#bland talky scenes leading up to her coming on page and impressing everyone

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There's no moment of writing triumph quite like the moment when you've been struggling over a plot problem and you suddenly find the perfect solution that makes everything fall into place.

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The Fuckening: Modern YA Fantasy Misunderstands Feminism and Effective Plot Structure

Alright, mother fuckers, buckle up. Like most book lovers, I read many books and I’m always searching for the next one that will make me develop a hyper-fixation. Nothing beats the rush of finding media so good that time loses all meaning and you’d sell your soul for the next hit of content. The amazingness directly results from being rare. So in between the moments of stuffing your face full of your favorite characters, the other books are read. The ones that could have been good but aren’t successful. The ones with the lying, beautiful covers used to lure readers into forking over crumpled cash while hugging the hopefully precious gem. Then, all the words are read and the covers are closed, and there’s only the silence of disappointment and mediocrity.

Anyway, I read a book. Shocking, I know. It had so much promise and as I delved into the first fifty pages; I thought I found a winner. Then it started to sink in a massive Titanic kind of way. This book was Wicked Saints by Emily A. Duncan (this essay/rant will have spoilers and will discuss the ending). I’m prefacing this rant with a disclaimer, not because I’m trying to side-step backlash, but because I feel it’s worth mentioning. This is all my opinion and if you loved this book with all your heart, that’s awesome! I understand why someone would spend time reading, writing, and engaging with it. It’s possible to recognize the weaknesses of a piece of media and still like it; I just happen to not like it because of those weaknesses. Returning to my point, the pitfalls, mistakes, and blandness of this book are rampant throughout Young Adult literature, particularly in Fantasy. As a writer myself, I’m not immune to committing the same sins, but I think it’s valuable to examine why and how these unfortunate tropes keep appearing. I have several points I want to explore in this essay, but the main two are the pretend feminist values and poor writing craft.

Part One: YA Book Feminism and Bland Female Characters

Wicked Saints is marketed as a book about a girl who can communicate with gods and draw power from them. Her magic is rare in a world full of blood magic users and as the war between her country, Kalayazin, and the opposing force, Tranavia, clashes on her front porch, readers are led to believe that she’s an integral part of how this war will end. I was here for this. I was so ready to scream about this book to anyone who will listen. Now, I’m screaming about it for a different reason. 

Nadya, our human incarnation of the god’s Walkie-Talkie, is not like other girls. She’s special and powerful and exceptional. At first, I bought this lie, much like I did with every other book like this one. I thought, finally, here’s a badass heroine who will take charge of her life and wield her powers to create a lasting peace or at least kill everyone. When the readers meet Nadya, she’s living in a monastery to hide from Tranavians since her magic is so rare and powerful, they’re sure to seek her destruction. Then, they find her, or rather Tranavia’s prince, Serefin, (a boy-general, because adults don’t exist in YA) does. Serefin tries to kill Nadya, but she escapes with help of Forgettable Best Friend.

Lately, I’m reading a trend of books that build a “strong” female narrator by giving her some sass, adding a rare but useless magic, and having her not die. Then they slap words like empowering, feminist, or well-crafted into the marketing campaign and call it good representation. This isn’t quite what happened with Wicked Saints, but I had the impression that Nadya would be more than what she actually was in the book. The hardback cover has the words “Let them fear her,” engraved into it for gods’ sake. I thought she was going to at least do something. 

Okay, there was one time she did something. While on the run from Serefin and the other Tranavians, Nadya and Forgettable Best Friend find a group of misfits being attacked. Nadya, in the confusion of who’s an enemy and who’s an ally, asks the gods for help. One responds by vanishing all light for like ten minutes or something. This scene is one reason I bought the lie that Nadya was going to be a Bad Ass Mother Fucker, but this is the only time I remember her using any kind of significant power. In fact, once the plot gets going, Nadya is cut off from her powers almost entirely. I’ll get to that later. Back to the group of misfits, which includes a broody, yet totally handsome Tranavian, Malachiasz, and bam, we’ve found the love interest. Malachiasz is a Vulture which I understood as a privatized military group that’s ruthless, skilled, and detached from the world (no family or friends). So, Nadya hates him on site, but Malachiasz has defected and has like emotion now. They argue a bunch and exchange heated glances. 

