Serena’s Review: “The Wrath and the Dawn”

Book: “The Wrath & the Dawn” by Renee Andieh

Publishing Info: G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers, May 2015

Where Did I Get this Book: the library!

Book Description: One Life to One Dawn.

In a land ruled by a murderous boy-king, each dawn brings heartache to a new family. Khalid, the eighteen-year-old Caliph of Khorasan, is a monster. Each night he takes a new bride only to have a silk cord wrapped around her throat come morning. When sixteen-year-old Shahrzad’s dearest friend falls victim to Khalid, Shahrzad vows vengeance and volunteers to be his next bride. Shahrzad is determined not only to stay alive, but to end the caliph’s reign of terror once and for all.

Night after night, Shahrzad beguiles Khalid, weaving stories that enchant, ensuring her survival, though she knows each dawn could be her last. But something she never expected begins to happen: Khalid is nothing like what she’d imagined him to be. This monster is a boy with a tormented heart. Incredibly, Shahrzad finds herself falling in love. How is this possible? It’s an unforgivable betrayal. Still, Shahrzad has come to understand all is not as it seems in this palace of marble and stone. She resolves to uncover whatever secrets lurk and, despite her love, be ready to take Khalid’s life as retribution for the many lives he’s stolen. Can their love survive this world of stories and secrets?

Review: Fairy tale retellings have been enjoying quite their moment in the sun over the last few years in the young adult publishing industry. And while they are some of my favorite stories to read, I’ve also about reached my saturation point for the number of ways you can try to make the prince character in a version of “Cinderella” actually interesting. So, I was very excited when I ran across this book and discovered it not to be yet another common fairy tale exploiting a craze but instead a story inspired by “A Thousand and One Nights.” I mean, I dressed up as Scheherazade as a kid for Halloween once, so obviously I was going to read this immediately. And, for the most part, it’s a pretty solid entry.

It’s hard to review this while also gauging my reaction based on whether or not I appreciated this book for what it was actually doing or because I was just so thrilled it was doing something different from the many other retellings. A big question with these is whether or not it differs enough from the original story. And this sort of did? The basic premise is still there. King kills wives each morning, woman sets out to avenge her friend who was a victim of this madness, woman staves off the axe via elaborate and strategic story-telling. And Shahrzad embodied many of the traits of the original character: spunk, bravery, and sheer stubbornness to see this mad plan through.

Unfortunately, because it is a novel and not a fairy tale, the book also fell victim to its premise. In the fairy tale, it’s very easy to spin this type of tale and escape relating the details or inconsistencies, especially using common story telling lines like “Another morning dawned. Another day passed. And Scheherazade continued to enchant her king husband.” That’s sweet and poetic and moving forward along those lines, it’s easy enough to set up your happy ending. With this? Not as much. There’s no way, even with the most sympathetic king character to not make Shahrzad’s transition from “revenge driven murderess in the making” to “love stricken girl who thinks maybe, yeah, he’s not that bad” seem less then believable and make her, as a character, highly questionable. All that said? I think the author did the best she could with this set up. I mean, it’s a crazy story to begin with, so going in, there has to be some forgiveness for the madness of the whole set up.

Other than this, the writing and scene-setting was beautiful. Again, maybe it’s because we don’t see a lot of settings like this in YA fantasy books nowadays, but the descriptions of the desert and lifestyle were beautiful and fresh. I also liked the inclusion of the stories that Shahrzad told each night. It would have been easy to just use a cheat, maybe tell one story, and then sweep the remaining nights under the rug. But the tales themselves were interesting and fun. Your mileage with this may vary, however, as the stories can also read as long breaks in the actual narrative of the book itself.

One other big detractor: a love triangle.

Overall, I really enjoyed this story. It’s the first in a duology (praise be, not a trilogy or, heaven forbid, a series…) So, I’m moving directly on to the next and should have a review of that up soon! This story pretty much wrapped up the retelling part from the original, which leaves the next with completely new content. We’ll see how it goes!

Rating 7: Good retelling, but fell into some common pitfalls.

Reader’s Advisory: