Tags: Action, Adventure, Fantasy, Comedy, Romance

The Saint Hides Her Identity by the Sea!

Back to a more normal schedule and I’m reviewing one of my favourite hidden gems of a series, The Secret Saint.

The latest volume has Fia back with her old brigade after the revelations of the previous volume. Whilst her sainthood remains a secret (for now), her latest adventure will really put that to the test as she heads towards Cyril’s dukedom, Sutherland, for their yearly lament. Sutherland will be a dangerous place for Fia to hide her secret as their history is deeply connected to the former great saint, this alongside the tragedy of Cyril’s mother and their belief in reincarnation will bring more than a few surprises to Fia’s doorstep.

Volume 3 goes for a decidedly more serious tone than previous releases as the series explores the great saint’s past as well as relations between the knights and the populous of Sutherland. The scars of a massacre haven’t completely healed amongst the people after the former duke of Sutherland, Cyril’s father, ordered his men to kill the people after they failed to act to save his wife and second strongest saint of the era. These actions alongside the kingdom’s equal blame on both parties have left relations between the brigade and the people rather icy, to say the least.

To change the status quo, Cyril and the newly introduced knight Kurtis have a plan to improve the situation by having Fia pretend to be the great saint, given that she resembles her and the former duchess. This creates some of the few funnier moments of the volume as Fia is almost instantly found out to be a real saint due to several slips of the tongue.

Whilst the comedy is usually great in this series, this time, it’s the scenes with Fia’s past self that steal the show. Just like her present iteration, the great saint is impulsive and compassionate often choosing to impart her saint powers on the most marginalised in society rather than attend political gatherings. Both Fia and her former self act a world apart from the present-day saints who think everyone else is beneath them.

These flashback chapters also introduce us to one of the great saints’ most important allies and best friends, the blue knight. A commoner by birth, he becomes the great saint’s personal knight and is beyond distraught being unable to save her from her fate against the demons. I was wondering what the payoff to telling his story would be throughout the volume, only for the reincarnation beliefs of the Sutherlanders to strike once again revealing that the new character Keith is the blue knights’ reincarnation at the end of the novel.

As much as I like the series, however, it isn’t without fault and its most major issue has become a running theme, the overall short length of the main plot. With all the interludes and short stories you would think that they’d still finish the story, unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the case as the story finishes in the middle of a scene as Fia and Keith come face to face with the deadly disease problem of Sutherland. I feel as though they could’ve had this volume and perhaps part of the next volume joined together to create a more fulfilling arc and had the side stories and interludes packed together in a type of .5 volume.

Overall, whilst I still continue to enjoy the main plot of the series and the ever sillier ways in which Fia’s great sainthood remains a secret, I can’t help but get annoyed at the fact that more of the arc’s story needed to be added to the volume to make it a more worthwhile read. Hopefully, there is more to the main story plotline in the next volume.