Blessed Monsters

Something Dark and Holy #3

by Emily A. Duncan

The startling conclusion to the instant New York Times bestselling Something Dark and Holy trilogy

The girl, the monster, the prince, the queen.

They broke the world.

And some things can never be undone.

In Emily A. Duncan’s Blessed Monsters, they must unite once more to fight the dark chaos they've unleashed—but is it already too late?

Genres: Fantasy, Young Adult, Romance, Horror, Young Adult Fantasy, High Fantasy, Fiction

528 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 6, 2021

About the author

“Emily A. Duncan was born and raised in Ohio and works as a youth services librarian. She received a Master’s degree in library science from Kent State University, which mostly taught her how to find obscure Slavic folklore texts through interlibrary loan systems. When not reading or writing, she enjoys playing copious amounts of video games and dungeons and dragons. She is represented by Thao Le of the Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency.”

Review/Rating Policy: I am a creature of many strong wills and book opinions so I only rate books I deeply adore. Everything else is just marked as read.

Reviews

[Emily Duncan]

things in this book:
cannibalism
swamp zombies
eldritch gods
really big spiders
monster-sonas
of course more eyeballs
sibling bonding under duress
oh god so much kissing
Katya Thinks Her Life Was Better Before She Had Friends. Her New Friends Are The Worst.
Serefin is gifted an entire bottle of vodka. He's delighted. This is maybe bribery?
Borzoi
more cults!
so many messes that need to be cleaned up.

[♠ TABI⁷ ♠]

FYI: I'm sad & weary to report this author has been outed as yet another person who finds it easier to be problematic than supportive of PoC and their cultures???

I just want to know all the characters are gonna have a happy ending and time to cuddle with their SO's after all the t r a g e d y they've been through

[jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

least favourite book in the series for the following reasons:

- too long between books and didnt feel like doing a reread, so completely forgot what happened in the previous book, and there are no little recap points to jog the readers memory in this at all

- this book is way too long with such slow pacing and nothing happening in a span of 300 pages

- felt a general disconnect with the characters and story (see point one), as well as with the writing (see point two)

that being said, i still really like the concept/idea of the story. based on what i started to remember from the previous books, the ending to this is really fitting. its an apt conclusion and one that suits the characters and their storylines. it also continues the excel at the dark, gothic, bloody vibes that i have loved since the first book. the atmosphere is definitely the shining star of this.

so overall, didnt love this as much as the first two books for various reasons, but there are still some good qualities about it.

↠ 3.5 stars

[Melissa ♥ Dog/Wolf Lover ♥ Martin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Meh, I don’t know! I skim read a lot of the book. I liked it, but I wanted All the heated scenes with Malachiasz and Nadya but it wasn’t like that. Yes, there is stuff but it dragged arse to those parts. It was more a little this and that, all these people, torture and bleh and shit. I guess I’ll be trading in my Owlcrate editions to make room for other books. I will get these on kindle when they go cheap and hope I decide I don’t want all the kissy kissy later on 🙄🤦🏻‍♀️

Mel 🖤🐶🐺🐾

********

The freaking limited edition pin that came is a whole mood for me!!







Mel

[Hailey · Rating 1 out of 5]

Update 4/6/2021: It has recently come to light that this book series was confirmed by the author to have antisemitic plotlines centered around blood libel and the conspiracy of Jewish analogs as the shadow government who are pulling the strings in the Royal palace. They thought they a “handled it sensitively” when in truth it just perpetuated harmful stereotypes that I didn’t notice until I had finished the series.

-The main character Malachiasz (Malachai...) is a
Jewish stereotype with unruly curly black hair filled with bones that he uses in his blood magic (blood libel). He is the leader of the “shadow government” who uses blood magic and kidnapping innocent young people to torture them and turn them into “one of them” to gain power. This kind of plot line about Jewish people stealing young and pure Christian children and corrupting them goes as far back as the Middle Ages. It is the exact definition of blood libel being perpetuated by Malachiasz and his cohort.

-The Jewish coded characters are also described as “vermin” which is an often used derogatory term when justifying the violence perpetuated against Jewish people.

The idea that a Jewish person is trying to control the government is something we see far too often even today with white nationalist conspiracies. I’m honestly appalled and disappointed that this is in the book and was confirmed by the author.

There were also derogatory comments made to Asian authors at events and in business group chats and they dismissed and belittled book bloggers and a survivor of CSA (over a Jon Snow/Sansa fan creation). Now that I know what I know, I cannot condone promoting this series so I will be marking my review down to one star and removing my original review.

[Ayman · Rating 1 out of 5]

fuck no and y’all know why

[Gretal · Rating 1 out of 5]

So, this book didn't call Malachiasz a boy as much as Ruthless Gods did, but it still was pretty bad at 72. I have nothing else to say about this book. I hated it.

[Era ➴]

ah yes
another problematic/racist author who has perpetuated harmful stereotypes and (literally, in-mental-health terms) triggered people with their insensitive behavior and refusal to own up to any of their actions
truly inspiring for aspiring authors like myself and my friends, who have enough trouble finding mainstream representation without the harassment (:
please see Elena's review for sources and information

[Lena · Rating 2 out of 5]

Annoying, inconsistent and partly boring - but it's finally over.
The end of the trilogy didn't live up to the first book. The author created an original fantasy world and interesting characters but got lost trying to put everything together. Some plot twists lead to nowhere; new characters are introduced all the time that have no influence on the story and some of the main characters remain decorative no matter how hard the author tries to make them significant. And the ending leaves more questions than answers. All this presented in uneven jumpy writing.
In general, good ideas spoiled by mediocre writing.

[ash |]

a concept: serefin finally gets to sleep

01 Wicked Saints 4 stars
02 Ruthless Gods 4.5 stars

[skyeslibrary · Rating 5 out of 5]

OH. MY. GOD.

Where do I begin?!

If you follow me on Bookstagram (@skyeslibrary), then you know Something Dark and Holy is my favorite series. I’ve dedicated many posts to expressing how much I love it and why. So, it isn’t a surprise to anyone that Blessed Monsters was my most anticipated read of 2021. I’m not going to lie, though — I was nervous. I just didn’t know how Emily could give these beautiful characters the endings they deserve without completely ripping my heart out. HOW COULD I HAVE EVER DOUBTED HER?!

This series ending is truly EVERYTHING I could have asked for!

The Summary
includes minor spoilers for Ruthless Gods

We pick up a few weeks following the ending of Ruthless Gods. Our characters are split up all over the place. Serefin and Nadya are plagued by their regrets and grief. Malachiasz is a whirling ball of chaos trying to grasp onto the little bit of humanity he still has. And the others are somewhere in between all of it.

