WICKED SAINTS fully lives up to it's title! WOW! What an excellent read! Dark, gritty, and completely addictive, Emily A. Duncan's debut novel will suck you in on the very first page and leave you wanting more. If monsters, gods, and twisted fairy tales are your thing, this book is perfect for you! Once you start reading this novel, you won't want to put it down. I can't wait to see what she comes up with next!

***Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press / Wednesday Books for providing an advanced ARC of Wicked Saints by Emily A. Duncan, in exchange for my honest and unbiased review.***

Kalyazin is a cold and snowy land blessed by the Gods with divine magic. Tranavia is a land of lakes, rivers and blood magic. For a century, they have been at war with one another. With no end in sight, it’s clear there is only one thing that will prevent both countries from being left in ruin - kill the Tranavian king.

Nadezhda Lapteva, known as Nadya, is the last known Kalyazi cleric. Nadya has lived in relative peace at an isolated monastery at the top of a mountain, speaking to the Gods and using the powers they grant when she asks. That is until the day the monastery is attacked by the Tranavian prince and his soldiers. Joined by three rebels, one of which is a blood mage that she finds herself inexplicably drawn to, Nadya begins her journey to kill a king and end a war.

With alternating perspectives, we follow Nadya as well as the Tranavian prince who is reluctant to return home after his time at the warfront. Seeing this world from opposing points of view makes it nearly impossible to choose a side, even for the characters who are faced with a decision to make when everything comes to a head. The lines between heresy and holy will be blurred. Blood will be shed. Betrayal and heartbreak will occur.

Emily A. Duncan has created a rich and deliciously dark world in Wicked Saints. With her captivating writing, she paints a gruesome world of religion, politics, war and, most importantly, magic. This world is dark and gritty with Russian influences, Middle-Age-Martyr-vibes and complex characters that you come to love even with their flaws and moral ambiguity. The magic system is sharp and unique, setting it well apart from other books in the same genre. Wicked Saints is something dark and holy, indeed.

This was a really great book filled with magic, thought-out worldbuilding, compelling relationships, well-written characters, and a twisting plot. I couldn't stop turning the pages or thinking about the book when I wasn't reading it. I would definitely recommend giving this a shot.

This was a fairly enjoyable story with lots of action and an interesting magic system. It could have benefited from more character development and world building but not too bad over all.

With the massive hype surrounding this book, I was sure I was going to love it. Sadly, I did not. I think this was just a solid case of "not for me." I was rather bored with the plot (or lack thereof) and didn't care a lot for the prose, so I couldn't bring myself to continue.

I do, however, think that I'm going to be the black sheep on this one. It actually felt a lot like the Grishaverse, so I think that fans of Bardugo will love this one!

I have been forcing myself to try and understand the world but I either come up confused or find myself skimming. With me skimming and the need to keep putting down the book, I just decided that I won't force myself to read it and review it.

This is a case of a "maybe it's not the book, it's me" scenario.

Firstly thank you so much to Netgalley and St Martins Press for granting me this arc in exchange for an honest review!

This was one of my most anticipated books of 2019 and I have so many mixed feelings about it.

There were a LOT of dry parts to this which made it feel like it was a lot longer but the action parts were done so well too.

The writing was amazing and I gave it 3 stars due to not gelling well with the story however I would definitely pick up anything else Emily A Duncan writes.

This reminded me of The Bear and the Nightingale as well as This Savage Song which are two books I really enjoyed.

All in all an enjoyable read

This book was one bloody, monstrous mess...so obviously I loved it.

Wicked Saints is told in two POVs:
Nadezhda: aka Nadya. a super religious girl chosen by the goddess of death. i was not expecting a girl who prays multiple times a day to be so great a murder.

Seferin: the prince. a super powerful blood mage. honestly i was expecting him to be a brooding prince Zuko-style but actually he was a powerful blood mage who spent a good deal of his time intoxicated and cracking jokes.

and then we have Malachiasz who was not what I was expecting. (and my 14 year old self would've stan-ed him so hard)

I ended up really enjoying this book and I am curious how it will turn out as a trilogy.

