This was a strong series. I feel that the final book was ultimately satisfying but it definitely was not a stand alone work. It was also kind of a sludgy mess. If you can work your way through the densest portions of the novel then you will be satisfied with the conclusion of the trilogy.

Honestly I didn't finish this book, and I don't think because it was necessarily bad, I just couldn't get into it. Was really struggling following all the different storylines, didn't seem like we got many reminders and I couldn't find great synopses.

MAJOR BOOK HANGOVER! Amazing ending to my favorite trilogy. I fell in love with all these characters and I just can't wait for Emily Duncan's next book!

DNF because I just could not make it through. Then I read author tweets and shaming POC, just not my thing and I won't try to pick it up again.

Wicked Saints sat on my shelf for about ten months until I finally cracked it open in December 2020. When trying a new author, I tend to prefer binging a complete series within a few months. Knowing that the third book in the trilogy, Blessed Monsters, was due in Spring 2021, I knew it was finally time.

I was absolutely blown away by what I found between those pages. A meandering tale of monster boys and nightmare girls, traveling a war-torn land featuring talking gods, giant eldritch horrors, and a surfeit of extra mouths and eyeballs. The Something Dark + Holy trilogy was like nothing I’ve read before. Seductively gothic and bloody, with resurrections galore. The main love interest was not morally gray but just deliciously villainous- yet not an antagonist in the story as a whole.

There was an extremely diverse cast, featuring characters from many different nations and conflicting ideologies. And I had never read a book that portrayed mental illness and anxiety in such a way, that it neither hindered characters’ journeys nor brought judgment upon them. (I am basically a writhing ball of only anxiety and depression so… I vibed hard.)

In March, I was absolutely delighted to get the chance to read a digital proof of Blessed Monsters. (Courtesy of Netgalley and Macmillan).

I loved it. I find that third books in trilogies usually break my heart with lackluster endings. I hate when characters are figuratively assassinated for the sake of completion of some sort of morality complex. (And I also hate when the “wrong” (to me) ships sail… though this is less important to my overall enjoyment). I sailed through this book in one sitting. I have never muttered wtf to myself so many times. Ancient primordial gods and three protagonists working both together and against each other. My beautiful, broken monster boy. My lost saint, learning the new shape of the world. My hot mess bisexual alcoholic king. I have never been so emotionally invested in three fictional idiots that rotate their single shared brain cell chapter to chapter. The end was painful, brutal, and ultimately so so satisfying.

In April, shit hit the fan. On release day, fellow author Rin Chupeco sent a call-out tweet announcing that Emily A. Duncan had bullied another author (Hafsah Faisal) two years ago. Apparently Duncan was upset (erm… probably jealous tbh) that Faisal was releasing a similar series around the same time, and called her “ugly”. This is honestly baffling to me, because saying that Faisal’s Sands of Arawiya duology is similar to Duncan’s Something Dark + Holy trilogy would be like comparing honey and vinegar. The two series are nothing alike. Not the characters, nor settings, nor magic systems. The only commonality is the “magical road trip” aspect. I really don’t know why Duncan felt she needed to bully HF.* (*There are no screenshots about this, but both HF and ED have seemingly confirmed these issues separately in their own tweets).

But it’s important to note here that YA book twitter is a cesspool of bullying and author cancelations. In fact, Rin Chupeco is a bully themself.

There was another incident where Duncan was tweeting about an incestuous Game of Thrones ship. A stranger who was an incest survivor asked her to tw incest, and Duncan and a friend laughed it off. Was this a dick move? Absolutely. But are tw required? No. Look, I understand that some things are very triggering for some people. But twitter is literally a hellscape. I have triggers myself, and I’m not sure I would ever expect things on twitter to be tw. Tumblr is good about that, facebook is stepping up, even good reads reviewers have gone off. Twitter is like… bashing yourself in the head with everything horrible in the world all the time. So yeah Duncan was an ass but… I mean… so is 99% of twitter.

So were these incidents the reason for ED’s cancellation? Nope! This was just the first snowball that led to thousands of strangers on the internet doing a pile on to expose even more sinister flaws.

Something Dark + Holy is incredibly antisemitic. Imagine my surprise, as a Jewish woman, to find out about this despite having loved all three books. I am Polish-American, and I fully admit I have little knowledge of medieval/modern politics from my grandparents’ birthplace.

