Their relationship is telegraphed a mile away, and as much as I like the enemies-to-lovers trope, it isn’t handled well here. The focus during almost all of her chapters was Malachiasz, the Tranavian who defected. Nadya, as the other POV, felt like a supporting character in her own story. Through him we got the barest glimpse of the politics, and he had most of the development as he dealt with the royal plot to rob him of his throne.

Of the two POV characters, Serefin was the more interesting. It was difficult to connect to any of the characters. There’s no real depth, no impending sense of doom. The plot moves from situation to situation at a pretty solid pace, but that’s all it does. It’s very well-written, and the descriptions of architecture are nice enough, but at times it was difficult for me to get a picture in my head. The world is muddy, the politics glossed over, the magic system messy. Unfortunately, there isn’t much development of either. However, none of this stuff really goes anywhere until near the end of the book, when it all collides in mass confusion and a rather anti-climactic final battle.Īs this is the first in a trilogy, it makes sense that Wicked Saints would spend the first book developing the world and the characters. Nadya spends much of the book struggling to reconcile the new information she’s learning with what we she was raised to believe, and there are some really excellent musings on faith. When the monastery in which she’s been raised is attacked by Serefin, the High Prince of Tranavia and a powerful blood mage, she escapes and runs into an odd trio – two Akolans and a defected Tranavian – who join her on her quest to kill the Tranavian king.Īt first, there was something really intriguing about the way Duncan connects religion, politics, and magic. She is able to access her magic by the grace of the gods, the entire pantheon of which she is able to commune with by touching a particular bead on her necklace. Wicked Saints is the story of Nadya, a cleric from the war-torn country of Kalyazi, the first of her countrymen to have magic in a very long time. Duncan’s Something Dark and Wicked trilogy, and it should be more interesting than it is. Religion, politics, and magic are twined together in Wicked Saints, the first book in Emily A.

Wicked saints a novel