One thing that’s absolutely certain is what they did on the mountaintop has had MASSIVE repercussions. The eldritch gods that were locked away for ages have been freed and are ready to strike — ready to consume the world and cover it in everlasting darkness. It’s only a matter of time (and not a lot of time) before they overtake the world.

And who is the one that gets to remind our motley crew how badly they’ve screwed up and what they need to do in an attempt to save the world? Our resident salty witch, Pelageya, of course!

The question is: can these monstrous characters who’ve so brutally betrayed each other at every opportunity come together to save the world and redeem themselves?

·

The Characters

Ever character — main and secondary — experiences significant growth. We get to journey with each of them as they dig deep to recognize who they truly are and who they want to be. Each has to FIGHT to bring about the change they want to see in themselves and in their world.

I’ve always loved the inclusion of a polytheistic religion in this series, and Nadya’s spiritual journey has been such a constant theme weaved throughout Something Dark and Holy. Even after everything they’ve put her through, she still wants to hope in her gods. But can she exist as she is — with her inner darkness breaking through the surface — and still keep her faith? Can she accept who she truly is and own her power, or will she continue to tamp it down and pretend to be less than she was born to be?

Malachiasz has always been our lovable, anxiety-ridden, monster boy that just wants to create peace for his country and its people (he also wants to possess all the magic he can — that doesn’t change). But now that he’s in the grasp of a malevolent god after being so thoroughly betrayed by the only people he has ever loved, will he succumb to the darkness that is waiting with open arms? Or will he be strong enough to overcome it and sacrifice what he must in an attempt to save the world and make it better than it’s ever been?

Serefin never thought he’d make it off the battlefields to claim his rightful throne. He has gladly accepted his reputation as drunkard, soldier prince. Now that he is a gods-touched boy that wears the Tranavian crown, can he grow up and bring about the peace his people so desperately need?

I would never forget our amazing supporting cast! We get so much of Parj, Rashid, Katya, Anna, Kacper, Ostyia, and a Vulture or two. This is one of the best ensembles I’ve ever read, and I can’t get enough of them!

·

The Review

As always, Emily does an incredible job getting us into the headspace of each of the characters. We feel their pains, their doubts, their hopes, their fears — everything they feel, we experience right along with them.

Emily’s writing is so beautiful. This chaotic, mad, macabre, gothic world comes to life so easily thanks to her world-building. She stays true to it from start to finish. This world is fleshed out thoroughly, and she builds on the solid foundation she laid in the first two books.

I am obsessed with the different magic systems within this series, and I love that we get to see even more of that in this one: blood magic (my personal fave), divine magic, healing magic…ALL the magic! And it doesn’t hurt that my love, Malachiasz, is a such curious magic monster! I love his desire to break down and analyze every piece of magic he encounters so he can understand how it works. He continuously wants to push the boundaries of what exists in order to move his country forward.

The relationships just get better and better! I was all-in from the moment I read Wicked Saints because the relationship dynamics are SO GOOD. Ruthless Gods explored that theme even more. And Blessed Monsters takes it to another level by increasing the amount of relationship content we get. Emily is a master at exploring individual relationships as well as weaving them all together as a collective.

Topics you can find in Blessed Monsters that make it AMAZING:
- friendship in the midst of betrayal
- love at the end of the world
- hesitant brotherly bonding
- forgiveness
- self-acceptance
- riddles
- international relations
- queer representation
- magic
- cults
- transportation huts

If you have a weak stomach, be warned this book includes massive amounts of:
- blood
- gore
- mutilation
- cannibalism
- eyeballs
- spiders
- death

·

I highly recommend this series, and I can’t gush about it enough. It really is my favorite! If you are reading this before April 6, 2021, please preorder Blessed Monsters. If you are reading after April 6, 2021, please go buy it immediately! If you already own it, share it with everyone you know!

Thank you so much to Emily A. Duncan for writing this beautiful, messy, bloody, series! We are undeserving, and I don’t think I’ll recover anytime soon, but I don’t really want to!

·

Thanks to Wednesday Books and D.J. DeSmyter for providing me with a digital ARC of this book to read and review prior to publication date! You made my dreams come true.

[Nastassja · Rating 4 out of 5]

Actual rating: 3.5 stars

“Lie to me,” she whispered. “Do what you do best.”

Blessed Monsters is a highly anticipated release I've been waiting for and dying to read. I've been following the story for three years and it is hard to say goodbye. But I'll try.

I decided to start with a spoiler-free part of this review because I want to express my admiration for the work Emily A. Duncan has done with this story. The world-building of this universe was one of the things I highly enjoyed throughout the books. Slavic-based with religion mixed with blood magic was exactly what makes the story stand out. Unlike Leigh Bardugo with her The Grisha Trilogy, Emily put more diligence in researching various Slavic-based cultures and harmonically integrating them into the story. There's almost no seams, how perfect the layout of the world was integrated into the carcass of the story.

The one thing I really loved is the dark tone of the story. This is a highly Gothic and bloody narrative. You can feel the darkness seeping off the pages to the extent when sometimes it does look like madness and it is hard to understand what is happening. But as it has added certain darkness to the story it has also confused it. By book three I was a little bit wary of all the craziness going on around characters and couldn't understand much. Hopefully, the second part of the book cleared things considerably but it still left an aftertaste that some things would only be comprehensible to the author, not the reader, which kind of disintegrates a reader from the story. Not much but still.

Another thing that bothered me considerably is the repetitiveness of action in this book. I had a deja vu quite a few times, feeling like we have been here before, have done it before. Some phrases and descriptions were similar or the same (?) as in previous books and it felt 500+ pages were too much for this one. I'd cut it, taking some overly poetic parts. But I also understand that it's the author's love child; she put her soul into this book.

Knowing how much Emily A. Duncan poured herself into this story, it saddens me that the situation with some of her statements on Twitter was projected on her books as well and people madly give bad ratings to a book they haven't even read because of their opinion about the author. I still stick to the opinion that a book should not suffer because of its creator. I separate a person who wrote a book from their opinions, religion, or political views, no matter how offensive they are or might seem to others. If I have something to tell the author, I'd do it directly on social media without organizing a witch hunt on the author's books.

In the second part of this review, I want to make a spoiler part because I need to talk about my favorite characters and I can't do that without spoilers, so SPOILERS ALERT!!!

