Title: Wicked Saints
Author: Emily A. Duncan
Series: Something Dark and Holy #1
Wow this is a lot better than I—never mind
I would like to thank Emily A. Duncan and Meghan Harrington at St. Martin’s Press for inviting me to participate in the blog tour. I received a free ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Seriously, if you don’t want major twists spoiled for you, do not read on.
*sigh*
I avoided reading this book because I was afraid I wouldn’t like it; now I find myself avoiding writing the review because my initial instincts were correct.
The first two-thirds were a delight. It was more accessible to a non-high-fantasy-lover than I expected. Duncan has phenomenal talent as a writer. Every chapter, every scene, and every word had purpose. She handled religious thematic questions and internal conflict with great skill. Her characters were distinct and endearing, likable but flawed. The tone was deliciously dark without being cruel for shock value. The world building was thorough, impressive, enveloping. The writing glowed with intelligence. Nadya and Malachiasz’s tentative relationship with elements of Romeo and Juliet and Elizabeth and Darcy was beautifully crafted, and was of course my favorite aspect of the whole thing, romance junkie that I am.
And then.
The last third, beginning when Nadya woke up while being siphoned, spoiled so many of those things I loved about the book. Its concepts regarding magic and religion became obscure and ambiguous, and I got confused as to what exactly was happening. Were the gods gods or not? If not, what were they? What was happening with Nadya’s powers? What was all that about Serefin’s nondeath and the moths? I got so terribly lost and felt so stupid because I couldn’t make sense of any of it.
So much character and story background was hinted at, teased, or at least spoken of, then never explored. So many questions went answered. How did Malachiasz go from being the nephew of the king to being tortured into becoming a Vulture and finally achieving the status of Black Vulture at sixteen? Why was he taken away as a child? What new methods did they try on him?
And why did the Vultures call themselves Vultures? I mean, I can see that as a scathing nickname given to them by others, but why would they call themselves that? I get the creepy factor—boy do I—but you can’t tell me they want to be equated with ugly-ass birds who can’t or won’t hunt for themselves and so feast on sloppy seconds. Where’s the dignity in that?
If Serefin was such a powerful blood mage, was there really nothing he could do to fight back against his father, against the Vultures, to prevent himself being killed? He seemed rather impotent for someone who was supposedly legendary. Also, I found flipping through a book, tearing out a piece of paper, and pricking your finger to bleed on it…not silly…but an unintimidating and inconvenient way to cast magic.
What was the point of the characters Rashid and Parijahan? They didn’t seem to serve a whole lot of purpose, neither did Kacper. They were just—there. Ostyia seemed to have a little more to do.
What exactly was happening in the Salt Mines? They were spoken of so much, but we never went there. Just blood siphoning and DIY-god experiments? Did we ever find out who the “former success” in the god experiments was, the one who had too much of a mind of his or her own? I thought at first it was Malachiasz, but then it was revealed he was the Black Vulture and nothing more was said of the former success, so I’m not sure what I’m supposed to take away from that.
So wait, were the Vultures siphoning Nadya’s blood in the palace? That was pretty bold, wasn’t it? Why didn’t they take her to the mines? More importantly, did they discover no special properties to her blood? I think it’s implied that she’s some sort of divinity, or at least a power unto herself—how, why, no idea—yet King and Co. didn’t notice anything extraordinary about her blood? And don’t tell me itwas just blood, because if blood was no big deal, then the entire premise falls apart. The king was gathering the blood of noble blood mages because they were more powerful, and little did he know, he got the blood of someone who was something more than a noble blood mage, who was something else entirely—and that fact never crossed anyone’s minds, much less came into play?
That entire captive passage was totally glanced over; I still don’t understand what was up with Kostya’s necklace and that ostracized god-but-not-a-god. What point did he—the non-god—ultimately serve? And wait, speaking of Kostya, what happened to him? Last we saw him, he was alive. I assume he was taken to the Salt Mines like the other prisoners of war. Does that mean we’ll be seeing him again later, or are we supposed to assume he’s dead and gone?
So many questions.
“Well of course you didn’t get all the answers, you’ll get them later in the series.”
Don’t even fucking start with that horseshit, strawman. Someone who didn’t like what happened in the first book won’t be reading any that follow. It reminds me of a common complaint among movie critics these days: “Stop worrying so much about starting a franchise,” they say to the studios, “and just focus on delivering a solid movie.” Meaning if they put the work into the story the first time, movie-goers will want more, and they’ll have their franchise.