If you like slow books, gothic feels, with great side characters, then you'll probably enjoy this monstrous book.

The first half was certainly a solid start, though after the halfway mark things definitely slowed and it became a bit harder to get through. It’s not that things slowed down per se. There’s a constant pressure of infiltration and not being caught and discovering secrets, but there came a point where I found I wasn't invested in the characters as much as I'd like to be? Not saying I didn't like them, but wasn't personally attached to them. I did appreciate the the theological discussions and the aspect of questioning your faith and it still being valid. I am interested in what comes next and I had fun reading this.

This had so many good aspects that never really amounted to much for me. The concept of blood magic needing an amplifier through spell books was very interesting, with the magic needing a funnel that requires maintenance and replenishment was a nice diversion from other fantasy reads. I also enjoyed the theology and political discussions that were constantly simmering beneath the conversations. If each side believes their religion is the "correct" one then who can really "win" a religious war?
I was drawn to the Slavic setting and the way Nadya can speak to her gods, almost like a mashup of Leigh Bardugo's Grishaverse series and Claire Legrand's Furyborn. Unfortunately it didn't live up to either of those epic fantasy works. There was a lot of telling rather than showing, and it felt jumbled or rushed during the dialogue and action, leaving me confused. I would have to flip back a few pages to remember who was speaking or who was moving during the action.
This was filled with tropes, and all the characters felt very token and predictable. I really wanted to like this, but it felt very niche-filler and fell flat for me. Malachiasz fills the role of dark and brooding bad boy, and I immediately thought of Bardugo's Darkling or Nikolai from later on in her Grishaverse series. Malachiasz doesn't quite meet expectations though, as his political moves felt a bit too predictable. His travel companions Rashid and Parijahan could've played much more complex and layered roles, but they currently feel very irrelevant for the plot. Maybe they'll play bigger parts in the sequels.
This will probably end up being a hit with fans of the Red Queen series by Victoria Aveyard, And I Darken by Kiersten White, or Throne of Glass by Sarah J Maas, even if it lacks the plot and sophistication of characters that are so popular in these aforementioned best sellers. Thank you NetGalley for the advanced copy and the opportunity to read and review!

Fans of Leigh Bardugo’s Grishaverse series will enjoy this dark fantasy. With elements of the European Holy War and the dark tales of the Grimm’s fairytales, this story will appeal to anyone that has ever doubted themselves. I’m honestly having an existential crisis after finishing this book. Wicked Saints is a must read debut author, Emily A. Duncan.

5 out of 5 stars.

This book cleared my skin, raised my grades, and took all of my emotions with it.
So, as a backstory, I accidentally got word of this book sometime in early 2018 on tumblr. And I have been hyped for it ever since. Thank you so so much to NetGalley for the e-arc. It made my month.

I loved this book so much. I loved the premise. This is a dark YA fantasy. If you’re on the hunt for something that has a darker premise, and characters who make some morally gray decisions, this is for you. I definitely would say it’s a lot darker than a lot of YA fantasy that I see nowadays. Also, to all you Reylo fans out there, you’ll totally love this. One of the characters is inspired by Kylo Ren and the Darkling from the Grisha Trilogy.

This book is set in Kalyazin (a fictional country). There focus on religion and gods, political strife and war. Tranavia and Kalyazin are at war, and have been for hundreds of years, over their beliefs relating to religion, gods, and magic. Nadezhda Lapteva (Nadya) one main character. She is a cleric, someone who is able to harness the power of all the gods (when she asks the gods). Clerics like her are rare, as clerics most often only have access to power from one god. Serefin is another main character, the prince of Tranavia. The book alternates between the POV of Serefin and Nadya.