The reason I gave this book 3.5 stars is I felt underwhelmed. I loved and enjoyed Wicked Saints and Ruthless Gods so much I hurt when characters hurt. But in Blessed Monsters I felt a little bit detached from them. Why? Because I didn't feel character development to the extent I wish I could. Granted, the way they decided at the end to sacrifice their lives was very emotional and I loved it but it also felt abrupt, too fast. The whole book Nadya, Serefin, and Malachiasz did exactly the same thing they did in the previous installment - being themselves. The story lacked show, don't tell factor for me. For example, we were told how charming Malachiasz to everyone was, why Vultures chose him as their leader, but we were never really shown that. Nadya turned from a mild special-snowflake to major pain in a backside with her talk of monstrous boys, plus her newly awakened monstrous powers. We get that you and Malachiasz are the same now, but I didn't feel the fringe when one thing became the other. This book has a lot of jagged edges that do not fit together perfectly. I love all charters separately and as couples but I did not feel the gradual fondness of them as the whole team.

I wanted less pathos and more sanity (as much as possible), but this story gave me more pathos and more chaos, which I get but also find very confusing and maybe more suitable as a motion picture for a visual perception but not in a written form. I lost a thread of events more than once and struggled to grasp it again.

Then there's Pelageya, which I found highly confusing and her being a prototype of Baba Yaga was quite weak compared to the original. She confused the narrative more than she served a purpose of some kind of twisted spiritual guidance. I understand that Emily wanted her to be that way but in this book I found myself liking Pelageya less and less, and she took quite a lot of book space if you ask me.

And don't let me start on the sex scene! We've been waiting for Nadya and Malachiasz to do it for three books, and all we get they kiss and the screen goes blank?! I wasn't expecting the level of Sarah J. Maas nakedness, god no, but considering how bloody this book was, some naked skin would do it well.

Apart from the aforementioned issues, I am still very fond of the whole trilogy. The ending, in my opinion, is very fitting. The characters didn't get their happily ever after but they got to hope and it is more than they had at the beginning of their journey. I loved how twisted and wicked they were, that basically all of them were monsters, not heroes. And even saving the world they were destroying it, in a way. It's refreshing. Antiheroes are my favorite type!

Plus, I really liked how the darkness of the story was diluted with humor. Serefin, the light of this story, even at the darkest hour still stayed funny and hilarious. Other characters as well joked quite a lot at the doomed hour and it lightened the story, otherwise, it would've been too dark, considering how dark it was already.

Overall, another age is gone with this trilogy's ending. I am sad and happy, at the same time. It will stay in my heart forever. All characters - main and secondary - play a significant role in the story. No one missed or mistreated and it warms my heart, knowing that even if there wouldn't be any other books written in this world, at least for them there's hope in the future and I can close my eyes and go back to the world of Something Dark and Holy.

[Ꮗ€♫◗☿ ❤️ ilikebooksbest.com ❤️]

Blessed Monsters: another awesome Title and Cover for this series!



What? I have to wait until April 2021...



c’mon already!

[Lara]

Ms. Duncan, please help Malachiasz and Nadya, they are literally one of my favorite book-couples. Ever.

[b · Rating 1 out of 5]

DO NOT READ - RACIST & ANTISEMITIC AUTHOR

To write something so horridly antisemitic KNOWINGLY is disgusting. To think of that as something funny to get away with is demeaning. What a disgrace of a writer and what a disgraceful and disturbing series. To write even less than a half as*ed apology and proceed to “take time away” to learn to not be a racist antisemitic person is running from accountability. The horrid way you made Hafsah Faizal feel for releasing a book on the day you were was childish. Shame on you. You haven’t even owned up to all of the nasty things you’ve said and the nasty ways you’ve acted. Being a white writer does not absolve you of your wrongdoings. Own up to your sh*t.

[Tiffany Bookwormgram]

Edit: I am leaving my review up, but things have come to light about this author and I am no longer comfortable supporting this series. I do not condone bullying in any form, especially when a white author uses their popularity to bully and be hateful to the BIPOC community.

***
I love how the author ended this series, but I couldn’t get over the repetition of words at points. I’m hoping the final copy has the word “entropy” at least a dozen less times.

Other than that, I loved it. These kids never listen to anyone and they’re disastrous and I had such fun with them! It was a wonderful end to a trilogy have had enjoyed so much.

[Brittany McCann · Rating 5 out of 5]

What does one even say at the end of this.... I don't want to torture these characters anymore, but I have SO many questions about the lore and the world, and if we don't get an Akolan tale, I will be SO SAD! I need the deets on these things, Emily A. Duncan. Emily is wow. If I could only pick one subgenre to read for the rest of my life, it would always be Dark Fantasy. Having them to add to the amazing genre with the stories of Anne Bishop and Jay Kristoff and contributing to keeping the darkness alive breathes new life into this area that isn't for everyone but packs more power than any other subgenre I have ever read.

When I describe this trilogy to other people, I tell them that there are only Grey characters, REALLY REALLY dark grey characters, except for maybe Anna and Rashid. Rashid is definitely the light in the dark. The depth of character is phenomenal.

I love this trio; of course, the girl and the monster reign supreme in my heart. The darker the girl, the more I loved her!

The lore was my favorite part; I loved the little sections before each chapter and how they brought a special depth to each chapter.

I have heard this described as a Joan of Arc retelling, which I guess very, very vaguely would fit, but this is SO unique and different from that that you would have to dig to find that. I guess it has to be just the incident of this book having a lot of fan art created for it that fed into that.

Some quotes I love
Such as Malachiasz's witty, dark humor:
“And you’ll go back to Tranavia and retake your throne, execute the ones who wronged you, and spend the rest of your life on the cusp of godhood and trying to crack open the mysteries of the universe?”
“Dramatic. I would like to take a nap as well.”

"'I've always wanted to rescue someone!' Malchieasz said cheerfully. 'What a novel change of pace.'
Rolling chaos and absolutely covered in blood. His eyes were murky; he was barely holding onto himself. He grinned at her"

"'You're a mess.'
'A mouth just opened on your neck so, really, speak for yourself.'"

The moment that gave me chills:
"Fitting, he says, for your last image to be of me, your last heartbeat in my hands. He wants me to destroy every single piece of you."

The great banter between Kacper and Serefin:
"Deflecting by way of catastrophizing is a great strategy."

5+ Stars. I absolutely loved the journey.

[Melody · Rating 2 out of 5]

This review can also be found on my blog, Where the Words Take Me.

Thank you, NetGalley and the publisher, for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

For the record, I���m not going to be reviewing the author and her behavior here but the book. If you’re curious about the former, plenty of folks on Goodreads have already done so for me. I have, frankly, read much better from much worse people.

