I am disgusted with myself for thinking that this book was excellent. But it would be dishonest of me to say "this was gross and bad" purely in the inI am disgusted with myself for thinking that this book was excellent. But it would be dishonest of me to say "this was gross and bad" purely in the interest of saving face, when I know deep down that's not my truth. The fact of the matter is that I loved it, and it had a forceful impact on me, and months later I'm still thinking about it.
Albeit when I'm alone, in the dark, lying in bed at the witching hour. That's when I think about it.
Warning: don't go into this thinking "how bad can it be". Because it can actually be that bad. And don't go into it with the intention of taking it literally; the talking cows are not actual talking cows. That's not what this is....more
I've attempted to read this book three times. Once, I came close to finishing it, but it feels disingenuous to say that, because I did not come "closeI've attempted to read this book three times. Once, I came close to finishing it, but it feels disingenuous to say that, because I did not come "close" to "finishing it" so much as I moved my eyes over the text sequentially until I reached a page that was reasonably close to the final one. Note that I did also attempt to listen to the audiobook, and I couldn't get through that either.
I understand what this book is trying to do. I appreciate the nuanced discussions around identity and colonialism. But those conversations could have taken place in a lecture theatre, or in an academic text, or in an online thinkpiece. In my personal opinion, to which I am entitled, it doesn't work as narrative fiction. The author gets bogged down in this dense, impassable hedge of worldbuilding (which is riddled with inconsistencies; how on earth can an empire this sprawling and technologically advanced hinge on paper mail that is encrypted with poetry? And why are the imago machines not connected to some sort of cloud? That's basic technology that we have today, here on Earth) so much that she forgets to develop her characters beyond one or two basic traits. Even that's being charitable: Mahit has one trait, which is that she is enamoured of Teixcalaan. She wanders through this story like a ghost, formless, merely reacting to stimuli in order to nudge along the treacly plot, which is in itself not even remotely interesting. I am extremely sick of these incredibly phoned-in, poorly-plotted, toothless murder mysteries that have been crowding the market in SFF across the past few years. I love a good murder mystery, but if you're going to write one, please, for the love of god, explore the genre. Read a few thrillers. Look into some true crime. And recall that, in order for such a plot to work, the reader needs to actually care about the characters. Because these bland, joyless, dispirited people chasing ghosts in this clinical, over-explained world did absolutely nothing for me. Three times over.
To say that this book let me down is an understatement. It disappointed me in ways I didn’t know were possible. Is it me? Maybe. Is it the book[image]
To say that this book let me down is an understatement. It disappointed me in ways I didn’t know were possible. Is it me? Maybe. Is it the book? Oh, definitely. You’d better get your landing gear on, guys, because this is going to be a long one. Warning: gentle spoilers.
The biggest problem with this book is the worldbuilding, in part because the relationship between the gods and the people doesn’t make sense. The pantheon of gods in Wicked Saints is comprised of deities that can be quantified (that talk directly to clerics and give them magical powers), but characterising gods as tangible voices with personalities drastically shifts the power dynamic. It eliminates the essential subjectivity of religion. The Zoroastrians did not believe in their principal deity, Ahura Mazda, because they had heard him speak; they believed out of pure necessity. Why, they asked, does rain fall from the sky? What is the moon? These are questions of faith. How do we prevent crime? How can we legitimise the absolute rule of monarchs? These are questions of churches, religious institutions being separate from faith itself, but what they have in common is the answers can be adapted to survive in different cultural climates. Faith, at its core, depends entirely on belief in a power that cannot be quantified. Tranavia turned away from the gods, but there is no real discourse as to why; that the existence of the Kalyazi gods can be proven should heavily impact the way that religion functions across the world, and should give Nadya an immense amount of power over her countrymen, but because there is no explanation ever given of the role of the gods in Kalyazi life - there is no explanation of Kalyazi life, period - the concept crumbles.
This world, at its basest level, doesn’t feel lived in. How can it, if all we know is what we see on the page? When the characters leave the page they turn to dust, because Kalyazin and Tranavia are like Flat Earth. If you leave the designated area, you’ll fall off the edge and die. There is nothing across the horizon.