Now that we’ve introduced our male characters (Serefin, Malachiasz, and some other dude in the misfit group), our plot gets going. There’s nothing wrong with introducing characters to start a plot, that’s how story-telling works. What I’m finding frustrating in this book and many others like it, is that the male characters make most of the decisions. They show the most autonomy and participate in the drama/action. Serefin is leading an army, making command decisions, and drinking copious amounts of alcohol (I don’t have time to get into the drinking to drown your feelings is Not Good argument, but know that this book doesn’t call out his addict behavior). Malachiasz and his band of friends are planning to assassinate the king. The female characters have run away, observed, and turned out the lights. Where is the girl who’s inspiring fear in the gods themselves? Where is the girl who’s fighting for justice and her future? Granted we’re only a hundred pages in at this point, so I’ll excuse it for now. 

In the meantime, the king calls Serefin back to the palace for Rawalyk, an event where noble women compete against each other to win the prince’s hand in marriage. Nadya and crew travel to Tranavia and disguise themselves as people participating in the event. I forgot to mention that the Tranavians only use blood magic and hate the gods, and in an effort to keep them out, the king put a barrier around the country, which keeps Nadya from using her powers. Convenient. And so very disappointing. As per their plan, Nadya has to get close enough to the king to kill him, so she uses Rawalyk to gain access. Nadya offends one of the other suitors and the suitor challenges her to an Agni Kai—sorry, different story, a duel, rather. Nadya has to pretend to use blood magic, so she can hide her true identity. Near the point of winning the duel, Nadya realizes it’s to the death, but she doesn’t want to kill the girl, so she tells her she’ll spare her. Then, Malachiasz uses his magic to end the girl’s life. Again, there are male characters forcing the plot forward while the female character’s agency is stripped. 

We’re now over two hundred pages in and Nadya hasn’t done shit except for worry about her crush and follow other people. Our narrator is a “powerful” girl, but the most interesting characters are boys and only male characters move the plot forward. I guess, who needs a personality or autonomy when you can have a love interest? To make matters worse, in the middle of all this crap, she’s thinking about her male best friend who died, but is coming back in book two, and not even Forgettable Best Friend who is actively trying to help them. Nadia thinks to herself “Kostya. You’re doing this for Kostya, she reminded herself,” (Duncan 256). Kostya was in this book for like five pages, who the fuck is this bitch? Why does anyone care? Why can’t she be going on this quest for herself, for her country, for her supposedly beloved gods? 

YA Fantasies keep prioritizing and valuing the actions of male characters over female ones. There are exceptions, but they only prove the rule. I’ve seen this repeatedly in books like City of Bones, Caraval, Shadow & Bone, Harry Potter, and now Wicked Saints. Some of those books are my favorite books, but if I never critique them, I’ll never want better or search for books that do more. I want to see more YA fantasies treat female characters like their male ones. I want female characters who participate in the narrative, make mistakes, experience success, and, I don’t know, have some ambition and goals. They should use their talents and be integral to the plot, because Wicked Saints’ plot still could have happened without Nadya.

Part Two: Character Development and Effective Plot Structure

Let’s get into this dumpster fire of an ending. While staying at the palace and pretending to be a suitor to the prince, Nadya uncovers parts of Malachiasz’s past and finds out he’s the leader of the Vultures who’s disappeared for reasons unknown. Nayda gets captured and tortured and learns that her gods may not be who she thinks they are, and she has her own power that she can always use. And does she use it? Not really. She questions everything, but not Malachiasz. Him, she makes out with. Nadya’s group and Serefin’s converge and they trust each other because they both want the same thing: the king dead. Serefin knows his father is trying to kill him and uses the help of the misfits, including, plot twist, his cousin, Malachiasz.

Serefin doesn’t understand why his father wants to marry him off and plotting to kill him at the same time, and eventually, Malachiasz talks about his past. He became the leader of the Vultures and was researching the gods when he figured out, in theory, how to become one. He gave this information to the king and you can imagine how a narcissistic king will feel about that. Malachiasz regrets his actions and runs away. Part of the process of becoming a god involves ingesting the blood of powerful magic users, hence the Rawalyk event and Nadya’s torture; they were collecting blood from the suitors. The king also has to sacrifice the prince to complete his goals. Together, they come up with a plan to corner the king while he’s attempting to perform the ceremony to become a god and kill him.