So what’s the deal with Blessed Monsters by Emily A. Duncan? Well, it turns out it’s better than Ruthless Gods, but it’s still not good. Descriptions of cosmic horrors and eldritch monsters were emphasized vastly over setting, so I never got a clear sense of where we were in Kalyazin. Characters would be at a nondescript palace, manor, safe house, graveyard, capital city, etc., and then they would be at the next nondescript place. So my brain did what it does: imagined whatever it wanted with nothing to ground its imaginings. Neither author nor editor has gotten a handle on the comma splices, either, so they were beyond annoying, along with the “noun and noun and noun and noun” description style. Whatever weight those had before gets beaten to death in this book. Whatever enthusiasm I had left for this trilogy was slowly chipped away as I read, to the point where even if other books were planned to be set in this world, I wouldn’t reach for them.

As with the first two books, the strongest feature here that I found was with the focus on its lore: the gods, the magic, and all the facets of life that are affected by them, especially now that the world is apparently ending as Chyrnog slowly takes over Malachiasz. At last, our characters are focused on the actual plot, namely how to stop Chyrnog and set the world back in order. Nadya is finally focused on what matters now that she thinks that Malachiasz is dead. I was so happy to have her back and away from Malachiasz for an extended period of time. I was even happy to have many chapters where Serefin and Malachiasz were forced to interact and navigate their whole brother thing. This was all sorely missing from Ruthless Gods.

And then I realized I had read over half of the book, and nothing was happening. Nadya and Malachiasz inevitably, unfortunately, reunite, and my interest plummeted. We have a decently-sized cast here that slowly came together, but they were all Extremely Cool with each other for no reason other than Duncan wanting everyone to get along. In the previous book, Malachiasz killed Nadya’s god, Serefin killed Malachiasz, and Nadya destroyed Tranavia’s access to blood magic. All three of these characters betrayed each other in enormous ways, but aside from them wringing their hands, worrying that the other two must hate them for their actions, it turns out they needn’t have bothered. Everything is fine actually! We’re all cool! Let’s all hug and kiss and have a trite argument, and then it’s all fine!

Even when Katya kills Zywia, Malachiasz’s right hand Vulture who he apparently views as a sister even though this is the first time I’ve heard it, everyone is fine with it. Even Malachiasz. Oh, sure, he’s tense and angry for a few pages, but who cares? Nothing at all comes of it. No consequences. We also never ever talk with any weight about the fact that Malachiasz is now eating people under Chyrnog’s compulsion because why should we? Let’s just make deadpan remarks and witticisms about it instead. Dealing with the old gods situation matters more, except the characters spend most of the book not doing anything about that, either. We have eight to nine people in the same area, and all of them just constantly wonder, “What should we do?” for a whole book. It’s like watching a DnD campaign where the players decide not to actively search for information; they just sit in a tavern and on the rare occasions where they deign to not sit in the tavern, the DM gives them absolutely nothing to work with.

What could’ve helped make this a bit more interesting to read would’ve been having our cast work through their lingering problems with each other. Except, no, we can’t have any real conflict between our precious main characters, can we? We have to force found family dynamics by ignoring everything that could cause the slightest bit of friction between them. Which, okay, but that does make it very boring reading when you have seven plus characters on the same page who have no tension between them. Everyone in this book has the exact same sense of humor, even random, barely-there characters. Everyone is cuddling and kissing each other, so you know they Love Each Other Very Much. Everyone sounds like everyone else, even Serefin, who in the past always stood out to me in more distinctive ways.

In fact, Serefin, who was my main reason for reading this trilogy, almost might as well not have been here after his Malachiasz-bonding scenes were over. I barely recognized him in this book, which kept affirming that he was charming, but the charm was all but absent. He really was here only because the plot demanded he had to be. I was proud of him from accepting his role as king and choosing to stop running, but he didn’t get much chance to actually demonstrate that resolve here. We never even went to Tranavia where all his political issues are. He also largely stopped drinking as a coping mechanism despite relying on it for two books, but he experienced no side effects or withdrawal symptoms, which was pretty unrealistic.

But besides the main three characters, what’s going on with the rest of the cast? Nothing, really. Ostyia is brutally shafted to the side for a lesbian romance with Katya that happens largely off-page, so why should I care? I don’t. Kacper is there just to kiss Serefin and assure him he loves him even though Serefin is king and will have all the responsibility a king is expected to have.

For two books, I kept waiting for Parijahan and Rashid to be developed as characters and explained why they are involved with this plot and these people, and I was so let down. Turns out the answer is Plot Conveniences and to assert that more people like Malachiasz as a person besides Nadya. I learned that Parj’s magic is unconscious of her control, and it’s some sort of rational magic. Apparently, the reason why Malachiasz becomes less chaotic/more human—especially in Wicked Saints—is all due to Parj’s magical influence, and I cannot begin to summarize how much I hated that. I also learned that Rashid has rare healing magic, and you know in that moment exactly what that means he’ll be using it for: resurrecting dead main characters.

Since I’m bringing up Malachiasz, let’s get this out of the way: I officially will never like or understand this character, and people who say he’s like the Darkling or Kylo Ren do owe those characters an apology. I have never seen the amount of pretzeling that these books do to justify this character’s actions while constantly flip-flopping between “unrepentant monster” and “he’s just a scared boy uwu.” While he doesn’t get called a “boy” as much here as in Ruthless Gods, it’s still way too much. For the first time in Blessed Monsters, Malachiasz reveals that he gave away the rest of his soul somehow, and that’s why Chyrnog has control of him. The book (and Nadya) believes his lack of soul is why Malachiasz acts without conscience or remorse for anything he does. Meanwhile, Malachiasz’s POV chapters constantly demonstrate his guilt, hee-hawing, and inconsistencies. So what is the truth? Who knows? Who cares?

Blessed Monsters affirmed for me why Malachiasz is such a poorly written character as a villain because not once has he actually had a goal or a purpose. He constantly thinks he does while floundering between choices nonstop. Now that I’ve read this book’s lackluster conclusion where Everyone Passes Out at the End, I can confidently say that Malachiasz never achieved any goal he claimed he had because he’s still in the exact same position as when he started. Sure, he has eyeball clusters popping up every second and mouths everywhere, but so what? He’s still mortal, he’s still the Black Vulture, his country’s still a wreck, the old gods are sealed off but not destroyed, he killed Marzenya but it’s loudly implied she’ll be reborn, so what was it all for?