I’m not satisfied with Nadya’s journey as a character. After everything that happened, by the end she was still convinced that she was only a channel for power, that any magic she cast had to come from greater beings. And by that point I was so confused as to whose powers were coming from where and why and who was truly what that I stopped caring if Nadya believed in herself. She started out a faithful servant to her gods and ignorant because people made sure she understood little, I can respect that, but by the end she was still just a sniveling mess of who-am-I, what-have-I-done, someone-please-hold-my-hold-and-show-me-the-way. Nadya, if your cause is going to be something as great as saving a nation—potentially two—you need to get over yourself. “Let them fear her”? *snorts* Yeah, right. Not one person in the book was afraid of Nadya.
Finally, the thing that officially put X’s in the eyes of this story for me: Malachiasz and his betrayal. There’s so much I want to say about this, but first give me a minute to gather up all the pieces of my broken heart.
My interpretation of the character differed vastly from the character Duncan intended to portray. How? I don’t think she got the tone of his character right for what she wanted to do with him. She took the love between him and Nadya too far, to a point it shouldn’t have gotten to if he’d truly been the calculating, ruthless, selfish character she wanted him to be. His love for Nadya was portrayed as too pure, too innocent, too tentative and unexpected to belong to someone calculating, ruthless, and selfish. He should have come off like Hans from Frozen—saccharine, smooth, too good to be true—but instead he came off like Kristoff—guileless and adorkably unsure of himself.
His motivation was never once clear; it seemed to be by the very end, but come on—if he was calculating and ruthless and secretly focused on becoming more powerful, would he have just left Nadya behind? With the power she supposedly unwittingly possessed—which I know he recognized because of his “the things you could do” comment in the closet—as naive and trusting and easily manipulated as she was, wouldn’t he have had more plans for her than to just have her kill the king? Couldn’t he or anyone else have done that? Wouldn’t he want her blood?
“He fell in love with her, that’s why he didn’t use her further.”
That makes zero sense. If he truly fell in love with her, he wouldn’t have been able to betray her trust and do what he did in the end. He wouldn’t have chosen his corrupt country over her. Besides, it couldn’t be that he was in love with her, because that was all a lie, from what I understood. None of it adds up.
So yeah. I don’t accept his betrayal. I refuse to choke down that the power-hungry, apathetic Malachiasz of the climax was the same Malachiasz from the rest of the book. It was such a 180 for his character that it’s fucking absurd. It felt as wrong to me as blood magic felt to Nadya.
“But that’s the point,” argues someone who wants their teeth kicked in. “He totally pulled the wool over all their eyes and used each and every one of them. The seeds were planted in the things he said.”
I understand that intention, and that most others will probably be perfectly fine with that. I do. But that doesn’t mean I, myself, have to like it or appreciate it, or that I’m going to exalt over it as a some clever piece of storytelling. Because it was just dumb. It was a cheap twist at the expense of an otherwise strong, amazing, charming, endearing character. It undermined the Malachiasz who’d been a damn good hero up till then, the Malachiasz who was earnest and considerate and afraid and vulnerable, the Malachiasz who realized he was not only capable of love, but of loving someone whose ideals were so different from his own. It also undermined Nadya’s character, her self-respect and dignity, as well as our respect for her; it undermined the beautiful “two enemies shedding their prejudices for a greater good of love and peace” theme; it undermined the reader’s emotional attachment to Malachiasz.
It undermined the whole goddamn story.
And—the final nail in the coffin—it undermined the character of Kylo Ren, who provided inspiration for the character of Malachiasz. That pissed me off.
Overall, Wicked Saints turned out to be a fantasy too caught up in itself to realize it would be entirely ruined by the terrible misjudgment of a good character and of what would make a good plot twist. I would give it one star, but Duncan really is a great writer, prose-wise, so I’ll give it two. As a storyteller, she’s not to my taste, and I doubt I’ll be reading any more of her books.
Also, afterthought—I’m not sure why it’s called Wicked Saints. Other than the epigraphs at the beginnings of chapters—the purpose of which I’m also not sure about, aside from world building—and Anna’s warning to Nadya not to become a martyr, saints, wicked or otherwise, weren’t really present?
Excerpt from the novel • Pronunciation guide
