She had been playing the video game Skyrim and was struck by the game’s sprawling forests, ramshackle villages and menacing, walled cities. The idea for the first book came in 2013, when Duncan was a junior English major at Malone University. “But if you made it through Wicked Saints, you know it’s only going to get more horrific.”
Because Wicked Saints had been marketed as a dark fantasy, readers weren’t expecting its horror elements, she says. Many of the initial responses to Ruthless Gods were positive, unlike the polarized reactions she received to the first book. Although it didn’t hit the NYT Best Seller list-Young Adult (YA) publishers promote debut novels more heavily than other books in a series-it topped the children’s series list of the Great Lakes Independent Booksellers Association the week it came out. The second book in Duncan’s Something Dark and Holy trilogy, Ruthless Gods, released in April 2020. You should write another one.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, did you think I ended there? Don’t worry!’” “But then I had a teen come up to me and say, ‘I read your book. I don’t know how to read,’” Duncan says, laughing.
But it takes more to impress some teens at her library. The book, the first in a proposed three-book series, was a success by all standard metrics-Duncan sold the trilogy to her publisher for six figures, Wicked Saints debuted at #4 on the New York Times Best Seller list and a devoted community of fans sprang up on social media.
Duncan, MLIS ’16, released Wicked Saints, her first young adult fantasy novel, to favorable buzz from reviewers and young readers eager for a story about dark magic, wartime, monsters and a girl (not unlike Joan of Arc) who talks directly to the gods. If any of them realized the youth services librarian at the desk 10 feet away-wearing exaggerated black glasses, dark lipstick and a nose ring-was the author of a best-selling young adult novel, they seldom let on. After school and on weekends, students flocked to the space to browse the stacks, take part in Dungeons and Dragons campaigns and play computer games with friends.
Before the pandemic closed the Hudson Library & Historical Society this March, the teen room was popular with the junior high crowd.
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