Also, there is a tendency to skip over details Duncan just doesn't seem to care enough about. There's a fight with an actual god that is dealt with quickly and somewhat breezily a fight against a malign divinity should be momentous, but here it's a speed bump in the way of the moping, the snarking, and the Reylo-inspired will they-won't they relationship at the heart of this series. Exactly how they all fled the city they were held captive in and how they managed their escape is omitted. But then, with little explanation, another main character (literally) swoops in, rescues her, and then the next chapter begins with her and all her friends now hiding out in a safe house. For example, there is a chapter in which one of the main characters is led to a pyre she has been condemned by the matriarch of her religion to be burned alive, while her friends are locked in a prison powerless to stop her death as a presumed heretic.

There are big, potentially action-packed events that occur in this novel that should be in the spotlight, but aren't. On a smaller scale, however, the premise is undermined at nearly every turn by a misguided narrative focus. 'Monstrous old gods have awakened amid a never-ending war between blood wizards and religious zealots whose deities are not what they seem' is perfectly cromulent. The overall premise of Blessed Monsters is fine. ( Blessed Monsters adds 'entropy' to the list of go-to words.) The three main characters spend about the first hundred pages moping these initial chapters could easily have been condensed into something more profluent, but the issue with them points to another element that makes the novel difficult to get through: the author focuses on parts of their story that I imagine most readers don't actually care about instead of the elements that had the potential to be captivating and memorable. At this point, I'm not sure Duncan could write a novel if you excised the words 'broken,' 'disaster,' 'boy,' and 'nightmare' from their lexicon. My optimism lies defeated by the last of the books in the trilogy.īlessed Monsters does not start well. Now that I've finished Blessed Monsters, the final book in the trilogy, I have to admit that this series is unfortunately a case of diminishing returns, with each novel being a bit worse than the one that precedes it. Duncan would grow into the skill to do justice to some of the interesting ideas in their novel. When I finished reading Wicked Saints, the first book in the S omething Dark and Holy trilogy, I was willing to accept that the book was the imperfect debut of a young author the book had a lot of problems, but my hope was that with further experience Emily A.

Blessed monsters book