Alex ✰ Comets and Comments ✰'s Reviews > Wicked Saints

“Blood and blood and bone. Magic and monsters and tragic power.”







Everything that has needed to be said has probably already been said about this book. I wanted to love this one so bad and what started off as a great exposition went downhill very fast. I'm still kinda just sitting here blinking... confused...unsure

copyright of all fanart goes to their amazing artists:
© ©
_______________

Is it really possible to be that bored?

Short answer = yes.
Long answer =

Wicked Saints is truly a lavish tale that echoes nostalgic memories of all your favourite YA high fantasy novels. I think if it had been published sometime during 2013, this would have taken me by storm. The magic system (only winning factor) and the world building (although lacking) was both interesting and enticing. Unfortunately, I wish there was something else that helped me cling to the story and keep reading but I felt like I was forcing myself to finish instead.



The first thing I would like to say that I almost always say if it is an issue:
Do authors feel embarrassed if they don't address their trigger warnings? I mean surely, it shouldn't be up to the reader to go look for them prior to reading the book! This has been and will continue to be a problem with me. I think trigger warnings should clearly be stated before the reader begins... Any-which-way;

TW: blood, gore, self harm, torture, parental abuse.

Secondly, there seemed to be no plot. It didn't quite reach a stream of consciousness writing style, but it also didn't seem like anything was moving. It felt like we were following the characters through snapshots and the plot was just something that could have been done. Serefin was the only saving grace for me, and we got little to no arc development or character development for HIM. I was also struggling to differentiate the voices between the dual POV's. Other than the fact the Gods can speak to Nadya mentally, the voices very rarely differed.

“Nadya was supposed to remain a secret for another year, training in the holy mountains with priests who—while they did not have magic themselves—understood the fundamentals of divinity. Like how a peasant girl could be the one thing that would save Kalyazin from the heretics’ torches. But war didn’t care for carefully laid plans.”

I really wanted to dnf at the 50% mark. I felt like I was trudging through this entire story and I wanted to be able to love it as much as my GR and book reviewing buddies did. I can say that although there were a lot of filler chapters, I loved being "thrown into the action."

The romance.... I love reading romance. I love all the tingly feelings and the magic in the air. I enjoy rooting for the character's and seeing them fall for each other in real-time. BUT THIS... I felt no connection at all and the romance felt more like a friendship because there was so much insta-love. I also ended up wanting the two characters NOT to be together. Every two seconds we were reminded by Nadya that; he was a monster, he was cruel and evil, he's not to be trusted however pretty he is!... I didn't feel the enemies to lovers trope at all.



I really feel like everything was just meh. I wanted so much more and nothing really delivered. Which brings me to the point that everything was just so boring... So much in the story was left undeveloped and open to surface interpretation. I feel like the problems that the characters went through and the hurdles they had to overcome diminished to nothing when it was game time. There was such big talk of having to fulfill a certain event, and the event would come and go without me even realizing it.

I love books that fly by, but with this I had to re-read paragraphs a couple times, multiple times in order to understand what was happening. It wasn't that the language was hard to interpret or the layout was difficult to read. Simply, my mind kept wandering off to different things and I kept losing interest.

Additionally, when it comes to diversity and representation, this book seemed to have so many cannon LGBTQ reps. There were also so many indicators to other representations such as Serefin's potential alcohol addiction. I just wish it was developed further instead of being left to the sideline. That said, I don't need any and all representation to be part of the primary plotline or story, but I felt like the presentation of it as a whole was overall lacking.

“Blood wasn’t a thing to be made light of, not in these times.”

This story had so much potential for breaking the boundaries of YA fantasy and spotlighting much needed topics. I loved the focus on faith, philosophy, religion, moral and ethics. I even loved the fact that this time the villain, was very easy to root for even through their destruction. I wanted to unpack this book and theorize all sorts of different outcomes and routes that the characters and the plot would take but it really turned a different path for me.