The gods in Kalyazin (this religion has no name) are listed here by the author, who asserts that this is not an exhaustive list, though for the amount of time we spend inside Nadya’s head, it falls short. There is a god of silence, but no god of sex and fertility. There is a god of speed, but no god of the hearth. How?
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The hearth has, from the most ancient eras of history, stood as the central pillar of the home and community; for instance, the Ancient Greeks would greet new immigrants and visitors to their region in their town’s common house, known as the prytaneum, near the communal hearth and a statue of Hestia. The hearth was the pin around which community and family life revolved, family being another fundamental building block of any society: this, why gods and goddesses of sex, fertility, and childbirth feature so prominently in a wide number of polytheistic religions across the world. Even monotheistic/Abrahamic religions, while not extending separate deities to preside over sex and fertility, cycle through multiple stories of miraculous birth, sacred unions, virgin mothers, divine marriages, and father figures. The Abrahamic God is exhaustively referred to as a father, which - while the Abrahamic God maintains an asexual veneer - stresses the archaic role of a father as a genetic creator. (On somewhat of a tangent, it is also worth noting that the idea of clerical celibacy is rare; for example, Judaism has never enforced celibacy for its rabbis or kohanim (priests), and in Islam, lifelong celibacy is forbidden. Sex, family, and reproduction are at the core of most, if not all, religions).
Once could argue that this isn’t directly relevant to Nadya’s journey to assassinate the king (more on that later) but… Isn’t it? There are vague mentions of Nadya praying, and she spends swaths of time condemning the Tranavians to heresy, but where is the intricacy of her faith? There are no rituals, social parameters, or legal systems discussed that in any way hint at the power of religion over Kalyazin. The gods don’t influence Nadya’s clothing, food choices, language, sexuality, literacy, or her understanding of her environment; the only time Nadya ever references the gods is during battle or when she is mumbling about the Tranavians being heretics.
Heresy has no concrete definition, but is generally understood as dissent from a commonly established religious belief. ‘Heresy’ is a deeply nuanced and complex topic that Wicked Saints, of course, does not have the mettle to tackle: Nadya deems the Tranavians heretics - a term that historically justified mass slaughters, notably during the Spanish Inquisition - with such wild abandon that it completely delegitimises the term. The word just stops meaning anything.
There is a vague reference to how magic is only supposed to come from the gods, but Nadya does not quote scripture, makes no reference to any pulpit preaching or schooling, and the gods themselves don’t offer any clarity. “Blood magic” is not a reason to waste money, lives, and time on war, and nor does it elaborate on the ramifications of heresy in Kalyazin; are there misconceptions about Tranavians? Are there stereotypes? It’s never discussed. They’re just “heretics”, and the reader is expected to accept that without any further clarification.
An example of the enormity of the notion of heresy is the use of fatwas in Islam. Fatwas are a woefully misunderstood concept in the West; after the hoopla around Salman Rushdie, a misconception of fatwas grew, in which the West characterised fatwas as “religious death warrants”, which is like saying that yoghurt is strawberry flavoured. Some is, but most of it isn’t, and only eating strawberry yoghurt when there are a thousand better and more interesting flavours is wilful ignorance at best.
A fatwa is a legal opinion delivered by a mufti (Islamic scholar) on a question posed by an institution, community, or individual. Fatwas are legally non-binding, but given that they’re issued by qualified experts, they can and have influenced shifts and actions across the Muslim world. Historically, fatwas were used to spread Islamic doctrine among the wider populace, advise courts on aspects of sharia (Islamic law), and encourage resistance against colonial rule. The historic use and context of fatwas is incredibly complex and speaks to the textured tapestry that is the Islamic legal system, but one interesting historical usage of fatwas was to enact a controversial practice known as takfir, in which communities or individuals professing to be Muslim were declared by a mufti to be kafirs (unbelievers), therefore justifying resistance against them or excommunication. Takfir was imposed on the invading Mongols, who claimed to be Muslim, but who were declared apostate by Islamic scholar Ibn Taymiyyah due to their opposition to sharia.