I’m going to break it down into three major issues that make SD+H antisemitic, as told by @anon26263 on twitter:
The antisemitic characterization of Jewish people as having claws, and dark hair, and sculking about/ shadow-controlling cities
The rodnovian origins of Duncan’s magic system, including blood magic. There is an antisemetic belief that Jewish people would sacrifice Christian children for rituals
Duncan’s dividing line between her two warring nations essentially paralleling Judaism and Christianity. The “Christian” nation plays host to cleric Nadezha Lepteva, who speaks to saints. The “Jewish” nation plays host to the Black Vulture, Malachiasz Checkowicz, who does have dark hair and claws and… shadow rules the city. Okay yikes!

But here is where I think keyboard warriors are finding offense in fiction that they don’t need to.
Malachiasz is the main love interest. He ends up becoming essentially a god (he’s also a prince)... and he’s also very sexy. Monsters in this series are sexy. Claws, hot! The more eyes and mouths the better! He is also not shadow-ruling.
This series does not portray either side as the better side. It read like a cautionary tale against religious discrimination as a whole. Only through working together were they able to defeat the eldritch gods so their countries can begin to heal.
The Rodnovian issue is that in modern times it has become mostly a nationalist neo-nazi party…. Yet Duncan, a librarian, based her rodnovian magic on slavic texts pre-dating this re-appropriation of the word.

Yes, you are allowed to feel offended by any of these things. I can only speak for myself. But I think Duncan is getting blasted into outer space for using dark parts of history as a backdrop in a high fantasy novel. I am not sure why she’s targeted by this when using horrible aspects of the past as inspiration is, like, a *thing* in so so so much fantasy.

Let’s take R.F. Kuang’s Poppy War trilogy, which has never been “cancelled”, as another example of using a horrific aspect of history in a high fantasy.

The Poppy War is set in ancient China, but the plotline takes inspiration from history, specifically the Second-Sino Japanese War in Book 1 and the Chinese Civil War in Books 2 and 3.

Kuang writes a fictional rape of Nanking and brutally describes the horrific things that the Japanese commited.

The list goes on....

My point here is this:
-Emily Duncan seems like an asshole
-Her high fantasy kingdom mimicked some horrible parts of history (as do many others)
-If you're (righteously) offended by her work, don't give her money. Simple as... I'm not trying to discount the offense but seriously? Everyone is still going to hp world and buying all the random childrens books by jk so...

***I received an uncorrected proof of this ebook from netgalley in exchange for an honest review***

“Are you a boy or a monster or a god?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said, voice soft.
“No. Of course not. As if it isn’t all the same thing.”†

A monstrous and bloody conclusion to one of my favorite trilogies of all time!

Emily A. Duncan is a master in their field. Something Dark + Holy’s magic system and world-building were fascinating and completely addictive from start to finish. I am obsessed with my ~disaster bisexual~ children, who have godlike powers yet manage to be completely normal teenagers with normal desires/anxieties (and occasionally fall to the ground face-first).

Blessed Monsters was everything I could have wanted in terms of trilogy closure. I also love that it was left open-ended, while still managing to be completely satisfying.

Wicked Saints 4.5/5. Ruthless Gods 5/5. Blessed Monsters 4.5/5.

†must be checked against final text

I am choosing at this time to not review this book based on information coming to light about the author.

I wanted to fall in love with this book the same way I have the previous two. Sadly, it didn't live up to the first or second. The narrative falls apart and the final ending leaves a lot to be desired. Overall, it was a disappointment.

As a well-educated adult, I'm not always the biggest fan of cancel culture. Let me be clear: I am not saying this book shouldn't be "canceled" or that the author does not deserve every ounce of criticism that has come her way. But for me, I find canceling media outright often leaves me without a clear understanding of why certain aspects are problematic. I won't financially support this, but I do want to do my (personal) due diligence to become better informed and aware.

I started the Something Dark and Holy series late -- around this time a year ago -- as I grabbed up any book on NetGalley that looked remotely interesting in the YA genre. I didn't do my research, and in my time on Goodreads looking at the reviews cursorily, did not see anything amiss. But when I went to wrap up the series with "Blessed Monsters", the criticism was all I was seeing!

