Ruthless Gods

A Novel

By: Emily A. Duncan

Narrated by: Natasha Soudek, Tristan Morris

Length: 16 hrs and 19 mins

Publisher's summary

The stunning sequel to instant New York Times best seller Wicked Saints

Nadya doesn’t trust her magic anymore. Serefin is fighting off a voice in his head that doesn’t belong to him. Malachiasz is at war with who - and what - he’s become.

As their group is continually torn apart, the girl, the prince, and the monster find their fates irrevocably intertwined. Their paths are being orchestrated by someone...or something. The voices that Serefin hears in the darkness, the ones that Nadya believes are her gods, the ones that Malachiasz is desperate to meet - those voices want a stake in the world, and they refuse to stay quiet any longer.

In her dramatic follow-up to Wicked Saints, the first book in her Something Dark and Holy trilogy, Emily A. Duncan paints a Gothic, icy world where shadows whisper, and no one is who they seem, with a shocking ending that will leave you breathless. 

A Macmillan Audio production from Wednesday Books

©2020 Emily A. Duncan (P)2020 Macmillan Audio

Weird accent

The voice acting is fine EXCEPT for the weird transylvanian(???) accent they use for all the dialogue. sometimes its hard to tell what the characters are saying with the accent, it definitely pulls you out of the story. It's also pretty hard to take intense scenes seriously when it sounds like count chocula is the one performing them. super weird choice there.

His name pronunciation changed?!

How could you do that to us?! Malachias is changed to malaciage?! Took me forever to adjust. Very sad. Still good book but a bit traumatizing for that reason.

Read the book instead.

This audio is terrible! I loved the first one and I listened to the audible. This one though- TER RI BLE. HORRENDOUS. From a counting muppet for the male voice to the female voice changing the way she pronounces names so much you think it’s a different character I just can’t listen to this book. And it’s the same narrators as book one. How does that even happen?!?!

Great story

I love this story and Emily Duncan is an amazing writer.
However, I wish I had read the books instead of listening. Tristan Morris sounds like a melodramatic Count from Sesame Street. I really had a hard time staying focused on the story when he was narrating. Both narrators made the characters sound much older than they should have and there was very little difference in the voice of each character.
Overall, the series is fantastic and I highly recommend, but you may want to read the actual book.

Struggle to get through

I loved The first book but this one was a bit of a struggle to get through. Not bad just not as good as the first

Idk man

The bare bones of this story and world had a lot of potential but wow, it falls so flat. This was mind numbingly boring at times and otherwise mildly interesting at best. I have had 9 MINUTES left for a week and I just don't even care enough to finish it. On top of that, the author's racism and antisemitism, which i didn't know about until after i purchased the first two books, is enough reason to not even bother to attempt to finish the series.

The author constantly reuses certain phrases and doesn't bother to change even the inner monologues of each character to distinguish them from one another. Every time i heard her go on another repetitive "the boy who ___" or "this strange beautiful broken boy" segment i literally rolled my eyes. Nadya's inner descriptions of Malachias are repetitive and cringe. We get it he's hot. Their relationship doesn't feel based on much more than that, and she has little agency within it. As a strong proponent of an enemies/friends/lovers and back again type trope, this ain't it.

as for the audiobook performance, i had to turn the playback speed up because they both read very slowly. Otherwise good performances and I appreciate them really going for it despite what they had to work with.

The narration was kind of awful at times

This trilogy is quite entertaining - It's not a perfect story and there is a lot of things that sometimes just get glossed over because maybe it would be too difficult to explain, but that's what it is. It's still fun to read (or listen to).

The male narrative needs some work though. What is with his voice doing that wavy thing when he speaks... it was a wee bit distracting and almost hysterical at times. When he did the voices it didn't bother me as much but when he was just doing the narrative it was pretty bad. I don't know a better way to explain it, it was just a very dramatic wave with his voice like he was putting emphasis on Every. Other. Word. I mean, he has a nice voice.... just not an awesome narrator.

Voices were cringe

Love the story. Really unique in my opinion. But the voice acting was horrible.

Male narrator is awful!

Bad review due to narration only.
I’m sure the book is great, because I’ve seen other reviews that can attest to that. I’m actually considering buying a print copy because I’m very interested in finding out what’s going to happen with the story. However… I cannot get through this audiobook because of the horrendous male narrator!!! I’m from Eastern Europe and I can assure you, even I cannot understand his butchered attempts at “Dracula” accents. So disappointing. Additionally, he did not change his voice enough to distinguish between different characters. When he is narrating, it is hard to understand who is speaking and what they are saying.
I loved the first book. I wanted to loved this one. I keep going back and trying to listen to this horrible narration. But Mr. Morris made it impossible to understand and to enjoy.

Dark and Twisted Goodness

Can’t wait for the sequel! They used the same narrators as the first book which I’m not too crazy about. They sound alot older than what these young characters should sound like. Especially the male narrator, he can be overly dramatic.
Story-wise. I loved it. Maybe even more than the first book. I was dreading the end of the book when I had an hour left. I just couldn’t get enough. There were some bits that left me scratching my head but overall it was 5 stars for me.

All tall no action

I really liked the first one but this had just too much inner dialogues and reflections on feelings. I will try the third just in case it gets good again.