I am glossing over how different magic is in the world now, but as far as I can tell, that’s the only thing that’s truly changed that matters. Serefin is still this godstouched moth king that can handle stars, but so what? Nadya is made of the same stuff as the old gods and accepts her power as hers, but so what? The eldritch descriptions have become so repetitive that they’ve become blasé even to the other characters in the book. No one reacts realistically to the stars around Serefin’s head or Nadya’s spider eyes, and even if normal people existed in Blessed Monsters, I’m sure they wouldn’t have any kind of reaction either. Anna sure doesn’t.

In a 528-page book that’s a conclusion to a trilogy, I expected so much more to be accomplished than what actually was, to the point where it strongly feels like other books in this world might be planned, but I don’t care anymore. This was the place where the landing needed to stick, where I could sit back and be glad that I invested the time I did in this world and these characters. Instead, all was wasted on the characters having a lack of direction for the entire thing, but don’t worry! There are plenty of scenes featuring empty conversation, quippy responses, cuddle time, and reminders that eldritch horrors are happening, which we’ll skip over as quickly as we can.

[Brittany · Rating 5 out of 5]

**Things have come to light about this author and we all can see she’s a shitty person now. No longer supporting the author (I had read an arc of this back in Feb) but I’m not changing my review because it’s how I felt at the time.**

Dark. Horrifying. Monstrous.

It is incredible to me how absolutely different this book feels from the first two, while simultaneously being the perfect conclusion to the story.

I loved this so much from the very beginning and truly cannot find anything with it I’d wish to change.
The layout of the plot and how it progressed, the POV set up, the character development - all perfection.
And MY GODS the character voice? It was a never ending cycle of me screaming, laughing, :( :( :( and !!!!!!!
The conversations between characters in this book are just A+ content I am in love with them all and wish they would all love me back.

I cannot wait for everyone else to get to experience this creepy ass perfect book.
(I also cannot wait to be able to share all of the highlights I have from this book but alas, you must wait until release day)

[Valeria]

How do you know a new Something Dark and Holy book is coming?

Your eye starts to feel weird.

[Taylor Stephens · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am a big fan of the first two books, and I believe that played a part in liking this book. I feel that the build up from the previous books was difficult to pay off and that shows in this book. However, it is still a very good book that I would recommend if you were a fan of the series.

[EmmaSkies · Rating 4 out of 5]

When - not if - you sit down to read Blessed Monsters, I recommend having a blanket (for shock), a warm drink (for comfort), and a friend no more than a text message away (for emotional support). Blessed Monsters kept me STRESSED at almost all times in the best way. SO MUCH HAPPENS.

The first two books in the Something Dark and Holy trilogy set such an epic stage that it's daunting going into the finale and not knowing how it could possibly all end, but Blessed Monsters does a fantastic job of living up to its predecessors. The stakes are higher, the fear is greater, the eyes are impossibly more numerous, and Serefin is more sarcastic than ever. What more could we ask for?

And while the SD&H series is a grand scale of gods and monsters and war, it's the characters themselves - both individually and through their connections with each other - which are the driving force of everything. Not one of the characters we see in Blessed Monsters is the same person we met in Wicked Saints (with the possible exception of Kacper who was perfect from the start and remains perfect, if anything he changes only to achieve a higher level of perfection) and that level of growth throughout these books is the beating (bleeding) heart of it all.

I'm just fully in love with this entire series, what a joy this has been from start to finish. Well...maybe joy isn't the right word. A stressful, bloody, magical, fanatical time that I loved all the way.

The pace of this book does move very fast and there were times where I wish things had slowed down a bit, where I got lost in everything moving so fast and five things happened before I'd fully processed the first, and there are some loose threads that I wish had been more explored by the end so overall I give Blessed Monsters 4 creepy eyeballs out of 5. This is definitely a book that will hold up well to a re-read in the future and I already can’t wait for it.

[Kelly⁷]

I shall perish with this book if anyone is harmed in an irreparable way.

[Diabolical Duckling · Rating 3 out of 5]

LISTEN UP DUNCAN YOU CAN DO WHATEVER YOU WANT WITH NADYA AND EMO VULTURE BOY BUT SERAPHIN, KACPER, OSTYIA, AND PARIJAHAN ARE OFF LIMITS! NOBODY BETTER HURT MY BABIES.

Update 06/26/2020 - THAT COVER. OH GOD. OH FUCK. THE RAVENS. THE ONION DOMES. THAT CREEPY ASS RED EYE. I AM SO FUCKING HERE FOR IT.

Review - 06/14/2021

Alright kiddos, I’ll be 100% honest with y’all. I really REALLY enjoyed the first two installments of this series. I loved the entire aesthetic of these books; the creepy gods, the dark forests, the decadent nobility, and the ersatz feeling of loneliness and terror evoked by the image of a white-haired cleric wandering in an icy wood with a glorified bird man. Sue me, I’m a motherfucker who loves the aesthetic. However, Ruthless Gods will ALWAYS remain my favorite installment of this series, as in this book, Duncan* failed to deliver. Blessed Monsters, while a satisfactory conclusion to the events of the previous few books and filled with lots of nice moments, ultimately felt rushed. I truly believe that this series would have been perfect if Duncan’s editors hadn’t rushed her to complete them in a span of two years and if maybe, just MAYBE this series could have been four books instead of three. Because while this book was by no means bad, there were many unanswered questions and resolutions that felt sloppy and underdeveloped. Spoilers will abound below, so if you don’t want them look away you shits.

*Note, the whole Anti-Semitic elements surrounding the Vulture storyline and Duncan’s supposed harassment of other YA authors (a debacle which included a Taylor Swift stan account, an author named Sin Pacheco (name changed to protect the innocent) and lots of angry, angry millennials) was not brought to my attention until well after this book was published and in my hot little hands. I don’t know much about the full dispute as it is very muddied and vague, and I am not Jewish, so I am not the best duck to speak about the anti-Semitic allegations surrounding this book. However, you can find comfort (or indignation) in the fact that I pirate every YA novel I read nowadays unless it’s a Holly Black book and so no money was given to Duncan in the process of this review.


SPOILERS FROM THIS POINT ONWARDS, TURN BACK, ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE.

THE GOOD

1) Plot Resolution

The only marginally good thing I could say about this book was that I did enjoy how everything was resolved. Some of the characters Duncan created were truly marvelous and I am happy that none of them met bad ends. I am glad Duncan didn’t pull a “kill the minorities” move and slaughter everyone who wasn’t white and/or straight. Seraphin, you got the peace and happiness YOU DESERVED, my gorgeous boy.

