Donatella's Reviews > Wicked Saints

EDIT: Amending my review because this author was seen harassing another poc debut author online. The tweets have since been deleted. The debut she was harassing wrote another Russian inspired fantasy, and it's clear this author is very jealous and her behavior is disgusting.

First Goodreads Review! (Yes, I made an account just because of how passionately I loathed this book)

First off, I snagged a copy of this back at Yallfest. It was one of my most anticipated reads of 2019, probably because of all the hype. But let me tell you, it's JUST hype. This book DOES NOT live up to it.

This author is an overly indulgent Leigh Bardugo wannabe

Here's a quick low down on how I felt about this book:
The writing was lukewarm. To be honest, it was fairly weak and held together by banter. The banter between the main female and the LE was probably the best part of the story

The end felt SO rushed, and the middle just dragged and dragged and dragged.

"Let them fear her" is the tagline, but . . .uh . . . she's not scary. Like at all? She has such little agency, it's ridiculous.

There were TOKEN poc characters. Pretty much the entire main cast is just white white white, then she sprinkles in these two characters who I believe were coded to be SE Asian? And they have literally NO purpose in the story. Like, at all. I kept waiting for them to do anything, but they didn't. I feel like the author just created them because someone reminded her that not everyone in the world is white.

We're told it's Slavic, but apart from some words, it really didn't feel like it? It just felt like snowy mountains for 90% of the story. Cool, cool.

I feel like it's trying way too hard to be clever, or Bardugo-esque, to the point where it literally just feels like the author is trying to rip off Shadow and Bone. Obviously she loves the Darkling, and this is just fanfiction to him.


Things I liked about the book?
-The title.
- The banter

Apart from that, this story was yiikeeeesss, especially with the issue about the POC characters (who are like.. almost killed numerous times).