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Navessa's Reviews > The Wrath and the Dawn
The Wrath and the Dawn (The Wrath and the Dawn, #1)
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2 stars? 3.5 stars? 5 STARS?!?!
Fucked if I know. I'm...torn. So I guess I'll leave this at three stars for now.
This book made me feel a lot of feels. But they were conflicting feels. On the one hand, this is a beautifully written, atmospheric 1001 Nights retelling rich with imagery. On the other hand, a lot of that gorgeous prose is dedicated to showing the reader, over and over again, how indecisive the female lead is.
You see, she's chosen to marry the king out of vengeance. He married and killed her best friend, along with countless other young women, and she's bent on putting an end to his bloody reign by sticking a knife in his chest. Or a sword in his gullet. Or by bludgeoning him over the head with a mace. Or by slipping a bit of poison into his...well, you get the picture.
That's all well and good, if you actually CARRY OUT THE DEED. But our female lead doesn't do that. Instead, she spends the first half of this book being a whiny, wishy-washy pain in the ass, failing to kill him even though she's provided with multiple opportunities to do so.
All because he's pretteh.
-_____-
So was Stalin. It doesn't make him any less of a murderous bastard.
I would have enjoyed her character so much more had she remained stalwart. Had she remained loyal to all those dead women and simply tried and failed to kill him. Repeatedly. Until she was forced to look past that pretty face and that cold facade to the troubled soul beneath. Because only in the latter half of this book do you begin to understand Shahrzad's unfortunate attraction to him. Only then do you begin to wonder why he's done the things that he has, and want, no, need to know the truth behind his actions.
Still...I'll be reading the next one. The writing alone makes it worth it. Even if I spend the entirety of the second installment trapped in the same frustrated emotional state that I was forced to endure throughout this one.
And that should tell you something.
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Fucked if I know. I'm...torn. So I guess I'll leave this at three stars for now.
This book made me feel a lot of feels. But they were conflicting feels. On the one hand, this is a beautifully written, atmospheric 1001 Nights retelling rich with imagery. On the other hand, a lot of that gorgeous prose is dedicated to showing the reader, over and over again, how indecisive the female lead is.
You see, she's chosen to marry the king out of vengeance. He married and killed her best friend, along with countless other young women, and she's bent on putting an end to his bloody reign by sticking a knife in his chest. Or a sword in his gullet. Or by bludgeoning him over the head with a mace. Or by slipping a bit of poison into his...well, you get the picture.
That's all well and good, if you actually CARRY OUT THE DEED. But our female lead doesn't do that. Instead, she spends the first half of this book being a whiny, wishy-washy pain in the ass, failing to kill him even though she's provided with multiple opportunities to do so.
All because he's pretteh.
-_____-
So was Stalin. It doesn't make him any less of a murderous bastard.
I would have enjoyed her character so much more had she remained stalwart. Had she remained loyal to all those dead women and simply tried and failed to kill him. Repeatedly. Until she was forced to look past that pretty face and that cold facade to the troubled soul beneath. Because only in the latter half of this book do you begin to understand Shahrzad's unfortunate attraction to him. Only then do you begin to wonder why he's done the things that he has, and want, no, need to know the truth behind his actions.
Still...I'll be reading the next one. The writing alone makes it worth it. Even if I spend the entirety of the second installment trapped in the same frustrated emotional state that I was forced to endure throughout this one.
And that should tell you something.
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October 8, 2015
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October 8, 2015
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Alienor � French Frowner �
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rated it 2 stars
Dec 21, 2015 09:00AM
EXACTLY.
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Yes, I know :( I'm still not sure I'l read the sequel, but maybe... I guess I'll wait to see what you all think :)
Yes, me too! I went from WTF is that ending?! to oh of course there's a sequel >.<
OMG THESE ARE MY THOUGHTSbut same im reading the sequel :P
Even though it has a sequel, it still should've given the reader more of a semblance of an ending. I feel like I'm staring at the incomplete circle that my high school psychology teacher used to taunt his students with.Great review by the way. Although i dunno if Stalin was all that hot.
"So was Stalin. It doesn't make him any less of a murderous bastard" LOL I really loved this book but your review definitely made me stop and think about it from a more critical perspective!
My thoughts exactly!! Khalid in the beginning was such a blank slate - no plausible reason why she's drawn to him or should feel sympathy for Shiva's killer
This blog post by a respected book reviewer I follow also pointed out issues I haven't seen others bring up -- which is that the guy rapes the heroine at first, and then she falls in love with him --
That blogger had a lot of good questions about setting, time period, and how authors choose to blend the two, and dismiss rape culture in pretty insidious ways. The questions posed in the book review fascinated me. Good stuff.
