Review: The Wrath and the Dawn
September 26, 2017
The Wrath and the Dawn by Renee AhdiehMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
“She was a dangerous, dangerous girl. A plague. A Mountain of Adamant who tore the iron from ships, sinking them to their watery graves without a second thought. With a mere smile and a wrinkle of her nose.”
I must warn you that these last weeks I've had the worst reading slump and so it's possible that my opinion on this book was affected by it, still I believe that even if I hadn't had such experience my opinion on it wouldn't have been very different. That said, I just thought that The Warth and the Dawn wasn't all that great.
“Some things exist in our lives for but a brief moment. And we must let them go on to light another sky.”
This book, as you might already know, is a retelling of One Thousand and One Nights. As far as retelling go I've always thought the most interesting thing about them is how the author manages to entwine parts from the original story with clever twists of his or her own invention. And it seemed to me, that The Wrath and the Dawn had very little of that as the story is basically the same. There is a king that marries a different girl every day, and each dawn the new queen dies by his command, however when the newest queen begins to tell him stories night after night, the king, entralled by her storytelling allows her to live in order for her to finish her tales.
The only differences I could find were the Kalid's motives behind the death of his wives and Shahrzad own reason to marry the boy. Other than that there are no new additions, it's basically the same story but devoid of the richness of the original book. The characters seemed a bit watered-down and the description of the enviroment a bit plain, I'm not saying that it didn't have it's moments because it did, for example there were parts of the dialogue between Kalid and Shahrzad that were frankly brilliant but besides that I don't think I would ever choose this book over the source material, maybe it just wasn't for me. I know it has fairly good reviews and some people like it very much but I think that compared to other brilliant retellings out there it's just not that good.
INSTAGRAM | BLOG | PINTEREST | GOODREADS
View all my reviews
8 Comments
Well I did like this book back when I read it, I thought the romance was really nice, but it's true what you said, the story is the same but it focuses on the characters a bit more.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I have to admit that there are moments when it was terribly compelling, but I guess I was expecting too much from it. It worked against me in the end.
DeleteI'm actually kind of relieved to see a less glowing review for this, haha. I still haven't read it, but I've seen soooo many ridiculously positive reviews for it that it got my expectations really high. Glad to see it has its flaws!
ReplyDeleteI think my high expectations were exactly what prevented me from liking this book too much in the first place, it's like I hoped it would be so wonderful when in the end it felt pretty average. However if you want to try it go ahead, the dialogue was very good in some places, and thank you for stopping by!
DeleteOoh, I though this book was meh as well! So many people have adored this duology, but I just don't get it? I'm just not as attracted to it as everyone else is! The Rose and The Dagger was meh as well, so this series, overall, just didn't impress me.
ReplyDeleteI guess we have that in common, for me it just felt like a YA version of the original story. I wasn't sure about reading the next one but now I don't think I will. It's strange anyway, I feel like I read a different book from everybody else, considering the glowing reviews it has on Goodreads...
DeleteI purchased this duology awhile back, but haven't gotten around to reading it yet... It's one of those books that is so hyped up, I feel it might disappoint in the end so I take my time with those before finally picking them up.
ReplyDeleteI totally understand the hype part and the disappointment, still if you already have them, maybe you should try the first one. For me it just didn't live up to my expectations, but a lot of people love it too.
Delete