4 stars
“The Wrath & The Dawn” is a beautiful retelling of “A Thousand and One Nights” by Renee Ahdieh, a UNC-Chapel Hill alumna who lives here in North Carolina.
It follows Shahrzad, a young rebellious woman who volunteers to be the next wife of the Caliph of Khorosan, Khalid. This young boy king is a monster — he takes a new wife each day, picked at random, only to have them strangled the next morning. But behind these horrible acts is a horrible secret, and Shahrzad must learn her new husband’s secrets to defeat him and avenge her friend who was chosen to face the terrible fate.
But Shahrzad is different from Khalid's former wives, and we know that from the first page. She plans to live. She will get revenge. Khalid had her best friend killed after marrying her, and she will not forget that. She tells the young king stories every night to keep herself alive, and she learns that the monster is not actually a monster after all.
But a war is brewing in Khorosan, and tensions are high after the deaths of so many of daughters and mothers. Shahrzad is in danger in more ways than one, but I imagine if any character can save themselves from anything that is thrown at them, it’s Shazi.
She is the fiercest main character I have encountered in 2015. She is proud, confident, strong and bold, but she is not cocky or haughty. She has a huge heart, and she is deeply devoted and protective. What a powerful and inspirational female character. Near the end, it looks like Shahrzad will need to be saved, and the men around her seem to think she needs their protection — but I’m pretty sure that as this series continues, Shazi will be doing all the saving. I was so, so, so impressed by Shahrzad.
Khalid, on the other hand — I hesitated here. The reason I gave this book four stars instead of five, which it really probably did deserve, is Khalid. He is flawed, and he has a dark past full of terrible secrets. He has done terrible things — or had them done, anyway. But I didn’t feel him as a character. I never really got him. He was reserved to both Shahrzad and the reader. Even when he opened up, there was so much more I wanted to see.
I always struggled to picture him in my mind — one minute, he was the boy king, and the next minute, he was a fierce sword fighter and a strong soldier. I could never get a grasp on who Khalid was — only that he loved Shazi, and that I understood perfectly. Maybe that was Ahdieh’s point, to keep Khalid closed off and reserved — but it didn’t work for me.
But what did work for me was the story itself — this beautiful, beautiful story. When I call “The Wrath & The Dawn” beautiful, I mean it. It’s the most powerful of love stories — quiet, slow and burning, Shahrzad and Khalid fall deeply and powerfully for one another.
And the words — goodness, the words. Ahdieh writes incredible prose, and the words will pull you in and keep you reading long into the night. At least, that’s what happened to me. From the gorgeous pink and gold cover to the love story to the words within, there isn’t a moment of this retelling that isn’t intoxicating.
Warning: You will fall in love with this book and with Shahrzad. But soak it all up and wait patiently, because the story does not end here.
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