I will be the first to admit that I am not aware of all the myriad ways there are to discriminate, stereotype, and offend people. I am constantly learning more, but honestly, this one shocked me, and made me realize how important it is to keep pushing myself to learn more. I won't regale here in ideas that I am wholly unfamiliar with beyond whatever brief research I've done in the last few weeks -- there are plenty of blogs, YouTubers, and reviewers here that can provide a much more educated and personal explanation of why this book is so harmful. But I will say that as an adult who COMPLETELY missed the antisemitism in the first two books, I am reflecting so much on this and other tropes in YA so much more now, some of which appear in this book too.

I'm glad I read this book because I was truly interested in diving deep into how far this antisemitism played out and see how Duncan chose to resolve it by the end. Doing so allowed me to feel better informed about the issues and contextualize the controversy. As she mentioned in her sorry-not-sorry on Twitter, she was aware of the antisemitism in the material she used as research for her book but thought she had handled it in a sensitive way. While I could identify what she meant by "sensitive" by the end of this book, I didn't see it as a solution or a means to dismiss the stereotypes the book relied on for its character development, setting, and plot. What makes me the most upset (besides, of course, perpetuating harmful stereotypes, consciously or subconsciously, for young adults) is that this is a FANTASY novel. While I know Duncan's interests lie in Slavic history, she could have named these regions and characters literally anything else and it would be less of a correlation to the historical precedence. I can think of dozens of books that have villains or Byronic heroes that sway too closely to some horrific real-world characters or events, but without the historical correlation, it's just a fantasy novel (with maybe some elite literary critics espousing some wild theory that such and such a character is based on this harmful historical figure). But yet, even as I write, I wonder if perhaps this thinking is harmful too -- the fact that if an author just changes a few names, places, details that would be enough to overlook the use of harmful inspiration for a novel. I guess if taken in retrospect (after it's already been criticized) it's no longer "just fantasy" -- the stigma has stuck. I can't even tell anymore; it's all so messy and harmful. Feel free to push me on this thinking; I'd love to think this through more.

If you've made it this far into the review: thank you. I'll move onto my thoughts on the actual writing. My arbitrary Goodreads-star review will only reflect the following because I can't even begin to think about marrying the two into an overall total.

Jumping into the first pages of this novel, I was quickly reminded of how complex this story had become. I took PAGES of notes on the first two books, which I chalked up to being me transitioning to typing my book notes rather than handwriting them. But nope. I wish Duncan had included more "review" earlier in the book, as many authors do (to varying degrees of effectiveness). She sprinkled some in, of course, but it wasn't until about half way that I felt like I'd gotten enough information to remind me of big events from book 2. There were some small details from the earlier books that were important to the plot of this that I had completely forgotten and felt frustrated about not being reminded of.

I found the plot engaging, but this book felt far too long. At over 500 pages (which was equivalent to about 8 hours of reading on my Kindle), it wasn't until about halfway that I felt the plot moving forward with intentionality. The first half was spent roaming and ruminating on the past/future (oh, and being kidnapped, of course). The pacing may have been faster with fewer transitions to different POVs, which tended to take time to establish, develop, and resolve a scene that may not have been that meaningful to the story as a whole.

Duncan's writing shines when she writes dialogue for her characters. I appreciate her talent at writing comedy in a tragic novel like this. But oof, we gotta review comma splices. I'm all for breaking grammar rules in fiction/creative writing (see fragments and other syntactical choices), but there were so many that read unintentional and distracting for this English-teacher reader.

And lastly, the real reason I read through this series: the relationships between characters. I'll read a book that's been steaming in a hot pile of trash if it means I can see how relationship arcs resolve, and since everyone gets paired up in this one, I was most looking forward to that. I was here for all of the Kacper & Serefin scenes, which is one of the only healthy relationships in the book. But I felt even more uncomfortable with the relationship between Nadya and Malachiasz in this book. I can disassociate with this kind of message (as I am an old YA reader), but I worry about teens reading this relationship between the two most important protagonists in this series and thinking this is an okay way to behave. I get it -- it's fantasy; it's not real; they're monsters -- but do all teens see it that way? Not a chance. Nadya is much more independent and strong in this book, but the abusive relationship that has been growing since book one continues here. Another harmful trope in YA.