I love the way this book creates a religion and gods. I think that was really well done. There’s 20 gods in this word, and they’re all built up so well. On the lines of things that this book did well, the plot and pacing were other things to add to this list. I think I got a good idea of the magic systems and the background for the first book in a series, without any info dumps. The pacing quick in some parts, slow in others, which came together really well for me. There was a part where I thought some things were glossed over and could have been in some more detail, but overall the pacing was great.

So, I’m a linguistics major in college, and I was totally impressed by the names and language phrases. So many times while I’m reading a book, the country names sound so… fake. These didn’t. They sounded real. After watching the video that Alexa done did with Emily A. Duncan, Duncan did do some linguistics research to create the language phrases and names, which are based off of Russian/Polish names/phrasing. (I love that so much.) There’s also a lot of Polish/Russian inspired names in this book.

EDIT: One little thing that bothered me was, at one point in the book, Parijahan, a brown skinned character, turned "as white as chalk". Authors do this all the time, to characterize fear in characters. But it doesn't really work for brown skinned characters, the melanin doesn't disappear when we're afraid.

Emily A. Duncan Q+A by Alexa Donne: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_uHy1ai6uI
Emily A. Duncan pronounces Malachiaz at 5:39, for all those of you who read this and were, like me, thrown off by how to pronounce the “ch” in his name.

I really hope the publisher puts a pronunciation guide at the front. I know a lot of books set them at the back (which I think is super weird).

TW: Self-harm. There’s a lot of blood magic.

This book took me for a ride! Complex character's, intriguing plot, betrayal and more! I can't wait for the next book.

This is a difficult book to rate. Some of its aspects deserve full five stars while others are weaker. In the end, it amounts to average.

I was looking forward to this one because I want to build a course exploring fantasy set in a Slavic-like setting. With a great popularity of the Grisha series, you get more and more books along those lines. This one is clearly inspired by Bardugo's books, but to give credit where it's due: there is also a clear effort. Linguistic aspects are particularly well done, and so is thematic choice to tackle issues of theology. What are gods? Why do we believe? What is the nature of magic, or the divine, or free will? All those themes were interesting and unlike your typical Young Adult offering. These are the book's strongest points. (Just for the record: I have nothing against "typical Young Adult"; there are many great books that fall into that category. Still, it is refreshing to see themes going outside of that.)

Unfortunately, other aspects bring the book down. The editing seems to be poorly done; there are so many little things that make reading difficult and tedious. The story is patched up in so many places, and I am not sure the author is to blame. Other than that, there is a problem of too much telling and very little showing at times, while many parts of the book and the magic system are poorly explained. For a book that relies so heavily on different aspects of magic and/or religion, it does a poor job explaining the rules. Certain things happen in the second part of the book that seem to expand on the previously established system, but since the system was never properly established in the first place, we cannot judge this change. Still, the main problem of the book is the fact that its narrators are not protagonists: at the end of the day, this is a book about Malachiasz. While there is nothing wrong for his story to be told through the eyes of other people, it does make some of narration unnecessary (do we really need half of the book to be told from Serefin's point of view?) and it does hurt our female protagonist's development. Don't get me wrong: I like the idea of a sheltered young woman learning about the wider world, making mistakes and trying to do her best. It is more realistic than to make her a super-powerful, know-it-all person in book 1. Still, Nadya is hurt by so much spotlight on Malachiasz. The fact that I am tired of abusive men being portrayed as love interests probably plays a role here (can this cliché die already?)

Also, as a Slavic person, I must say that Duncan takes her time to explore languages, but everything else Slavic is used for the aesthetics only. It is clear she has a passing knowledge of Russian and Polish cultures, but she uses those simply to spice things up and make her setting different than a typical fantasy set in a world inspired by Medieval England. One might recognize certain details and elements as Slavic, but make no mistake: this is a typical Gothic novel of a Western tradition. There is nothing Slavic about it. Nothing wrong about it, of course, but I am disappointed because I was specifically looking forward to a Slavic-inspired story. (Plus, do we really need yet another story portraying Slavic people as wild, constantly at war, punishing heretics? And it feels really uncomfortable given historical relations between Russia and Poland.)