This is only one example of the immense complexity of the notion of “heresy”. Nadya claims exhaustively that Malachiasz is a heretic, yet she does not put up an iota of resistance against him, and even their theological arguments are flirty and cutesy, which, if you’ve ever seen theologians get into a quarrel on faith, you’ll know is disingenuous at best. Neither character ever moves beyond the most childish questions of faith or religious warfare.
Furthermore, at no point is any concrete explanation given for the long and costly war between these two nations, other than their divergent religious beliefs. This in itself is a dangerous model: religion doesn’t cause wars, politics and class warfare does, from the modern wars in the Middle East to the Jacobite Rebellions, and to notably the Thirty Years’ War, one of the most destructive conflicts in human history, which boils all the way down to Martin Luther’s landmark break from Catholicism, stemmed from his disenchantment with the corruption and money-grubbing of the Catholic Church. The fatwa I previously mentioned about the Mongols being declared kafirs is a good example of this. One might argue that this fatwa endorsed religious warfare, but what were the Mongols doing? Invading, and this fatwa mobilised the affected Muslim communities to push back against colonial rule. Politics were the root reason for this, not religion alone.
Simply put, religion is a vast, complex, and nuanced topic that Wicked Saints does not have the range to tackle. Most of the page time is wasted on a forced and saccharine romance between two bland characters: an alleged cleric who bizarrely seems to know nothing about her own religion, and a limp analogy for Kylo Ren.
I said in my status updates that I had a lot of feelings about this comparison with Kylo Ren, and I do. There’s no but here. Just buckle in.
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Kylo Ren is an infuriating character, mostly because his turn to the dark side is conflated with Darth Vader’s, whose story is vastly more layered. (I could rabbit on here about the excellent and subtle examination of church corruption that is mirrored in the Jedi, but seriously, I can’t. Oh, I want to, Long Pause, but I can’t.)
Here’s the thing. Death of the Author is a legitimate angle in literary criticism, and there’s a great video here where Lindsay Ellis explains it, but it’s almost impossible to fully extract the author from this work, partly because she has a flourishing internet presence. Duncan makes no secret of her fan status for Kylo Ren, and the hallmarks of his character are so blatantly obvious in Malachiasz that I cannot in good conscience ignore it. Not only are both characters physically identical, but ideologically, they’re the same. Kylo Ren’s quest for power at the detriment of his own sanity and moral integrity and his (fan-interpreted) thirst for a plucky Jedi (space monk) hang around Malachiasz like a bad smell. But pulling from a character as loathe-worthy as Kylo Ren left a really bad taste in my mouth, and I think I hated Malachiasz for the same reasons that I hated Kylo Ren.
They both follow this exhausting arc of the “broken boy” who was made this way by a flawed mentor and who has a good side that was ripped from them in some contrived way; granted, Malachiasz was forced to become a vulture, but when offered a chance to escape a life of 2005 Goth Torment and live with the space monk, he turns it down in favour of more power, a mirror of Kylo Ren killing Snoke with Rey, but then turning against her and seizing his seat of power for himself. Of course, Wicked Saints boasts none of the political complexity that makes the Sith/Jedi conflict compelling, and while it makes a half-baked attempt at “political intrigue” it fails on the most basic level, mostly because the politics of Tranavia are not remotely interesting and the politics of Kalyazin don’t exist. But here’s the crux of it: if you’re going to rip off a character, at least make it a good one. (I know there are some Darkling vibes here, but the Kylo Ren comparison stuck out to me.)
I suppose you could argue that Kylo Ren’s desire to be like Darth Vader is an allegory for how power-hungry people pluck half-truths from history to suit their own personal agenda, but the fact that he is a Skywalker and “the one that Luke couldn’t save” leans into the narrative conflating him with Darth Vader. Alas, because no coherent or sympathetic build-up was lent to properly justify Kylo Ren’s turn to the Dark Side, it just feels…uncomfortable.