Final verdict: the overall plot line through the series was excellent (I'm talking about the larger plot of the gods doing their evil things and how that all resolves, not the incredibly controversial plot line of Malachiasz and his obsession with power/blood). The execution could have been stronger, the relationships could have been less problematic, and the whole book could have been way less racist.

I'm not going to review anymore of Duncan's work for the time being. I'm all for giving people the opportunity to learn and grow, so we'll see what happens in the future. But for now, I'll stick to support authors who are invested in adding positively to the world rather than perpetuating negativity.

Much like the previous two books, Blessed Monsters was a slow burn at the beginning and a raging story by the end. Although it took me a bit to get into the story, I loved seeing the characters and plot develop even more. As usual I adored the dark setting, the gothic world, the banter between characters, and the magical elements. The multiple POVs really helped me feel for each of the characters and helped get me back into the series after the year-long wait. I loved the action, sarcasm, romance, graphic descriptions, and character development. I don't think that there's a whole lot else I can say without spoiling anything, so I'll just say that I'm happy with this book and sad that this trilogy is over!

Fans of the Something Dark and Holy trilogy will not be disappointed as Duncan brings her story of monstrous heroes and forgotten gods to a close. With the machinations of so many characters, mortal and divine, coming to a tangle of violent conflict, the fate of existence hangs in the balance. Which choices were made freely, which were prodded by ancient beings long waiting for their chance to strike--there are no easy answers, but the final desperate hopes of these outsiders brought together by fate and luck will shape the course of everything. Duncan's delivery of this final book in the trilogy is sometimes chaotic, but a chaotic narrative fits heroes made of chaos and bad decisions. It's a bold end to a bold series, bringing some form of resolution to journeys that began in darkness and bloodshed, in threats offered from opposite sides of a battlefield--and now, united in fresh understanding of the world and their places within in.

This is a story about a girl & her monsters.

This book was fitting end to a dark, glittering world. I was uncertain how I was going to feel around the 75% mark? But it pulled together for the end I was hoping for & I appreciate the character continuity present throughout.

Thank you Netgalley & St. Martin’s for the e-Arc.

I have struggled to write this review since finishing Blessed Monsters. Shortly after finishing this, as I was gearing up to write my review, there were some allegations about the author that came to light in the book world that I do not stand by nor can tolerate.

I’ve contemplated foregoing reviewing this because of the situation but I feel like it isn’t fair to do so. I’ve decided for this review specifically I will give my full, honest thoughts about the book and only the book.

Blessed Monsters was EVERYTHING. It was chaotic, monstrous, bloody, but oh so good. From the moment I started to the moment I finished I felt like I was in a state of chills where I knew nothing but this world and characters. And my heart aches for them, with love, with compassion, with a wholesome sense of wanting to protect them at all costs.

There are very few authors, and very few series that encompass my emotions and enraptures me in such a way, but this series does and will continue to do so I’m sure. Even now, more than a month after finishing, I am consumed by my emotions at this phenomenal conclusion. It was beyond what I could’ve imagined and yet everything I didn’t know I needed.

Rambling aside, the Something Dark and Holy series is, to date, the most unique series I’ve read and the most special to me. All the good things I could possibly feel and say are this series.

Based on Duncan's anti-Semitic statements online and the various things spread through this series, I can't in good conscious rate this book higher than a 1 star.

I won't be reading anything from her in the future.

Thank you to the publisher for providing me with an eARC of this title. When I first read WICKED SAINTS prior to its release, I was very immediately pulled into the world, its characters, and the magic systems. I went on to enjoy RUTHLESS GODS, and was initially looking forward to the conclusion of the series, BLESSED MONSTERS.

However, all of that came with my extreme ignorance and unawareness for how inherently antiSemitic the content of this series is, to a point that it permeates nearly every aspect of the worldbuilding—the blood magic system in particular. There is no excuse for not seeing this, and that fault lies entirely on myself.

As a result (among other circumstances surrounding this author that surfaced prior to both me starting to read the eARC and BLESSED MONSTERS's publication), this is no longer a title I feel comfortable reading or reviewing at this time.

Note: I would be inclined to submit this as "Will Not Give Feedback," but I strongly disagree with the way that this function negatively impacts Netgalley members' feedback ratio.

