Format: Hardcover, 544 pages
Release Date: April 7, 2020
Publisher: Wednesday Books
Source: Library
Genre: Young Adult / Dark Fantasy
The thrilling sequel to instant New York Times bestseller, 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.
Ruthless Gods is the second installment in author Emily Duncan's Something Dark and Holy series. This story picks up 4 months after the ending to Wicked Saints. The world is heavily inspired by Slavic cultures as well as a play on Joan of Arc. Gods and Magic play a prominent role in the story despite the story revolving around a century-old Holy War between Travania and Kalyazin. Once again, this story focuses on three main characters: Malachiasz Czechowicz has fled to the Vulture’s Salt Mines in his monstrous form; Serefin Meleski, now King, is struggling to keep his sanity and his kingdom from being overthrown by his own court, and Nadezhda (Nadya) Lapteva no longer has her Gods to guide her through the fallout of Malachiasz failed attempt to become a God.
This series has strong secondary characters as well: Yekaterina Vodyanova, Tsarina of Kalyazin, is a new addition to the series who has her own goals. Ostyia, Kacper, Parijahan, and Rashid all return. We even get a deeper understanding of who Parijahan is and why she turned her back on her own people. Things get interesting when Nadya finds her friend, Kostya, who was supposedly dead, very much alive at the Salt Mines leaving her to abandon her plan of finding Malachiasz. Kostya’s reintroduction into Nadya’s life is pretty predictable. Nadya undertakes a journey to a sacred site, but she'll need the help of the Black Vulture, once a boy named Malachiasz, to get there.
Let's remember a few facts: All of Nadya’s worldview is colored by the fact that she spent 17 years of her life in one place surrounded by about a hundred people protecting her and keeping her away from the real world. She’s curious, because she’s seen so little of the world thus, she tends to be empathetic and kind in a world where those things are used as a weapon, much like Malachiasz used those things as a weapon against her. In essence, Nadya sacrificed everything in the first book and is now a prison of her own devices. She trusted the wrong people; she’s been lied to multiple times and was hurt several times, but she remains hopeful when it comes to Malachiasz. Her power is still unexplained, but the introduction of the elder gods makes it clear that it will be explored more fully in the final novel.
Two thrones, two kings, two boys to plunge this world into darkness for the sake of saving it. Curious that we are now finding out the facts about Serefin and Malachiasz which leads to questions. There is also the prophecy of the girl, the prince, the monster, and the queen. But which queen is the prophecy referring to? Serefin, who is missing one eye, and has stars in the other eye, battles a voice in his head throughout this book. The voice of a god who is hell bent on taking revenge through using Serefin as a pawn in his twisted game.
Serefin wants the God out of his head and Malachiasz finds himself hungering for more power and is desperate to meet the voices who want a stake in the world and refuse to stay quiet any longer. Will the truth finally come out about the Gods themselves? Serefin also made some questionable choices towards the start of the plot, and the romance that blossomed around him happened without proper build up.
We get to know Malachiasz a little more in this book through Serefin's POV in the flashback chapter. We see how he got his powers in the first place and how later on he accepted that power and became what he was now. His relationship with Nadya varied a lot. They bickered a lot, hurt each other A LOT of times, but Nadya has her Darkling moment where enemies become lovers is the new shiny thing on the block. The author is great at portraying him as an antagonist, while still showing that he retains some of his humanity.
This is such a dark, weird fantasy series that will strongly appeal to the right reader (ME!) and be indescribably off-putting to the wrong one. I'm looking forward to the finale. I am looking for answers as to the role each of these characters will play in the final scene. I also want to know what Yekaterina is up to and what she wants with Nadya.
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SEREFIN MELESKI
A viper, a tomb, a trick of the light, Velyos is always reaching for whatever does not belong to him.
—The Letters of Wlodzimierz
Serefin Meleski inhabited the sliver of night that was ripe for betrayal. It was a time when knives were unsheathed, when plans were created and seen into fruition. It was a time for monsters.