All in all, this was an intriguing story with some excellent themes and some poor narrative choices. I will be reading the sequels and I hope for it to improve. Ultimately, the story has all the elements of a future hit: intense magic, memorable setting and (probably the most important for this type of a book) a bad boy love interest. This seems to be a winning combination so I predict great things for Wicked Saints and Emily Duncan.

String start to a new series. Interesting worldbuilding and politics. Beginning felt a little like it threw reader in at the deep end. Curious to see what comes next.

Holy hell, what a book. Wicked Saints absolutely killed me--a lush world; a cast of incredible characters; slow-burn, intense romance; and a breath-taking, heart-stopping ending. I don't know how I'll manage the wait for Book 2.

Russian & Polish culture is really hot right now, huh? (Even though it's actually cold ahahaha I'm so sorry.)

This was a story for which I LOVED the concept behind and for the most part I enjoyed the ride. The intermingling of the Gothic tone, religious doubt, and magic was executed pretty well. Duncan does a great job in the world-building, especially for a first book. I understood why these two nations were fighting, I understood the religion and the magic systems. Duncan could be a little flowery with all her "blood and bone" descriptions, but for the most part I liked the writing style. I read this pretty fast.

However, this was definitely full of several YA tropes I didn't love so much:
- Nadya, our badass cleric, is arguably the secondary character in her own story. I did think she expressed more agency and strength than some other reviewers, but she definitely fell in insta-love and her mind was swayed instantly & constantly by the Soft Look of a Boy. The boy in question, Malachiasz, is a Sexy Bad Boy with a Troubled Past, so like I GET IT, but dang did this girl waffle back and forth in her beliefs and feelings pretty much every paragraph.
- Malachiasz, the aforementioned Sexy Bad Boy with a Troubled Past, is possibly the most complex character in the whole thing. (I do think Serefin gave him a run for his money.) You <i>know</i> the dude is hiding some secrets, and those secrets are somewhat shocking when revealed. You never quite know if he's a good guy or not, but due to Nadya's heart eyes you're inclined to just go with it. However...this guys loves to grab chins a little too much. I must have counted at least 10 chin-grabbing incidents. It's hot like, the first time. After that it's just weird.
- The two people of color in this whole thing have nothing to do and might as well not be characters at all. They definitely feel tossed in for Diversity.

I do want to read the second book because that ending!!! leaves things on an intriguing cliffhanger. I just hope Duncan addresses some of the above concerns in the next installment.

As promised, WICKED SAINTS was dark, bloody, and full of magic. The characters were distinct and well-developed, and the way their lives overlapped and entwined, especially toward the end of the book, made the story all the more interesting.

Not for me.

Magic system infused with religion and politics. Okay, but needed some more polishing to make it stand out. Often felt like it bogged down the plot rather than furthered it.

Dark and bloody. Yes. So much blood.

Characters. Nadya wasn’t exactly the awesome kick ass woman I was promised from the blurb. This really felt like Malachiasz story. I personally never connected with the characters enough to care about what happened to them.

About a third of the way through the book I started counting how many names the word Tranavia/Tranavian appeared on each page. The answer is an average of 4. With such a lengthy dark fantasy book that is about 120 times too many.

This will likely attract Grishaverse and As I Darken fans.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the Advanced Reader Copy.

WICKED SAINTS is a dark fantasy story of war and faith yet despite its unyielding grit there is something seductive wrapped within each word that will have you longing for more. Action-packed, fearless, exciting, and dare one even use the word enchanting? If you're a fan of Leigh Bardugo's books then you'll likely enjoy this. It really was a captivating contribution to the fantasy genre. A long-fought religious war is merely the tip of the iceberg when it comes to plot and these tangled lines are punctuated by magic battles, duty, secrets, betrayal, prejudice, and even a drop of romance on the side. This is a debut you won't want to miss.
-pooled ink