Anakin Skywalker is my favourite Star Wars character, and Revenge of the Sith is my favourite Star Wars movie. Sure, it has holes and the acting is ropey, but what a layered, nuanced portrayal of a villain arc. The thing is, that villain arc was built slowly and methodically from The Phantom Menace, rooted in Anakin from his early childhood. Anakin’s arc is about servitude, manipulation and corruption: he was born a slave and ripped from his mother by the Jedi order, but while the Jedis professed to have freed him, all they did was force him into a more subtle indenture. The Jedi order treated Anakin like a tool to be used, like a slave all over again, and the pain of Anakin’s arc is that he was the chosen one, but was so stunted by his upbringing and the manipulations of the corrupt Jedi that he fell prey to Palpatine, who offered him only another form of bondage, this time to the Sith. Anakin’s sole moment of personal agency was when he turned on Palpatine and killed him, saving Luke, but condemning himself to death. Anakin’s final moments, in which his sweet son forgave him, were the only moments in which he was ever truly free.
Contrast this with Kylo Ren, whose arc revolves around him being a privileged brat who, after one (probably drunken) moment where Luke considered killing him because he thought he was a child psychopath, turns into a mass murderer. He is tolerable because Adam Driver is a truly excellent actor, but it’s the edgelord “limpid tears” quality to Kylo Ren that Malachiasz captures. I hated him because all I could think about was Kylo Ren’s mask, that he wore for no reason other than to be a theatrical douchebag, while Anakin’s mask was keeping him alive. (I love this very specific trope, and another character who pulled it off beautifully was Christopher Nolan’s Bane, whose backstory was excellent and heartbreaking, and please stop these tangents. Please. I am begging myself to stop.)
I said in my status updates that this book could have benefitted from being reworked as an adult novel, and this is perfectly encapsulated in Serefin’s chapters: he is 19 and leading an army, and he’s also an alcoholic. What a relatable character for teens, right?
Serefin had no arc, and instead spent most of the book wafting from one boring locale to the next, until his story culminated in some utterly batshit nonsense about moths and stars. I wanted to avoid talking about the author’s reprehensible behaviour on Twitter, where she slams readers for daring to criticise her book, as if the only reason anyone would dislike it is because they’re dumb, but I think it’s worth noting that if a good number of people come to you with the same criticism of your product, you might consider doing a bit of self-reflection. Put it this way: say I’m shopping for vibrators on Amazon, and I see one with fifty reviews out of a hundred that say it put them in the hospital. I’m likely to trust that verdict and save myself an injury. Books are art, yes, and art is subjective, but when everyone complained about the finale for Game of Thrones being rushed, it wasn’t because millions of people just suddenly lost their collective marbles. It was because the finale was rushed, and that’s the tea.
The author argues that it’s fine for a book to be “confusing”, and goes on to say: “I just… think readers could do with becoming comfortable with things not being explained in rote detail. / Anyway! Plenty of fantasy authors will hold your hand! I won’t, sorry!” (10/05/2019) What a lot of nonsense. “Confusing” is an error in storytelling; complex, mysterious, or abstract are legitimate literary techniques (Bryan Fuller’s Hannibal does this brilliantly). The ending of this book was a complete mess, not only because of the absurd, anachronistic, and poorly edited prose (a feature throughout the book) but because it’s just so fucking jumbled, and I won’t stand for being mocked on a hellsite like Twitter for this book’s own lack of basic detail or coherent plot. The characters’ bid to kill the king makes no sense besides; their initial plan is to kill both the king and Serefin, which will create a power vacuum and only exacerbate the problem, but the Dramatic Showdown reads like the view from a Go Pro thrown into a bag of fighting cats. The inept chaos of it isn’t even good for a cruel laugh.
