Wicked Saints by Emily A. Duncan – ARC Review

Summary:

A girl who can speak to gods must save her people without destroying herself.

A prince in danger must decide who to trust.

A boy with a monstrous secret waits in the wings.

Together, they must assassinate the king and stop the war.

In a centuries-long war where beauty and brutality meet, their three paths entwine in a shadowy world of spilled blood and mysterious saints, where a forbidden romance threatens to tip the scales between dark and light. Wicked Saints is the thrilling start to Emily A. Duncan’s devastatingly Gothic Something Dark and Holy trilogy..

Review:  2 Stars – DNF

I wanted to like this book so badly. An upcoming fantasy release about two warring countries, each with their own type of magic and religion and a story about the characters at the center of it all sounded like a book that I would really enjoy. Unfortunately, I had a hard time getting into this story. It ddidn’t capture me and I really tried to give it a chance before I finally gave up about halfway through.

My first big issue was with the names of the characters. I understand that when writing a book set in a foreign country the names should reflect that, but when I couldn’t pronounce then there wound up being a bit of a disconnect. That by itself wasn’t a huge problem, but rather one of many. In this book there were so many names though, names of saints, of gods and of course, of characters, all of which I could hardly pronounce which lead to much confusion and skimming. I also didn’t find myself connecting much to the characters themselves. Nadya was an orphan who grew up in a monastery, so her back story was practically blank, leaving little to develop upon and connect with. There seemed to be little depth to all of the characters in the story.

While the plot had promise, I was bored most of the time while reading. A few interesting scenes kept me going and I really liked the ideas behind the different types of magic, but I found this book incredibly easy to put down. I had to push myself to read it or to pick it back up. I don’t know if the writing wasn’t compelling or that I just didn’t feel connected to the story, but after a couple days of trying to force myself to read this book I finally decided to just set it aside.

I really wanted to like this book, but sadly I didn’t really enjoy reading it. I never felt connected to the characters, I couldn’t pronounce a lot of the names, which lead to a lot of skimming and confusion and I didn’t find the story compelling enough to push myself to finish reading the book. I normally love fantasy novels with intricate religious systems, but all the saints and gods of the religions in this book were just too much. I found it hard to make myself care about reading this story. Wicked Saints overall was a huge disappointment for me.