This book took murder mystery in an Italy-inspired fantasy world with Saints and magic, and made it INCREDIBLY BORING.
Seven Faceless Saints unfortunately never became anything I was interesting. I don't really have much understanding or concept of the world or city, other than there's seven or six sectors. They mentioned something about the disciples keeping the economy going I guess, but how?? Their market is for disciples only, not regular people. Every magic person is a disciple but there's ranks but I don't quite understand how it works. Also they occasionally work at the temple, I guess? I don't know where the Saints came from, maybe they just EXIST like gods but we barely get any kind of information. There was some kind of snippet like Genesis thing but it was really brief and the main character just didn't care.
This book does talk about religion, the Saints are a religion but idk what regular people would GET out of it. The disciples who run the place seem not to give a shit about the regular people. Roz is very against the religion which is perfectly fine but this book almost tries to have this conversation about religion but refuses to make an effort to talk about the other side. The same with the rebellion and injustice, however the characters and the book doesn't really want to delve in to it too deeply. It's like afraid to try to say anything and doesn't want to explore anything.
The main problem was that I couldn't care about the two main characters! Roz especially was just an awful character mostly. I understand her anger and bitterness, but it's not even entertaining or interesting or fun to read. She's so cold and rude. The worst thing is that Roz thinks she's right 100% of the time and the narrative follows through with that too. Like maybe if it let her be wrong or something, it would have been better. I just couldn't STAND her. Damian was just kind of bland to me, I'm sorry. Boy has PTSD from war and he thinks he's a monster and follows the rules. That's about it.
The characters are basically horny for each other and that's it. I really don't understand how they could be in love with each other.
This book just felt really repetitive and then plods along the most boring mundane murder investigation I've had to read. I was not surprised by anything that happened. Not moved by anything either. It's like:
Roz chapter: my MURDERED FATHER, I don't care about being a disciple, Damian didn't write to me why is he hot??, oh yeah INJUSTICE
Damian chapter: the WAR, I haven't slept, I don't wanna go back to the war, Roz hot, oh yeah the murder investigation