Furthermore, the side characters could have been backspaced from the text and it wouldn’t make the blindest bit of difference. At one point, Malachiasz tells Nadya that Parijahan, one of their token POC companions on this journey, has gone missing which may mean she’s dead. Nadya makes no comment on this, despite naming Parijahan as her friend in a previous scene, and instead flirts with Malachiasz and faints dramatically in his lap. That said, Nadya becomes a side character in her own journey, as the author forces Malachiasz down our throats like salted corn into a French duck, but it’s telling that two of the few characters of colour are scarcely given a backward glance when their lives may be in danger. Similarly, Ostyia, the only explicitly queer character in the book, has no agency or depth, just a talking doll for Serefin to frown at. Serefin has the potential to be queer, though all of his romantic interactions are directed toward women and he shows no romantic or sexual interest in anyone of any other gender.
At this point in my life, I am not willing to hunt for queer representation. I am sick to fucking death of begging for scraps, and I will not sit around parsing through lines of text with a magnifying glass, pawing for sustenance like a starving possum. The answer is no.
This book suffers because of the romance, which hoovers up page time, chapter after chapter dedicated to Nadya mooning over Malachiasz. Landmark beats like crossing the border into enemy territory and battling through a duel and getting attacked by the vultures flit by as Nadya laments about her “broken boy”. This is not high fantasy, just the story of a ghost-girl and a Kylo Ren body double coldly bumping together, as much chemistry between them as two puffs of inert gas. Us gays are over here starving for rep while this is the accepted standard for straight romance? Give me a fucking break.
I can’t praise any element of this book and maintain my integrity, but if it were reworked as adult and another hundred pages added, this could have been an interesting story. If the sexual element was completely removed from the central relationship, Malachiasz aged up to forty and Nadya aged down to nine, and the connection between them rewritten into a tender friendship between a crotchety father figure and a stubborn, angry orphaned child, this could have blown me away. What a tale that could have been, especially if it revolved around a civil war, with Malachiasz and Nadya being actively chased by Serefin, aged up to thirty-five. Give Serefin a menagerie of bastard children and an earned reputation as an actual axe murderer and I could have really gotten on board with this. But I can’t, and nor can I ethically endorse another botched Slavic fantasy. If you’re interested in Slavic fantasy written by actual Slavic people, then I’d suggest Andrzej Sapkowski or Lana Popović. There’s also a list of authentic Slavic reads here.
I suppose it says more about me than it does the author that I’d have preferred this to be grimdark, but what would I know? I’m just a woman, standing in front of a bookcase, waiting for an author to hold my hand....more
Head's up: If any of you fuckers comment at the bottom of this review and say, "You don't understand BDSM" I will hunt you down and make you eat your Head's up: If any of you fuckers comment at the bottom of this review and say, "You don't understand BDSM" I will hunt you down and make you eat your computer, plus the mouse, plus the keyboard, plus any other internet-connected devices in your home, including but not limited to iPhones, iPods, iPads, Androids, games consoles and ereaders. This book is not an accurate or healthy portrayal of a real BDSM relationship between two consensual and enthusiastic parties. Thus, by defending it as such, you are doing a disservice to the actual culture of BDSM (no kinkshaming). So don't fuck with me and try to pull that shit.
Oh, also, there will be a substantial amount of cussing throughout this review. If you care about the sanctity of your virgin eyes then shut down your computer and go do something else. We are all grown-ass adults and this is the internet. If you're going to come over and here and lecture me about swearing then I'd advise that you PIPE the fuck down and stop being so bloody delicate.
Alrighty, then. You guessed it, guys: it's story time.
When I was thirteen, I decided I wanted to be an author. For years I'd chattered away about being an architect or a vet or what have you, but who was I kidding? All I ever wanted to do was write. So I sat down, and I did. I did write.
I'm actually not shitting you. I thought it would be as easy as sitting down and writing some crap on Wordpad (alright, calm down, this was the noughties) and I wrote a lot of crap: I tried to write a play, and then I tried poetry, and then I wrote short stories, before eventually expanding into novels.
Novels is a stretch. I wrote about a hundred single-spaced pages and to my present-day horror, made my family read it. And they actually did. Remember all those embarrassingly awful school projects you did when you were thirteen? Or even just those embarrassingly awful things you did in general when you were thirteen? I feel the same level of shame when I think of my little preteen self, handing this pile of shit over to my sister and thinking I actually had something.
