Review: Ruthless Gods by Emily A Duncan

Hey all, Dani here.

Will I be able to get through today’s review without turning into a gushing fangirl mess? Unlikely, but I will try my best.

First off, I want to absolutely say thank you to Wednesday Books and NetGalley for granting me early access to one of my absolute most-anticipated releases of 2020. I really appreciate it. Getting this early access did not affect my rating or review, and all thoughts and opinions are my own.

Okay, enough with the disclaimers already. I just want to jump into this review already. Oh, I guess I should say that you can find my review for the first book, Wicked Saints, here on the blog as well.

Book Details

Format: e-book

Pages: 432

Publisher: Wednesday Books

Publication Date: April 7, 2020

ISBN: 1250195691 (ISBN13: 9781250195692)

Summary

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.

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.

My Thoughts

Rating: 5 stars

It’s been so long since I reviewed Wicked Saints on this blog. I was so excited about reading it that I read it in November 2018 and then reviewed it first thing in January 2019. Then I went to the release day event in Columbus in April 2019, and I feel like I’ve talked about this book in at least two or three recommendation posts. I own a lot of copies of Wicked Saints too: signed hardcover, signed OwlCrate edition hardcover, hardcover that I annotated, e-book, and audiobook. Do I plan to buy the paperback in April? Yes, I do. Oh hey, if someone has either version of the Wicked Saints ARC, I’d really love it/them for my collection.

Clearly it’s obvious that I absolutely adore this book, which was why I pretty much started crying when I was granted the e-galley for Ruthless Gods. I was so excited to jump back into Nadya, Serefin, and Malachiasz’s world and story.

Obviously I hoped that this book would live up to my high expectations after how much I loved its predecessor, but I am happy to announce that it lived up to and blew away my expectations. So much happened in this book.

The characters are struggling with the changes since the events of the first book, and they are dealing with the fallout and consequences of their actions. Nadya just wants her gods to talk to her again, Serefin wants this mysterious voice in his head to stop talking to him, and Malachiasz is…well, he’s Malachiasz.

I will say that there were a couple plot point twists/revelations early on that I was able to quite easily predict, but I was still just so hooked on this story. Overall I ended up reading it in one day (well, technically two, if you count the fact that I stayed up quite late in the night to finish it).

Yes, this book is a bit more Gothic Horror, and there was definitely some eye horror going on in this one, which Emily A Duncan warned people about, but it really helped to build on the atmosphere of this world.

I feel like we learned more about the two main countries and their history with each other in this one. The worldbuilding was definitely expanded upon in a very interesting way. I loved getting to learn more about the gods and the war and the history of these peoples.

And I feel like I can’t really talk about the ending, though yes it is a wonderful shocking twist that makes me even more anxious about any piece of information about the concluding novel to the trilogy.

It’s difficult to review sequels because you don’t want to give out any spoilers, but I can just say that I absolutely adore these books, and I’m ready to continue to obsessively fangirl over Emily A Duncan for many years to come.

Oh–and last year when I went to the Wicked Saints release day event, I took Emily A Duncan a set of dice because she was partly inspired to write these books because of D&D. I’ll just say that I already have another set of dice for the release of Ruthless Gods, so I hope that I’m able to get to a book tour event this time around as well.

Where to Get a Copy

You can pre-order your own copy of this book from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-a-million, Book Depository, or your local independent bookstore through IndieBound. This book will be released on April 7, 2020.

You can also check with your local library to see if they will order a copy.