He knew that span of hours intimately, but even knowledge of the inevitable wasn’t enough to make it less painful. It wasn’t like he spent his nights awake because he was expecting another tragedy.
No, he did it because it was easier to drink himself into oblivion than face the nightmares.
He was awake when Kacper slipped into his chambers. To rouse him, clearly, but he probably wasn’t particularly surprised to find Serefin lying on the chaise in his sitting room, one foot braced on the ground, the other leg kicked up against the back. An empty glass on the floor within reach and a book hanging over the arm where Serefin had put it to mark his place as he considered the same thing he had considered every night for the last four months: dreams of moths and blood and monsters.
Horrors at the edges of his awareness and that voice. The thin, reedy voice that needled him from a place past death. It never left. Those strange intonations hummed constantly in his veins.
“Any trouble is of your own making,” the voice snipped.
He did his best to ignore it.
“Who is it?” he asked Kacper. The hammered iron crown had long since been placed on his head, his palm cut and bled on an altar as he was named king of Tranavia—his downfall was oncoming. The nobility had never liked him, not when he was the High Prince, and certainly not since his coronation. It was never a matter of what or when, only who would be the first one brave enough to strike.
He had let the tense whispers go on and put off explaining fully how his father had died. He was tempting fate. Tranavian politics were messy. So very, very messy.
“There’s a collective meeting happening,” Kacper answered, voice soft.
Serefin nodded, not bothering to sit up. He’d anticipated it from the slavhki who had been supporters of his father.
“Kseszi Ruminski is involved,” Kacper continued.
Serefin winced, finally standing. Nicking his finger, he lit a few candles with the magic sparking from his blood and wiped his hand, movements slow.
Zaneta’s family had been demanding answers for months. Serefin was at a loss for what to say. “Oh, terribly sorry, she committed some light treason and the Black Vulture decided she would be better served amongst his kind. Tragically awkward situation, but, there it is! Nothing to be done.”
It was a constant, festering point of anxiety that had settled underneath his skin. Yes, Zaneta had betrayed him, and, yes, he had died for it, but did she deserve the terrifying fate Malachiasz had chosen for her?
“You’re being unusually calm about this,” Kacper noted.
“What will they do, I wonder? Hang me? Toss me in the dungeons and forget about me?”
Kacper deflated some, shoulders slumping. “I hate when you’re defeatist,” he muttered, shoving past where Serefin stood to make his way into Serefin’s bedchambers.
“Where are you going?” Serefin asked. He contemplated the bottles in his cabinet before pulling a miraculously full bottle of vodka from the shelf. “I’m not defeatist,” he murmured. “I’m pragmatic. Realistic. This was inevitable.”
“A coup is not an inevitability,” Kacper snapped from inside the room. Was he packing? “None of this would have happened if you had hanged that damned cleric instead of forcing her into the same odd limbo you’ve forced on the rest of the country. But you didn’t. And here we are with a coup on our hands because we have no one to blame. Do you want to end up like your father?”
Serefin flinched. He took a long drink. Dreams of moths and blood and his father’s body at his feet. He had not landed the killing blow but it was his fault all the same.
“No,” he whispered, brushing a pale moth away from the flame of the candle.
“No. You don’t.”
But that is likely inevitable, too, Serefin thought morosely. Kacper would not take well to him saying it out loud.
“Half your clothes have been eaten by moths.” Kacper sounded despairing.
The door flew open. Serefin’s hand went to his spell book, adrenaline spiking. He shuddered, sighing. It was only Ostyia.
“Oh, you’re awake,” she said flatly.
“Lock that door.”
She did.
“I told him what was going on and he’s standing there drinking!” Kacper complained.
Serefin offered Ostyia the vodka bottle.
Kacper poked his head out and groaned as she grabbed it and took a sip.
She winked at Serefin—an exaggerated blink from her one eye.
“Get back in here, Kacper,” Serefin said.
Kacper huffed loudly and leaned in the doorway.
“How long have they been meeting?”
“I’m fairly certain this is their first,” Kacper replied.
“They won’t strike tonight.”
“But—”
“They won’t strike tonight,” Serefin repeated firmly.
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