2) The Old Gods

The old gods are all evil weird bitches and so of course I loved seeing them do their shit. The gods and the conflict between the pantheons has always been one of my favorite aspects of this series.

THE BAD

Messiness

While Wicked Saints and Ruthless Gods were weird, well thought out masterpieces, this book seemed a bit rushed in comparison. There were a few unresolved plot threads/elements that make me want to SCREAM when I think about the wasted potential surrounding them, which include but are not limited to:

1) Seraphin’s Eye

If you’ve read Ruthless Gods, you’re probably still recovering from Seraphin’s “I am a bad bitch and I will rip out my eyeball to spite literal divine beings” scene. That scene, in of itself, was perfect. Case closed, nothing more needed to be done. Thus, I was surprised when Duncan revealed that Malachiasz/Chyrnog had Seraphin’s eye stowed away in their....mass of blood....or whatever. I was even angrier when Malachiasz’ stealing of the eye went NOWHERE. Seriously. The lost eye is used for a bit of horror and some comic banter and then....everybody forgets about it. There was no fucking reason for Vulture Boy to even HAVE this eye and it was completely irrelevant to the plot. Seriously Duncan, why the fuck did you even need the eye in this book? It was a pointless scene and it should have been edited out. Leave Seraphin and his goddamned eyeball alone, they’ve both been through enough.

2) Pelageya

I’ve decided to arrange this list in order of piss-offs, and the treatment of Pelageya in Blessed Monsters was a pretty big piss-off. For starters, Pelageya is built up to be a pretty interesting character throughout this series. She’s an exiled Kalyazi witch who lives in a foreign land under her greatest enemies’ protection. She has dubious motives and even stranger magic. She is immortal, and ANCIENT. She knows shit about the gods and divinity that could make or break our protagonists. I was curious to know more about Pelageya’s origins in this book, but alas, Duncan decided to give us JACK SHIT. I had soooooo many theories for Pelageya’s backstory: was she a former cleric and a Kalyazi saint in hiding? Was she one of the original Saints who bound chrnog? Was she a scheming devotee of the elder gods who elaborately plotted the release of Velyos and manipulated everyone in order to achieve this end? Was she living proof of the promise offered to Nadya by the gods - an immortal, magical human vessel of divinity? Well guess what Bastards, we’ve all been conned. Pelageya is just....a witch. That’s right. Just a witch. Nothing more. She’s exactly what she was presented at face value, when she could have been SO MUCH MORE. Her immortality (which should not be physically possible even in the laws of this universe) is never explained. Neither is her power, or her history, or literally ANYTHING that would have made her remotely interesting. She’s rendered a standard quirky witch cliche and MY GIRL DESERVED BETTER. Honestly, having Pelageya be a more fleshed out character would have resolved the vast majority of this series’ other issues, such as the reason WHY Kostyas had the pendant with Velyos and WHY Nadya had this strange hybrid magic. Which brings me to the next and GREATEST piss-off.

3. NADYA’S PARENTS

I cannot believe, and I mean I cannot FUCKING believe that Duncan’s editor didn’t edit out the whole mystique-over-Nadya’s parents shit. I mean for real bros. Critics of the series always pointed to the entire religious system being half-baked, and in this book I can’t help but agree. For the unaware, Nadya meets the Matriarch (AKA the female pope who runs her church) and in a key confrontation, The Matriarch reveals that she hates Nadya because her parents were shady clerics/dark magicians/ traitors?! Now this alone would be fucking fascinating but since Duncan shit the bed, the issue of who Nadya’s parents goes nowhere, and Nadya herself even says that she will “never know” why Magdelena (The Matriarch) hated them.

BULLSHIT I SAY. I’m so fucking pissed that Duncan brought up this intriguing and important plot point and then went nowhere with it. I could see it being negligible if Nadya always knew she had parents with a murky past, but this girl literally thought she was a penniless orphan with no origins before Magdelena drops this bombshell. I lowkey feel like Duncan had some sort of plot thread involving the true identity of Nadya’s parents and her ersatz magic, but then removed it and left the bombshell info in like a lazy fuck. Like seriously, what the fuck. You can’t just “Luke I am your Father” a character and then NEVER EXPLAIN THE MYSTERY. For fucks sake. I’m saddened and disappointed that Nadya’s parentage and their connection to the church was not explained, as it would have been fascinating.

IN CONCLUSION

Blessed Monsters was a satisfying but messy conclusion to a series with two far more superior books. Ruthless Gods will forever be my favorite of this trilogy, and I am curious to see what Duncan writes in the future. The wicked spooky vibes of this series are something special, but the author’s inability to explain some plot points in a satisfactory way leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth. But overall, it’s a solid book and it won’t make you want to kill someone. Hence why I gave it three stars. Duckling Out!

Ps: AND YES I WILL REVIEW ALL THE GOOD BOOKS I READ SINCE JNAUARY DONT TEST ME HOES OKAY BYE

[The Girl with the Sagittarius Tattoo · Rating 5 out of 5]

SO GOOD, and so very bloody! Wow, Emily Duncan pulled out all the stops with this book. Dense with character-driven plotlines, we find Nadya, Malachiasz and Serefin reeling from their brushes with death and the gods of old.

Malachiasz is more monster than human now, possessed by the god of chaos and covered in ever-blinking eyes. His path will sink him deeper into depravity where not even Nadya can reach him. Serefin must dig deep and embrace his destiny to rule as he gives in to his love for Kacper. Nadya is an enigma, raised in the church as a cleric but with the heretical ability to talk to the ancient gods. Already confused by the contradiction of her gift and the church's teachings, she slides further into darkness for loving a boy whose thirst for knowledge reached too far and is about to end the world.

I'm sad to leave Nadya and Malachiasz behind with the finale of this trilogy, but I loved how it all came together. *This is one of my all-time favorite fantasy series.* Pitch black brilliance.

[Anastasia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Update 1/27/2022: OK, it's review time. I've spent quite a bit of time mulling over what my rating should be. The reality is, I liked this more than Wicked Saints but less than Ruthless Gods. This book offered us certain crucial crumbs the series has been missing (actually showing trauma instead of telling us about it?? actually showing at all instead of telling? finally!), which proves to me that Duncan's able to incorporate readers' criticisms into their work when they feel like it.

Maybe if less time had been spent bitching on Twitter about the "haters" instead of working on meaningful revisions, this series wouldn't have been such a tragic waste of paper.