I really enjoyed book one in the Something Dark and Holy trilogy, book two was okay, and I ultimately decided to not finish this one in light of information that has recently come out about the author and the anti-Semetic themes this series holds.
I hadn’t picked up on it initially, and will say that I loved the characters and the journey they were on before I stopped reading.

I really enjoyed the story but my review would be very biased based on recent events that came to light

I won't be reviewing Blessed Monsters because I've been made aware of the blatant antisemitism in the series and the author's habit of bullying fellow authors. I don't agree with the author's actions and will not be promoting this book in any way.

For the record, I’m not going to be reviewing the author and her behavior here but the book. If you’re curious about the former, plenty of folks on Goodreads have already done so for me. I have, frankly, read much better from much worse people.

So what’s the deal with Blessed Monsters by Emily A. Duncan? Well, it turns out it’s better than Ruthless Gods, but it’s still not good. Descriptions of cosmic horrors and eldritch monsters were emphasized vastly over setting, so I never got a clear sense of where we were in Kalyazin. Characters would be at a nondescript palace, manor, safe house, graveyard, capital city, etc., and then they would be at the next nondescript place. So my brain did what it does: imagined whatever it wanted with nothing to ground its imaginings. Neither author nor editor has gotten a handle on the comma splices, either, so they were beyond annoying, along with the “noun and noun and noun and noun” description style. Whatever weight those had before gets beaten to death in this book. Whatever enthusiasm I had left for this trilogy was slowly chipped away as I read, to the point where even if other books were planned to be set in this world, I wouldn’t reach for them.

As with the first two books, the strongest feature here that I found was with the focus on its lore: the gods, the magic, and all the facets of life that are affected by them, especially now that the world is apparently ending as Chyrnog slowly takes over Malachiasz. At last, our characters are focused on the actual plot, namely how to stop Chyrnog and set the world back in order. Nadya is finally focused on what matters now that she thinks that Malachiasz is dead. I was so happy to have her back and away from Malachiasz for an extended period of time. I was even happy to have many chapters where Serefin and Malachiasz were forced to interact and navigate their whole brother thing. This was all sorely missing from Ruthless Gods.

And then I realized I had read over half of the book, and nothing was happening. Nadya and Malachiasz inevitably, unfortunately, reunite, and my interest plummeted. We have a decently-sized cast here that slowly came together, but they were all Extremely Cool with each other for no reason other than Duncan wanting everyone to get along. In the previous book, Malachiasz killed Nadya’s god, Serefin killed Malachiasz, and Nadya destroyed Tranavia’s access to blood magic. All three of these characters betrayed each other in enormous ways, but aside from them wringing their hands, worrying that the other two must hate them for their actions, it turns out they needn’t have bothered. Everything is fine actually! We’re all cool! Let’s all hug and kiss and have a trite argument, and then it’s all fine!

Even when Katya kills Zywia, Malachiasz’s right hand Vulture who he apparently views as a sister even though this is the first time I’ve heard it, everyone is fine with it. Even Malachiasz. Oh, sure, he’s tense and angry for a few pages, but who cares? Nothing at all comes of it. No consequences. We also never ever talk with any weight about the fact that Malachiasz is now eating people under Chyrnog’s compulsion because why should we? Let’s just make deadpan remarks and witticisms about it instead. Dealing with the old gods situation matters more, except the characters spend most of the book not doing anything about that, either. We have eight to nine people in the same area, and all of them just constantly wonder, “What should we do?” for a whole book. It’s like watching a DnD campaign where the players decide not to actively search for information; they just sit in a tavern and on the rare occasions where they deign to not sit in the tavern, the DM gives them absolutely nothing to work with.

What could’ve helped make this a bit more interesting to read would’ve been having our cast work through their lingering problems with each other. Except, no, we can’t have any real conflict between our precious main characters, can we? We have to force found family dynamics by ignoring everything that could cause the slightest bit of friction between them. Which, okay, but that does make it very boring reading when you have seven plus characters on the same page who have no tension between them. Everyone in this book has the exact same sense of humor, even random, barely-there characters. Everyone is cuddling and kissing each other, so you know they Love Each Other Very Much. Everyone sounds like everyone else, even Serefin, who in the past always stood out to me in more distinctive ways.

In fact, Serefin, who was my main reason for reading this trilogy, almost might as well not have been here after his Malachiasz-bonding scenes were over. I barely recognized him in this book, which kept affirming that he was charming, but the charm was all but absent. He really was here only because the plot demanded he had to be. I was proud of him from accepting his role as king and choosing to stop running, but he didn’t get much chance to actually demonstrate that resolve here. We never even went to Tranavia where all his political issues are. He also largely stopped drinking as a coping mechanism despite relying on it for two books, but he experienced no side effects or withdrawal symptoms, which was pretty unrealistic.

But besides the main three characters, what’s going on with the rest of the cast? Nothing, really. Ostyia is brutally shafted to the side for a lesbian romance with Katya that happens largely off-page, so why should I care? I don’t. Kacper is there just to kiss Serefin and assure him he loves him even though Serefin is king and will have all the responsibility a king is expected to have.

For two books, I kept waiting for Parijahan and Rashid to be developed as characters and explained why they are involved with this plot and these people, and I was so let down. Turns out the answer is Plot Conveniences and to assert that more people like Malachiasz as a person besides Nadya. I learned that Parj’s magic is unconscious of her control, and it’s some sort of rational magic. Apparently, the reason why Malachiasz becomes less chaotic/more human—especially in Wicked Saints—is all due to Parj’s magical influence, and I cannot begin to summarize how much I hated that. I also learned that Rashid has rare healing magic, and you know in that moment exactly what that means he’ll be using it for: resurrecting dead main characters.

Since I’m bringing up Malachiasz, let’s get this out of the way: I officially will never like or understand this character, and people who say he’s like the Darkling or Kylo Ren do owe those characters an apology. I have never seen the amount of pretzeling that these books do to justify this character’s actions while constantly flip-flopping between “unrepentant monster” and “he’s just a scared boy uwu.” While he doesn’t get called a “boy” as much here as in Ruthless Gods, it’s still way too much. For the first time in Blessed Monsters, Malachiasz reveals that he gave away the rest of his soul somehow, and that’s why Chyrnog has control of him. The book (and Nadya) believes his lack of soul is why Malachiasz acts without conscience or remorse for anything he does. Meanwhile, Malachiasz’s POV chapters constantly demonstrate his guilt, hee-hawing, and inconsistencies. So what is the truth? Who knows? Who cares?

Blessed Monsters affirmed for me why Malachiasz is such a poorly written character as a villain because not once has he actually had a goal or a purpose. He constantly thinks he does while floundering between choices nonstop. Now that I’ve read this book’s lackluster conclusion where Everyone Passes Out at the End, I can confidently say that Malachiasz never achieved any goal he claimed he had because he’s still in the exact same position as when he started. Sure, he has eyeball clusters popping up every second and mouths everywhere, but so what? He’s still mortal, he’s still the Black Vulture, his country’s still a wreck, the old gods are sealed off but not destroyed, he killed Marzenya but it’s loudly implied she’ll be reborn, so what was it all for?

I am glossing over how different magic is in the world now, but as far as I can tell, that’s the only thing that’s truly changed that matters. Serefin is still this godstouched moth king that can handle stars, but so what? Nadya is made of the same stuff as the old gods and accepts her power as hers, but so what? The eldritch descriptions have become so repetitive that they’ve become blasé even to the other characters in the book. No one reacts realistically to the stars around Serefin’s head or Nadya’s spider eyes, and even if normal people existed in Blessed Monsters, I’m sure they wouldn’t have any kind of reaction either. Anna sure doesn’t.

In a 528 page book that’s a conclusion to a trilogy, I expected so much more to be accomplished than what actually was, to the point where it strongly feels like other books in this world might be planned, but I don’t care anymore. This was the place where the landing needed to stick, where I could sit back and be glad that I invested the time I did in this world and these characters. Instead, all was wasted on the characters having a lack of direction for the entire thing, but don’t worry! There are plenty of scenes featuring empty conversation, quippy responses, cuddle time, and reminders that eldritch horrors are happening, which we’ll skip over as quickly as we can.

Oof, where do I start. After the recent reveal that Emily Duncan is a bully and super problematic, I am furious that I spent my money on my Owlcrate editions of this trilogy. Especially, after reading blessed monsters.

There is NOTHING worse then reading a series and watching characters go through so much, to only LITERALLY have them in the exact same places they were prior to the beginning of the series. I am not kidding, when I say that all the problems they were fighting in the first book, are still around at the end. It was such a let down.