Target Audience: NA

Where do I even begin? To quote one of our great poets (never thought I would draw Goethe into this): “Two souls alas! are dwelling in my breast.” So what’s the deal? Well, I know for a fact that naive 16-year-old me would have loved this series. Not-quite-as-naive-and-a-lot-more-sensitised 28-year-old me not so much. There’s common ground though: it’s just my kind of fantasy world. But while 16 is swooning about just her type of (male) characters, 28 is screeching at her that these characters, their relationships, and some of the concepts are totally fucked up and toxically romanticised, and 16 should just get lost in the past where she belongs (you see, it’s always fun living in my head). Wondering what has them so worked up?

Wicked Saints is certainly not for everyone but it’s 100% for me! It’s been a while since any book had me this much on edge, this excited: There’s the Eastern European inspired world (always there for that!), a complicated inscrutable magic system (I like puzzling over that stuff!), a gripping dark and desolate atmosphere (gets me every time!), intriguing characters (hello, dark-and-mysterious-more-or-less-evil guy!), and an ending that left me quite devastated (gimme that second book already!) …

I bet you thought that this is a horse novel, but really, it is not. It’s more or less the 1987s version of a New Adult novel that has incidentally horses in it because it’s set on a farm. You’re probably not convinced yet. After all, there’s a horse on the cover and it has ‘stallion’ in the title (well, one could read it metaphorically, but we really, really don’t want to go there) . . .