Blessed Monsters is a bloody, beautiful finish to the Something Dark and Holy trilogy

Emily A. Duncan’s Something Dark and Holy trilogy is a bit of an anomaly in the world of YA fantasy. The pitch-black series is a disturbing tale of blood magic, vengeful gods, and tortured relationships, with an unrelenting affinity for madness and gore.  Yet it is also compulsively readable, emotionally rich, and utterly surprising in almost every way.

The series concludes with a third and final installment, titled Blessed Monsters, that ties everything up in a way that ultimately feels satisfying, even if some of the edges remain a bit jagged. This was probably never going to be a tale that had a truly happy ending, but Blessed Monsters feels necessarily complete, what with almost everyone having died, come back to life, and sacrificed various bits of their bodies along the road to achieving something like peace by the end.

As a finale to a trilogy, there’s actually not a tremendous lot that actually happens in this book. Oh, sure, there are eldritch horror-style old gods rising, and the various horrible mistakes all three of our leads have made -destroying Tranavia’s blood magic, killing a Kalyazi god, and becoming chaos itself – may have broken the world beyond saving.

Yet, the bulk of this story is about love and forgiveness, and the relationships between a group of desperate people who care about one another in spite of the horrible things they’ve done (and often to one another.) There’s so much talking – but the good, difficult kind of conversation, that opens characters up both to readers and each other, adding necessary layers and shading to figures who are already violent shades of grey.

And by the end of things you’ll love all these people more than ever before, even if you still can’t quite figure out whether their stories will ever be happy ones.

Nadya, the cleric who once spoke to gods, is reeling now that Malachaisz’s killed the primary one she once served (RIP Marzenya!), and she has less understanding than ever of who she is and what she’s meant to do. (There’s also the small problem of her strange and corrupting new abilities, which may be something dark and holy all in and of themselves.

Serefin, King of Tranavia and less sure than ever of what that actually means without the magic his people have relied on for centuries, is struggling to save both his country and the brother he killed. Malachaisz, for his part, has also died, been resurrected, and is now possessed by an ancient chaos god that wants to literally eat the world.

Sometimes trying to describe anything to do with this trilogy truly sounds like the most gloriously demented fever dream.

There are plenty of grotesque and horrifying sequences throughout Blessed Monsters – most involving Malachaisz being forced into murder and some mild cannibalism by Chyrnog – and more than a fair bit of heartache, because what does winning even look like in a world where so much has already been lost?

But, as has been the case throughout the series, it’s Duncan’s character work that shines here – from Nadya and Malachiasz’s gorgeously doomed love affair to the prickly relationship that has developed between two damaged boys who happen to be related to one another, everyone has made horrible, world-ending mistakes. And yet, none of them are lost completely, or beyond redemption.

Blessed Monsters also takes the time to bring some depth and closure to two of the trilogy’s best side characters. Rashid and Parijahan finally take (semi) center stage for part of the story, as we learn some intriguing and shocking tidbits about their pasts and the real reasons they left Akola behind.

At this point, if you’ve enjoyed the other two installments in Duncan’s trilogy, you likely know what to expect and whether this is a series for you. If so, you’ll find plenty to love about Blessed Monsters which leans heavily into so many of the things that made its predecessors great – uncomfortable horror, situations in which even “good” outcomes guarantee neither victory nor happiness, and Malachaisz somehow being a literal walking disaster even while clusters of eyes are appearing across his body.

And there certainly aren’t many books you can say that about these days, can you?

Blessed Monsters is available on April 6. Will you be adding this to your spring must-read list? Sound off in the comments.