I had my doubts about whether or not I would enjoy this book. The one thousand and one nights type of story has been done before. And everyone seems to be doing fairy tale retelling lately. However, I am so glad that I decided to read these books.
The Wrath and the Dawn series was an awesome duology about love, betrayal, and magic. We start off with our main character Shahrzad getting married to the caliph. She's full of bitterness and intent on revenge for the death of her best friend Shiva who was murdered by Khalid, the caliph. She volunteered for the position of his bride knowing that she was going to die and hoping to be able to kill him before she died. Her ultimate goal, though, is to stay alive and be able to kill him, so her plan on that first night is to tell him a story and end it before she gets to the end to keep him from killing her until she ends the story.She doesn't expect what happens though.
Khalid's character is probably my favorite, so I'm going to start with him. At the very beginning of the book, before we even learn his name, before we meet Shahrzad, we find out that he gets put into an awful and very difficult position. We don't know what it is, but we know that no one in the castle is happy about it. When we find out that he has to kill his wives, one every night, we begin to hate him. At least at first as we see him through Shahrzad's eyes. However, through the things he does, despite Shahrzad's obvious hate for him, something changes.
Because of her stories, Shahrzad gets spared. She lasts a few nights and even after the guards come for her one morning and she has the noose around her neck, Khalid still saves her. We find out that he knows that she meant to kill him, the whole time he's saving her. He wants to die, because he knows what he's doing is a terrible thing. The whole of his kingdom sees him as a monster, but as Shahrzad's relationship with him blooms, we see that is most definitely not the case.
I think the letters were the thing that put Khalid in the top in my eyes. For every wife that he had killed, he wrote a letter to their families about how wonderful the girl he had to put to death was. And then his letter for Shahrzad was directed toward her. For me, that was the moment where he went from monster to amazing.
Shahrzad's character, while a strong one, softens throughout the span of the books. She starts off hardened by revenge and hate, but as love begins to heal her broken heart, she finds that things are not as they seem and begins to loose her edge a little bit. That's not to say that she does not remain a strong female character throughout, because she most definitely does, she just loses her anger and that makes her more likable as the books go on.
Tariq and Rahim are two more characters that are significant in the book. Tariq is the other male character in the love triangle in this book. It's not a great love between Tariq and Shahrzad, or at least it didn't appear that way to me. Yes, Tariq wants to save Shahrzad from the moster caliph, but at first I didn't really get a romantic vibe from him. I didn't get that feeling until later on when he confronts Shahrzad and discovers that she actually wants to be with Khalid.
Rahim is the comic relief of the story. He was probably my favorite undercharacter. He was funny and took the edge off of Tariq's often sharp personality. He softened the scenes that would have otherwise been dry and hard to get through. His romantic interest in Shahrzad's sister Irsa was a little surprising and when he was killed at the end, I will admit to tearing up because he was such a great friend and a great character.
There are way more characters that I could go through, but in an effort to keep this from getting too long and boring, I'll keep it to my favorites.
This duology was definitely a good one and I plan on keeping an eye out for other books by this author for sure!
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