Where I Missed the Fun

Wicked Saints by Emily A. Duncan
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I didn't like it at all. It's not a 1 to me, because it does have some cool ideas, but it's not a 3, because those are books I like.

I usually DNF a book rather than give a 1 or 2 star, and I almost DNF'ed this, but I remembered it was a Christmas gift (off my wish list, no less) and I make a point to read all the books given to me. So I kept going, hoping it improved. it did not, IMO.

The positive:

I love the Slavic setting. It's too little used in English language books, IMO, and there's a lot of room for new story-telling here. And I liked some of the magic system stuff, including the Black Vultures, who were very intriguing.

That's about it.

The negative:

The characters are so dull. I really tried to like them, but I just didn't. They got worse the farther we went. I felt no connection with any of them, and I freaking tried. They felt like unserious and entitled teen characters on a CW show or 90s horror film whose emotional depth could be measured in eyelashes.

The descriptions are absent. We should have amazing snow-covered forests and gothic architecture and moody landscapes, but it's all so scantily mentioned I couldn't picture anything. The mountaintop monastery at the beginning? Barely described at all. The paths they take? The cities they pass through? The castle in Grazyk? Impossible to imagine. I found this very frustrating. I was looking forward to the setting and it made almost no appearance.

And the plot is horrible from the start. Nadya goes charging out to face the enemy in the very beginning and then does absolutely nothing. What was it that she intended to do? Over and over, she talks like she's super powerful but then demonstrates almost nothing. Then she meets up with some people, doesn't trust them, kinda trusts them, doesn't trust, kinda trusts, over and over. Ugh. With Malachiasz in particular, she repeats this until it made me angry. She thinks about killing him, then brushes his skin and feels all giddy. Then she hates him and then brushes her fingers through his hair. Back and forth, sometimes multiple times on a page.

And nothing important happens until the last few pages. The whole plot is summed up by "they intend to assassinate the king by going there and killing him." It's like a heist movie if the big plan is to walk in the front door of the bank with a gun.

Meanwhile, a bunch of people who mattered to Nadya were recently killed, and she seems to be totally over that. Later, when she meets Serefin, the villain who did it, she interacts with him like he's the quarterback at a rival school.

Maybe others like the book just exactly as it was written and it's just not meant for me. That's fine. And maybe the series gets way better after this. I hope so. But I won't know because this book really didn't work for me at all.

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