Many reviewers have either marked this book one star or removed their ratings entirely in light of the scandals surrounding Duncan's behavior. I understand this decision, and I respect it. Reviewers are entitled to sharing their honest opinions about the books they read, and if they feel an author's behavior off-page has so drastically colored their reading experience, why shouldn't their rating reflect that?

The additional problem with this series is that it's not just Duncan's off-page behavior; there's a whole storyline in this series that is antisemitic (mainly revolving around the Vultures and blood magic). Maybe I could give Duncan some credit if they had not been aware of the implications of making an elite, "monstrous" group of characters with black hair, brown eyes, and blood magic the power behind a puppet king in a fantasy-inspired Poland. As a historian, I will acknowledge that one of the nice things about fantasy stories inspired by real history is their ability to deviate from the "true" narrative. In fantasy, you can incorporate certain real-life elements while leaving out more problematic ones. That's the wonderful thing about fantasy; it's not obligated to remain historically accurate. In other words: The Vultures didn't have to be coded as a stand-in for the Jews, even if this is supposed to be a world inspired by Poland. It's fantasy. We can take liberties because none of it's real anyway.

But Duncan was aware of this parallel--and continued to write the Vultures as Jewish-coded. This is the part I cannot forgive: the knowledge of the error while writing the story. That, and harassment of other authors sharing their release dates. Why can't we lift each other up? Why, in the publishing world, is that so damn hard to do?

So yes, these are problems. Duncan's since left Twitter and IG and remained inactive on both platforms, though they seem to be active on Pinterest. I won't be reading Duncan's further works (unless someone wants me to troll haha), and I won't be supporting them with my money. But this rating doesn't reflect the author's off-page behavior. I'm a little pettier than some of these other reviews, see. I'm not going to give this book a bad rating based on arguably bad behavior. I'd rather give this book a bad rating because it's a genuinely poor story, and tell you why.

Duncan might be a person who's made bad decisions. But, for the purposes of this review, Duncan's just a bad writer. And I'd argue that, while their decisions and actions have definitely cost them a long-term fan-base and possibly a writing career, it's considerably more incriminating to say that it seems nothing of value would truly be lost if Duncan never wrote a story again.

I picked up this series for the aesthetic. I continued for the aesthetic. I finished for the aesthetic. All this series is is aesthetic. That's the only part about it that's interesting, and I bet even the marketing team notices it. Look at the blurb for this book. The other two used to have blurbs that were far vaguer about the plot, but those synopses seem to have been updated, so I'll rest my case with those. Look at it. There's no plot in that blurb. Even the people writing the damn blurb to market this book knew this series was just a mish-mash of cool ideas without any actual backbone and momentum. If you're a writer like me and you struggle to plot, I bring good tidings of great joy: You can get published and still be shit at plotting. You can even get a major book deal! This series is proof!

Spoilers ahead, but my assumption is that, if you're reading this review, you don't care. In all honesty, I wish I were spoiling something big, but I'm not, because there's no big reveal here. Almost 1500 pages, and we never really learn what the Kalyazi gods are. We never really learn what Nadya is, either. We never learn how Chyrnog is defeated. Everything this story has been building toward, all the elements that are propelling these characters forward, and what do we get? A climax where everyone blacks out and several of the characters bind him into a book...somehow. We never learn. We never get to know where these characters got the idea for the binding spell or how they accomplished it. 1500 pages, and the readers don't even get that.

It's hinted that the new gods who replaced the old gods replaced beings that are more than what they seem, but nobody addresses this. Nadya is supposedly a vessel of these old gods, and she has the power to communicate with all the new gods solely because they wanted to block Chyrnog from accessing her. This is an attempt to explain why Nadya can communicate with all the gods, an ability that's unheard of among the Kalyazi clerics.

OK, fine. That addresses one element I had questions about. But later on we learn that Nadya's powers are entirely her own. Which means she's not really a vessel. But how did she get these powers? Who gave them to her? Why are they dangerous? How could Chyrnog access her through them?

Oh, we don't know. She's just "gods-touched" or whatever.

Huh?

At the end of the story, our crew is researching into magic hoping they'll eventually find some answers. OK, that's realistic, I guess. We don't always have the answers when it'd be most convenient for them, and if we want certain kinds of knowledge, sometimes we have to work for it. But why taunt your readers with answers you're never going to give them on the page? What's the point of us reading? Because let me tell you, I wasn't reading for the romance.

Don't get me wrong, I love Kacper and Serefin. Those two have my whole heart, and this series would be leagues better if they'd been the center of it 90% of the time, because Serefin is the most strongly-rendered character out of the trio. He has a clearly-established, believable past, realistic conflict we see him struggling with, emotions and decisions we can relate to and understand, and a consistent character arc that makes sense. I do think he went from "reluctant heir" to "I'm the future king and you'd better heed my clout" too fast, but I could track his acceptance of his fate and his changing attitude toward the throne, a destiny so caught up in trauma and abuse for him. It was an excellent arc.

Malachaisz and Nadya have no such arcs. Nadya starts out as a supposedly-sheltered cleric, the last of her kind. The "sheltered" aspect is undermined very early on into the story as she quickly becomes a selfish, petty masochist who defends and pledges her loyalty to the only character who continues to backstab and betray her, and she does it knowing Malachaisz will never choose her. She is the Foodie Beauty of YA fantasy. You heard it here first, folks. She doesn't even do it for the mental gymnastics involved in going toe-to-toe with an equal. That would imply she's clever. At the end of our story, Nadya isn't a cleric, and she's not a vessel, and she's not Chyrnog's. She's like Gonzo. She's a whatever.

Maybe Malachaisz is her equal, though, because he has no character arc, either. He has no growth and no goals, except "become a god" and "save Tranavia," both of which are shaky at best when justified in tandem. His character is entirely tell and no show. We're told he's an anxious, shy troubled boy--and side tangent: I swear, if I hear one more YA author try to call their hero a "boy" as a codeword for "edgy" or "troubled," I'll set their book on fire, pour myself some special harvest Riesling, and dance around the ashes with my wine glass in hand.

Seriously, it's not cute, ladies. Giving characters who make morally-gray decisions a characterization that infantilizes them in place of letting those characters show actual remorse and regret for their actions and then using this infantilization to justify character actions as heroic just because you want us to like them does NOT a likeable hero make. (If you're trying to write anti-heroes, let's talk.) All that does is reinforce the "boys will be boys" narrative in, well...an actual narrative. Stop calling your YA books feminist if you do this, because you're really not practicing what you preach if you do.

