left! And couldn't commune with her anymore! Duncan just threw in a new character! To fill the same role! Who somehow just knows a bunch of plot-driving information! Just...because, I guess!
The romances in this story continue to make absolutely no sense to me. Build up? Foundations? Don't know them. It's kind of like...Ruthless Gods took all of the parts of Wicked Saints that I didn't like but was willing to overlook and then...made those parts the entire book.
Overall, I'm disappointed. I'm sure people will like this book -- it's got a lot of cool elements, too. Duncan turns the horror and more grotesque elements up to 11, which I know will appeal to a lot of readers who've been looking for more horror YA. It just wasn't for me, I guess?
ARC provided by the publisher via NetGalley.
I loved Minerva and hated Ashe but you win some you lose some, I guess
I would feel really bad about giving this a star rating, because it would be low, but it would also be because of me and not because of the book. As of writing this there's only one rating on it because it came out today and I'm not going to tank the rating for reading a book I should have known I wouldn't have enjoyed. I picked this up because of the promise of the representation but so many other aspects of this book weren't for me. I generally don't like romantic suspense, which was the main issue with this one. Just... not for me