**Disclaimer: I received a free advanced reader’s copy of Ruthless Gods by Emily A. Duncan through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for this opportunity.
Ruthless Gods by Emily A. Duncan is the second book in the Something Dark and Holy series. It is the sequel to Wicked Saints, and picks up not long after the first book leaves off. Ruthless Gods releases on April 7th. I rated it four stars on GoodReads.
Here’s the summary from GoodReads:
Darkness never works alone…
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. They’re pieces on a board, 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.
Wicked Saints was one of my favourite books that I read last year. I really enjoyed it and I was really excited about the sequel. However, because this is a sequel, I am going to keep my review vague and spoiler free. I don’t want to ruin anyone’s reading experience if you haven’t yet picked up the first book. So I’m just going to do an overview of my general thoughts.
Ruthless Gods took me a long time to get through. I don’t think this is any fault of the book specifically, I just had a bit of a weird reading month in March. Obviously I did finish it up, and I am glad that I did. However, I will say that I enjoyed Ruthless Gods less than I liked Wicked Saints. It wasn’t a bad book, but it was slower than I expected. After the ending of the last book, I thought this one would be more fast paced. There were moments that were super exciting and that had me super engaged, but there were some parts that just felt like they dragged on.
The last ten percent or so of this book was super engaging. It wasn’t the only moment where I was super engaged or else this would have been given a much lower rating. However, it’s definitely a part that stood out to me. Emily A. Duncan has a way of ending a book that makes it so that you desperately need the next book immediately. This book hit me right in that spot. I really need to know what happens in the next book.
I love these characters as well, which is a really redeeming feature. I like the struggles they went through and seeing them grow and develop. It was interesting to see a few extra perspectives included in the novel as that allowed us to get to know some of the side characters better than we did in the first book. I also liked the new character they introduced. I liked the perspective of Kalyazi royalty.
I also liked how the world building developed in this novel as well. We got a greater picture of the world and I liked the mythos. It’s a pretty unique, interesting world that Duncan has created. I’d love to read a collection of myths from this world.
One thing that kind of bothered me about this book was that there was some weird jumps in parts. There were a few moments where she cut away in what I thought was a rather important scene. Perhaps this is nitpicky of me, but it kind of bothered me a bit. Some parts dragged on, and as I mentioned I wanted a bit more excitement.
However, on the whole I really liked the story, and I’m definitely going to need more in this world. Does anyone know when the next one comes out?
Make sure to check out Ruthless Gods when it publishes on April 7th.
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