Wicked Saints: A Novel

Something Dark and Holy, Book 1

De: Emily A. Duncan

Narrado por: Natasha Soudek, Tristan Morris

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.

©2019 Emily A. Duncan (P)2019 Macmillan Audio

Reseñas de la Crítica

“Prepare for a snow-frosted, blood-drenched fairy tale where the monsters steal your heart and love ends up being the nightmare.” (Roshani Chokshi, New York Times best-selling author of The Star-Touched Queen)

“This book destroyed me and I adored it.” (Stephanie Garber, New York Times best-selling author of Caraval)

"If you like your young adult fantasy full of ice, blood, and angst, Wicked Saints will sweep you up in its wintery embrace." (NPR)

Awkward start, amazing characters

This book was a slow start, but by the time I finished I was bereft. The narrators' accents were a little too heavy, so it distracted from the world building. This made me almost give up on the book, and I am so, so glad that I didn't.
Eventually the world building and character roles came together, and before I knew it, I was totally engrossed in the story. The main characters were so well written, that it became impossible not to become emotionally invested in them. As of right now there are some plot holes, and loose ends, but that just makes the sequel so much more enticing.

So good, but flawed

IT WAS SO GOOD. But so flawed. The story was amazing. But the execution didn’t work out so well. It was a very confusing read for me. I kept having to go back, feeling like I missed something. The writing made it a bit difficult to follow. But the overall story was amazing and I fell in love with the world. The narration and accents were terrible. The male narrator was much better than the female though. I recommend reading this one instead of listening to it.

Awful Narration; Imaginative World Brought Down by Standard YA Tropes

Wow. The narration in this is abominable. The accents during dialogue are performed like bad Hollywood vampire tropes (“I VANT to SUCK vour buhloood” type ridiculous), while non-dialogue is flatly Americanized and bit stale. What makes the narration worse is that there is no differentiating among the accents of characters from varying countries, even though we are told in the story that they sound quite different, they are all performed identically. The author also provided a pronunciation guide for names and places, yet they are still mispronounced throughout the book, including the name of a lead character. Hopefully this is corrected going forward.

The story is fairly standard gothic YA (think Leigh Bardugo’s Grisha series). The book really survives on the dialogue between characters and the strong leads. The world is complex, but it lacks imagery and true development. What is most absent throughout is ambience. If you take away the dialogue, the story is told very flat and lacks dramatic tension. We are told what happens and what (some) things look like, but there is no feeling, no tension; just straight telling not showing.

If you like the characters, gothic stories, and forbidden romance with mysterious and morally ambiguous pretty boys, you will most likely enjoy the book. If that doesn’t stand out to you, spend your credit elsewhere. The bones of a good story and compelling world and characters are there, but it lacks the fleshing out needed to really jump off the page and feel real and draw you in. If you are someone who doesn’t mind reading, you would also be better served with the physical book instead of the audio version.

Good story line - slow burn romance

This book was good overall - kind of a slow build in some places - the narration could have been better but wasn't bad by any means.

Good story

It started out tediously slow but pick up towards the middle and the ending was great. Overall great story.

Great book, narration not so much

I enjoyed the story very much, one of the best books I’ve read this year. I didn’t really like the readers for this one. Also the names are mispronounced compared to how the author intended them to sound. I personally felt the accents that were given were hard to understand and took me out of the story.

Wickedly Inticing

This story started very fast, which is great for my attention span. With very little romance and very little slow parts, it made for a devilishly good tale. Though I sense where it was going, I still enjoyed it quite a bit. definitely recommend Thai for 7th graders and above.

Good Story and Characters But Familiar Too

I'm dividing my review into sections.
The Story: Overall, this is a pretty standard Chosen One story. The Chosen One sets out to do The Thing she was chosen for. She does it, and there are twists and unintended consequences that set up for a second book. Emily Duncan's delivery on that structure is pretty good, and if you like Chosen One stories, you'll probably like this. It has echoes of the Shadow and Bone trilogy, Spinning Silver, and The Bear and the Nightingale, while still offering a new world and magic system that is interesting on its own.

The Characters: This part is extremely subjective. If you read the Shadow and Bone trilogy and shipped the Darkling and Alina, you'll probably love the romance here. There is some similar imagery and tragic dark boy + saint girl vibes. That was not my ship, but I respect it as a thing other people like. Serefin was the best character in the book ( I know, I know, Darkling fans, your favorite is Malachiaz.) He is more complex, unpredictable, and interesting than all of the others. The two sidekick characters were massively under-developed and hardly mattered to the story.

The Narrators: whoo boy. You've probably seen the debate in the other comments. The female narrator made everything sound trite and no-big-deal. But her accent was more believable and she had more distinct voices than the male. The male narrator sounded like GPS. He had a very staccato reading voice with very little inflection. I recognized him from the Six of Crows prologue. They weren't the worst narrators I've heard on Audible, but they weren't great.

Overall: I enjoyed listening to this book. The story was familiar, as were some of the characters. That said, I didn't mind the echoes of other stories because this world and magic system were very creative and much different than the others. If/when there's a sequel, I'll probably just pick up the physical book if they hire the same narrators. I wish they had picked Kathleen Gati for the whole thing. She did an amazing job with The Bear & the Nightingale.

unique and original theological fantasy

great book, interesting story with theology, mythology, and folklore mingled together. the accents are a little distracting initially but fine as the story moves forward. slightly disappointing end sets up interesting possibilities for a sequel I'll definitely be looking forward to...

Loved it!

I know there is a lot of debate over this, but I personally loved the accents. I liked the fight scenes a lot and I wanted to fight too.