About a year later, with zero knowledge of how publishing works, I posted it straight into a bunch of indie publisher's slushpiles. A vanity publisher replied to me and told me they didn't want my work, and I did the undoable: I argued with them.
As I write this, I'm practically convulsing with embarrassment. Vanity Publisher, if you're reading this, please forget I ever existed. But if you can't do that, at least give me an alias when you tell all your friends about that dumb kid who sent you the book about pyromania without having done any research.
In some ways, having read this book, I finally feel like I identify with that vanity publisher: I read someone's irredeemable shit and hated it, but then they tried to defend it and I got so mad I broke a window with my face.
(Peeps, if you think E.L. James hasn't tried to defend this shit, then you need to get on YouTube and watch some pleading vids from the publisher.)
I just...
I haven't read a book this awful since Revealing Eden (but let's not open that can of worms). It was like an acid trip. Am I reading this, I thought? Is this actually a published book? Are people actually parting with money for this slab of steaming garbage?
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I feel like this book insulted me, really. I feel like it spat in my face, because what reader-respecting author would create a protagonist this redundant and awe-inspiringly dense, expecting an audience to love and respect her? It's as if someone took an ice-cream scoop and relieved Ana of her brain. How could you...? Why would you...? Why is she...?
I just...
I have no words. I have no words to explain this protagonist. None at all. I have more to say about the love interest, who's like a more threatening Charles Manson but with only one brainwashed follower (Ana). This guy goes to the hardware store and buys like chains and lime and shit and Ana doesn't think this is weird?
What the fucking fuck?
And of course there's the whole "inner goddess" shit and Ana thinking that it's sexy to wear a chunky knit sweater and be strapped into a vehicle, and then using the word "vagina" during a sex scene.
"Oh, he touched my vagina".
Yeah, excuse me while I tame my boner!
I felt so uncomfortable reading this book. Now, let's be honest here: I read porn. Of course I read porn. Anyone over sixteen who says they've never looked at or read porn is talking out of their ass. But this book made me feel uncomfortable, and here's the kicker: I read it alone. I was reading it alone in my living room, and I felt uncomfortable inside my own head. What the fuck does that tell you?
I don't want to start yammering on about the way this book is written. It's written like horrendous fanfiction. There are spelling and punctuation errors, stupid turns of phrase, random asides, stilted dialogue, awful physical descriptions, weird pacing, and I don't know, like a thousand instances of brand dropping and band-naming which gives the book this bizarre cheap and dated quality that really takes away from what little redeeming features it might have had.
What are the redeeming features? I don't know. The blurb sounds interesting. That's about it.
But what is it about this book that's captured the attention of so many millions of people across the world? The absurdly stupid protagonist? The pushy, obsessive, totally unrealistic love interest? The relationship in which only one party is actually interested in BDSM, and the other is incredibly resistant to it, but is forced into it? The terrible writing? The awful cover art? The cheap, thin binding? A story so convoluted, so ridiculous, so totally immature it could only ever have been born from Twilight?
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There is nothing enjoyable about this book. This book is garbage. There are no two ways about it: it is shit. Awful, awful shit. And I'm not sorry for saying so. This is my fucking opinion, and I'm damn well going to voice it.
Okay so since Fallen was so much fun, I’ve also done a nostalgia read for this one and will be posting a Red-Hot, 1000 Degree Take within the next couOkay so since Fallen was so much fun, I’ve also done a nostalgia read for this one and will be posting a Red-Hot, 1000 Degree Take within the next couple of days. I had intended to drop the review and run, but then I started reading the second book, Hades, and I physically COULD NOT resist posting status updates. So let’s see how far I get with this.
Note: we d r a g g e d this book to hell and back 10 years ago but as a community we only scratched the surface. If any of you are hankering for a nostalgia read, I highly recommend this. It’s WILD shit, and I realised I had forgotten all of it, from the weird antisemitism to the 100% white town in the American South (???) to a teenage girl committing suicide by cutthroat like she’s Cardinal fucking Woolsey. I’m shooketh. ...more
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