Ruthless Gods by Emily A. Duncan — Spoiler-Free Review

RUTHLESS GODS
by Emily A. Duncan

Macmillan
April 7, 2020

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.

Thanks to the good people at NetGalley and Macmillan for providing me with a eGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Wicked Saints, the predecessor of Ruthless Gods, was a strong debut with enticing characters, a great premise, a unique magic system, and limitless potential. Ruthless Gods, however, didn’t follow through on any of of the first book’s promises the way I had hoped.

As we rejoin our beloved characters from book one. A little time has passed, but it doesn’t matter. Nothing really happened and it seems like maybe they just say around waiting for the second book to start.

They thing proceed to embark on a journey that none of them knows anything about, including why they’re actually doing it at all. Each one of them then spends the rest of the book flip-flopping back and forth enough to frustrate any politician. It goes something like this:

I hate him, I hate him, I hate him, I hate hime, I LOVE HIM, I hate him, I hate him…

This kind of conflict can be great if there are reasons for each step, but without any reason at all it reads much more like a group of people who should be medicated.

Without a clear goal to the seemingly random quest and characters would say one thing and do another, everything about this story seems listless and random.

I was excited to read this sequel, but unfortunately I found nothing but letdown. It was left open for at least one more book, but at this point, I can’t imagine I’m going to pick it up.