OK, back to Malachaisz. We're told he's anxious, we're told there are parts of him that can and should be redeemed. Hell, we're told he's funny. But we never see any of this. All we see is him betraying everyone, time and time again, for his own ambitions. He's the one who gives Chyrnog a vessel. He's the one who ends up setting Chyrnog free. He thwarts the rest of the crew and willingly withholds info from them--info that would have helped them destroy Chyrnog so much faster, because then they would have known what his plans were. Why try to justify why Malachaisz should be redeemed if you're not going to show us the qualities that makes him worth being saved? Duncan can write banter and sarcasm without sacrificing character likability. Serefin's proof of that. Why couldn't they have done the same thing here? Who knows? We certainly don't. Makes sense this book was "his" book. In terms of pay-off, it's the weakest of the three.

And don't get me started on his "romance" with Nadya. I don't understand what they see in each other, or why so much of the conflict in this series hinges on such a poorly-established romance. Malachaisz is not worth betraying over. Nadya doesn't display any of the traits Malachaisz supposedly sees in her, the traits we're supposed to believe he helps the others for. She's not kind, and she's not innocent. She's a fickle fool. I don't like saying stuff like that, especially about female characters. Especially about female characters whose religions are heavily inspired by my own. But it has to be said, because...well, I'm trying to give my honest thoughts. I didn't actively hate Nadya during this story. But hell, at least where Alina was stupid, she was mostly likable. She wasn't intentionally selfish.

I could say more. I could talk about how Parijahan and Rashid literally exist to check BIPOC boxes, stand in as bodies for Chyrnog's binding spell, and attempt to convince us that Malachaisz is objectively likable because, when Parijahan is on the page, it means more than one character in the group outside of Nadya likes him. I could talk about how Katerina was a wasted character and how so many of the magical elements were also wasted because they added atmosphere to the story without adding any substance to the world in the story. I could give you a list of all the problematic elements in this series, but I'll point you to other reviewers for that, and I'll update this list as I find more reviews that catalogue these issues more eloquently than I can right now. But, in short--if you've scrolled this far for a tl;dr, you must really like scrolling--this isn't worth your time, for many reasons.

Maybe you're one of the people who would rather judge an author's merit by their portfolio than by their actions. I get that. I'll save you the time: It's still crap. Spend your money and time elsewhere.

Update 4/18/2021: Well, as it turns out, I do have some bones to pick with this author. I'm not on Twitter anymore, so I missed the controversy when it occurred.

I've mentioned in comments on other reviews that this author has a tendency to subtweet reviewers who don't like their/her books. I think it's unprofessional, petty, and childish, and I avoided bringing that discussion into my reviews of Duncan's books because I wanted to do better than that. In my mind, if I focused on reviewing the author's Twitter behavior, I was no better than she was.

Little did I know this behavior extended past passive-aggressive tweets about negative reviews. Duncan has done other things, and she's done them intentionally, knowing the harm these things have caused. Harassing other authors and knowingly including anti-Semitic plot threads in your work is not something I want to support.

Of course I learned about all of this after obtaining a copy of this book. Sigh. I'll still read it now that I have it, but probably not for a while, and I won't be supporting Duncan in the future. I already took issue with her other behaviors, and recent revelations have proved this behavior goes far, far deeper. Her actions are damaging and disappointing, and it's a real shame.

ORIGINAL REVIEW

Okay, I am excited about this, BUT I need to nit-pick a few things:

1) If black is the color we're gonna go with, I feel like there should be less white space on the bottom half of the cover to match the previous covers in this series better. Because the bottom half looks less filled out, this cover looks "off balance" when compared to the others.

2) Most people aren't gonna care about this, but why do these domes have Orthodox crosses on them? I get that Kalyazi is inspired by Russia, which is historically an Orthodox place. However, to my recollection, crosses don't exist as a religious symbol in Kalyazi, so why are they on this cover? The old covers of Shadow and Bone managed to incorporate the onion domes without the crosses. Surely this book could have done the same?

I guess I'm just tired of my religion being used as an intriguing design motif or for the aesthetic, especially when said usage isn't accurate to the storyline. But any of these bones are ones I'm picking with the cover artists, not with the author. Whatcha gon do.

[Elisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reading this book was an arduous process. It took me two months, and I was often tempted to give up, but I knew I’d want to finish the story at some point and I didn’t want to have to start the book from the beginning, so I stuck it out.

The first book was interesting. (I didn’t catch the details that have since been deemed by many to be problematic, and posted a review based simply on my tastes and my interpretation of the elements with which I was familiar.)
The second book was a bit boring and unfocused.
This last book went way past that: tedious, overwritten, drawn out to a point where it’s often hard to follow the narrative threads.

I like the characters, but they often get lost in the rambling, ranting, unfocused writing.
It reads like an old man telling a tale and often losing his train of thought.

When I first started this series, I had such high hopes for it and was mildly obsessed with the characters and world. So it’s more than a little surprising to me that, even if I try to judge the book purely on its own merits as a story, without making any cultural or religious links, I disliked this so much. I found it just incredibly hard to get through. But it truly is so terribly emo, sappy, and ranty.

I’ll be unhauling these at the first opportunity, and I can’t settle on a rating but it’s somewhere between 2 and 2 1/2 STARS.

[Mirabel · Rating 2 out of 5]

thank god this book FINALLY ended it felt like an eternal tirade of pure yap

[Alaina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Okay, so, yes - I dove into Blessed Monsters guys. Long before the drama came out to play, I knew that I wanted to see how this was all going to end. I fell in love with each book and the characters that I got to know.. so I just really wanted to see what was going to happen next.

Certain characters definitely wormed their way into my heart. I'm not even mad about it because I became very protective over them. Plus, shipping certain people kind of helped form a light at the end of the tunnel. I still think, however, that I deserved more romance from one ship because I freaking earned it.

As for the actual story, well, it's safe to assume that I actually ended up zoning in and out of this audiobook. Which is definitely weird for me to say because this never happens to me. So I would constantly pause and go back to where I was and just listen to it all over again. At times I think not a whole lot was happening and that's when I would start to zone in and out. Then at other times, I felt like so much was happening that my mind was to slow to catch up to it all.

Other than that, it was a good conclusion to this trilogy. Just like the prologue, the ending sucked me in and left a bittersweet feeling. I'm just overall happy that I was able to see this thing through and form my own opinion of it all. I can't wait to dip my toes into another dark adventure... wherever that book may be.

[Verónica Fleitas Solich · Rating 4 out of 5]

History had a hard time picking up speed but that did not ruin this particular world.
I love the aesthetics of the trilogy and I really liked that the protagonists end up being these imperfect heroes who do not come out of the outcome completely graceful.
A good ending.