It all goes spectacularly wrong. Serefin gets captured and killed by his father, but he doesn’t die? I don’t know; there were a lot of moths involved and I was very confused. Malachiasz and Nadya go after the king and there’s a mediocre fight scene. Nadya kills the king but not after like three pages of her debating why Malachiasz is just chilling on the throne and watching this all happen. Malachiasz betrays the group, taking the power for himself. Nadya has the nerve to be surprised and heartbroken. He turns into a bird-like thing and flies out the window into the darkness.

The only time Nadya uses her own magic to do something it turns out to be in service to a male character’s goals. I’m tired and I hope you are too. Anyway, this section’s purpose is to look at effective plot structure. Wicked Saints meanders for three hundred pages trying to tie together a book about war, marriage competition, and religion. When the plot points all converge for the last eighty pages, we ultimately learn nothing more than we did at page 200. If this is a book about villains than why are minimally bad things happening? Why did no one die except for the throw away character at the book’s beginning? Why aren’t there more consequences for the character’s actions? My questions are answered by pointing at the poor plot structure and terrible character development. This book is run by boring characters whose actions don’t amount to anything, and that’s when they actually do something. Characters should evolve or devolve depending on the narrative. They should enact the plot, not have the plot happen to them. The few times we get characters changing, it’s followed by the most basic plot twists. Looking at Malachiasz in particular, we meet him while he’s plotting to kill the king with his new acquaintances, then he meets Nadya. She calls him a monster a million times, and he doesn’t deny it. They plot to kill the king again. By the end, we find out he’s only in this for himself and surprise, he’s not a good guy! Did not see that coming.

Continuing my rant on Malachiasz, Wicked Saints has one of the poorest representations of anxiety that I have seen in a long time. (Note: right after this I read Truly Devious and boy, the whip lash I had from that transition. From one the worst to one of the absolute best). Before I rip into this terrible character development, let me discuss two things: one, I don’t know if the author suffers from anxiety. It’s possible that Duncan experiences it very differently than me, and this may be good rep for someone else (I have my doubts about this since I can shred it like wet tissue paper, but I’m willing to mention this possibility). Two, considering Malachiasz’s turn to The Dark Side, it may have been purposeful bad representation. Essentially, he never had anxiety, just needed Nadya to trust him. Okay, with that out of the way, let me scream this: ANXIETY IS NOT CUTE. IT’S NOT A FUN, QUIRKY CHARACTER TRAIT. PLEASE FOR LOVE OF MEDUSA, STOP USING MENTAL ILLNESS AS A CRUTCH FOR YOUR INABILITY TO WRITE COMPLEX CHARACTERS.

The only thing we know about his anxiety is that he bites his nails. Sigh. I’m sorry it’s just that the more I think about it, the angrier I get. Wicked Saints came in an OwlCrate box and in the letter from the author to the reader she describes Malachiasz as “a boy whose earnest anxiety hides monstrous secrets.” Except anxiety doesn’t hide what you’re feeling, in fact it often puts your deepest fears on display for other people to see and usually at the worst moment. Anxiety has a million symptoms, many of which can be observed from the outside and thus easily incorporated from the point of view of a non-anxious character. Here’s a list: panic attacks, hyperventilating, shaking, hypervigilance, irritability, restlessness, sweating, tense muscles, difficulty sleeping, and fatigue. Sometimes Malachiasz displays fatigue and irritability, but it’s when the other characters are in the same headspace, so it doesn’t count, because it can easily be chocked up to circumstance, not mental illness.

If we ignore the author’s implication that his anxiety is earnest and assume that he faked it to gain Nadya’s trust, we get to a problem. The book never explores how he lied or parses through where he’s genuine, so, I have to assume that he was supposed to have anxiety. He’s called a monster so many times I got irritated. Aside the fact that it’s offensive to make the only mentally ill character a “monster,” it’s downright annoying to read a million times. Malachiaz is an attempt at a morally gray character. He makes decisions that only benefit himself, but sometimes he saves lives or kisses a girl, so some parts of him are still good. I’m okay with that, what I’m not okay with is piss poor characterization. People with anxiety can be bad! But if you make your villain anxious, it should be for a better reason than he needed a personality.

