on
3.5/5
Non-Fiction
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Rating: 3/5
Pages: 400
Time: 11:11:00
Started: 17 October 2023
Finished: 22 October 2023
Summary:
After his best friend died in combat, Damian's father pulled strings to get him back into the city and into a position at the head of the city's guard, despite his not being a Disciple, a magic-wielder blessed by one of the seven Saints. When a series of mysterious murders begins to draw the attention of the whole city, Damian is put under pressure to find the killer, and quickly. Except, although the higher-ups want only for Damian to find a simple answer, a killer to be put away once and for all, all the signs at the murders seem to point to Chaos, the seventh and lost saint, and his illusion-armed disciples.
Roz wants nothing more than revenge. Revenge for her friend's death, revenge for the non-blessed city-dwellers treated like second citizens, and most of all revenge against her ex-friend Damian for her father's death. Working during the day as a disciple but allied at night with the city's rebels, Roz is willing to fight for justice--even if that means allying with the boy she hates most.
Thoughts:
This book was not anything new. I liked the premise; the world-building with the idea of the saints was fun (even if I guessed that Chaos was back from like the first four pages), and I liked the Italian parallel; Roz was a very badass character; the writing wasn't bad. But there was nothing in this book that I, between Leigh Bardugo and Renee Adieh, hadn't seen before. Damian was essentially a powerless himbo created solely to be devoted to Roz, and while I'm all for that, it did not make him a particularly compelling narrator. The secondary characters were also never particularly interesting, and nearly all the betrayals and plot twists were easy to guess. This was not a bad book, and I don't regret reading it, but also I think this book is a Divergent-esque sign that it's high time for authors to break the mold a bit.