Wicked Saints (Something Dark and Holy, #1)

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..

I’ve spent the past year glaring at this book, refusing to read it, because what if I didn’t like it?

The pressure was real. I saw so many mixed opinions about this book, and I wanted to read it so much that I went out and bought it shortly after it was released … but then I just … didn’t. Because it would’ve broken my heart if I ended up hating it. Surprise! I loved it. Phew. And what a relief that is.

Wicked Saints is a dark, twisted book where the gods are more than they seem, countries are at war, and betrayal is just the name of the game.

I breezed through this in a little over a day, because once I got going, I just had to know how it was going to end.

❧ I fell in love with these characters from the very first page.

Okay, maybe the second or third page, but still, that’s pretty good. The characters fit really nicely into archetypes, which might be a problem for some because of the predictability, but you know what? I like these archetypes. They were delightfully snarky and sarcastic and absolutely brutal when they needed to be.

Nadya is the epitome of a Chosen One trope, the special cleric who can speak to all the gods, which is unheard of. And yet … this trope ended up turned right on its head.

I don’t want to say too much about it, but I really enjoyed Nadya’s character arc. It wasn’t what I expected, which made it even more exciting because I didn’t see it coming.

And as for the other characters? Welp. I posted this on Twitter while I was reading:

I'm still 100 pages from the end of Wicked Saints, so this may be a little premature, but I've decided that I'm obviously going to marry Serefin, okay? You're all invited to celebrate with me & my murder king. I promise we'll keep the bloodshed to a minimum. Probably. #amreading

— Sammie (@srbetler) March 30, 2020

Now that I’ve finished, I 100% can confirm that this is still my plan, and you’re still all invited. I can’t be held responsible if something should befall you during the wedding ceremony. It’s a bit of a brutal country, you know. The reception will be worth it, I’m sure, if you’re willing to take the risk.

Needless to say, I fell for these characters hard, all of them. They made me laugh and they were so easy to root for.

❧ Nothing—and no one—is quite as it seems.

If there’s one thing I’d warn a reader going in, it’s this: trust nothing. I enjoyed that there were so many twists and turns and I never knew what to expect. Some of it I predicted might happen, of course, but that actually made me more exciting. I’m sure there’s something in there to be said about me enjoying betrayal and backstabbing, but who has the money for all that therapy? So let’s just leave it at I loved it.

There’s a pervasive theme in this book of secrets and lies (two of my favorite things), and so much foreshadowing that things may not be the way Nadya thought they were.

Nope, not even the gods. Because yes, the gods are all characters and have their own personalities and voices. For some reason, Nadya can speak to all of them, even though that’s absolutely unheard of, even for a cleric. But it would stand to reason that gods would have some of the biggest secrets, right? What they are, I don’t know, because this book doesn’t delve into any of that, but boy is there some strong foreshadowing that we might find out in the next book (and it is, in fact, called Ruthless Gods, so here’s hoping).

❧ This story was dark and twisted in all the right ways.

When I say this book is bloody, I mean it’s bloody. As in … blood magic! The best kind of magic, right? Okay, maybe not, because if I’m honest, the sight of blood sometimes makes me queasy and that’s not a great place to be in during a fight. Nonetheless, I thought the blood magic was interesting here. Realistic? Not exactly. I mean, the body only produces so much blood, and there’s only so much you can lose before you’d have pretty dire side effects. Still, it was a neat concept.

I’d also just like to point out: everyone’s a villain, okay? There may be some subtle shades of gray, but for the most part? No one’s exactly living up to any hero status.

Not that anyone’s particularly claiming to be a hero, which is probably for the best. There’s nothing my dark heart enjoys more than a book full of villains, especially when those villains are legitimately trying to do the right thing. They just … don’t know what the right thing is. And heck, I don’t, either, so … eh, yeah, let’s try this. Why not? How bad can it be?

❧ Some of my favorite tropes are enemies working together and enemies-to-lovers, and boy this didn’t disappoint.

Not very far in, it became obvious that this would be a situation of enemies working together, and so much yes to that trope. What made it even better was that I loved these people Nadya was forced to work with. Even while realizing that, okay, sure, they may not be the best people ever. But the enemy of my enemy is my friend, right? I’m really hoping to see more of these people in the second book.

The romance is also a dark, convaluted enemies-to-lovers where you never quite know where either party stands.

So, in other words, the best sort of romance. Because normal romance is boring. Give me death threats and potential homicide over strolls through the park any day. I don’t want to say too much about the romance, but this is one of my favorite tropes, and I wasn’t disappointed.

If you had to choose one patron god (like the god of wine, harvest, etc.), who would your patron god be?