After I finished this book, I looked through some Good Reads reviews and many of the users pointed out something I hadn’t noticed. To use the blood magic, characters had to cut themselves, and reviewers found they didn’t like how this glorified self-harm. Many suggested that a trigger warning for self-harm should be placed at the beginning or the magic system should have been handled with more sensitivity. As someone who does not have personal experience with self-harm, I won’t elaborate and instead let other people make of it what they will.

There were two parts of the book’s description that sold me on it: one, the girl talks to gods, and two, a star-crossed romance. We already know how disappointed I was about that first plot point, now let’s talk about the other disappointment of the day. A fantastic rule going around on the internet  goes “if they have to kiss for you to know they’re in love, it’s not good romance.”

I will say something that may offend many people, but hopefully you’ll stick with me. Young Adult Fantasy books have bad romances. They’re underdeveloped, poorly crafted, and overused. Romance is my favorite genre, and I love seeing it in other types of books, but many times YA fantasies have the worst romances. Despite being constantly undervalued, romance sells and adding it to books usually helps pique people’s interest. But you don’t just “add” it to your book, because romance is hard to write. Hold on, I need that in capital letters. ROMANCE IS HARD TO WRITE. Good romance comes from nuance, established trust, chemistry, and gradual character developments. If a writer doesn’t do those things, you get insta-love, which isn’t satisfying or believable.

Wicked Saints tries to do an enemies-to-lovers trope. Nadya and Malachiasz don’t spend enough time together to develop a proper friendship much less a romance. They have legitimate reasons to hate each other and neither of them seem to change enough for it to be justified that their feelings have evolved. Nadya loses contact with the gods, but that should serve as a crisis of her own faith, not an automatic belief in something else. Her willingness to ignore Malachiasz’s obvious red flags is beyond frustrating and I can’t believe the book wanted me to be surprised that he betrayed the group at the end. Anyway, it’s time to make some conclusions, otherwise this essay/rant will never end.

Part Three: How Did We Get Here?

Wicked Saints is not the first to do these exact mistakes, and it’s here because of its predecessors. What other books do we know that have a Russian culture theme, a useless female narrator, and a love interest who’s bad? That’s right. I’m about to bring up the internet’s infamous Grisha trilogy. Throughout my entire reading experience, I was struck by the similarities of these books to the point where I was sure I was reading a fanfiction AU of Shadow and Bone. These books are so similar it had me wondering about plagiarism (I’m mostly kidding about that). The Grisha trilogy and Wicked Saints use the same tired tropes and rely on the readers need to self-insert to make up for the narrator’s lack of personality.

How do we get books that shout about feminism but don’t incorporate it? Books are written by humans and humans live in a flawed world. Art doesn’t exist in a vacuum and so many of the things we create are flawed. Sometimes, what we meant to write isn’t what is written. An author may have every intention of creating strong, complex female characters, but through the difficulty of writing, poor planning, and a host of other reasons, the result is a bland, useless character. Many times, these characters are touted for having magnificent powers, but they never seem to use them or if they do its only in small ways. This happens, in part, because if the character is all-powerful then there’d be no plot, so to create tension the author takes the power away, scales it back, or adds an obstacle in the way of using said power. This is all well and great, but it often leaves readers feeling like the book duped them into believing this character is special. People don’t like to feel as though they’ve been lied to. In my opinion, “Gotcha” plots and character developments result from bad writing.  With Wicked Saints there weren’t “Gotcha” moments so much as there were “please stop being a dumb bitch” moments. Nadya wanted to fall in love Malachiasz and the whole time I kept asking myself why. He’s a saltine with pretty eyes and fucked up nails. Then there’s Serefin who instead of dealing with his problems, he gets drunk. His big plot point is that he doesn’t die and turns into a swarm of moths for a while which would have been cool if they explained it in any kind of manner.

Stopping the proceeding rant, I should make conclusions and end this before it gets more out of hand. YA fantasies aren’t progressing the way they should, and you could point to several books that do incredible things, but they’re in the minority. YA authors need to make their narrators complex and fully formed instead of literal sawdust. We need authors to create better female and non-binary characters who have the same agency as their male counterparts. They should stop including romance in the first book. Let the characters grow and breathe for a hot second. Gradual bonds made through several books are always more satisfying and well-crafted than a rushed romance in book one. Also, people in the publishing industry, please, please, please use sensitivity readers. Or maybe search for books written by Own Voice authors. I know for a fact there are incredible writers creating amazing works out there. I’ve interacted with them. Someone publish their books before my head explodes.

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