The Wrath and the Dawn tells the story of Shahrzad (Shazi to her friends), a young woman who boldly sets out to marry, and seek revenge on, the man who murdered her best friend. Khalid, the Caliph of Khorasan, takes a new bride each night only to have her executed at sunrise. When Shazi's friend becomes the Caliph's victim, Shazi volunteers herself with a plan to make it past the sunrise after her wedding night without being murdered. Inspired by A Thousand and One Nights, Shazi does make it further than the brides before her by telling Khalid a cliffhanger story, promising only to continue with the story if he lets her live to see another nightfall. The opening savior story, much to my delight, is the story of the genie in the lamp. It's a great concept and has a lot of potential. Sadly, for me, it just fell really flat after the first few chapters. By the end of the book, the only thing I really wanted to do was watch
and listen to songs sung by the late, great
,which, in turn, made me sad, so I had to cheer myself up by listening to
Oh, right, we were talking about the book. Sorry, I lost myself in more entertaining ventures for a second. To be fair, there were a few things I liked about the book (hence, the three stars instead of one on Goodreads):
1. The setting is fresh and unique. The Wrath and the Dawn is set in historical Khorasan, which is in the northeast of Persia (Iran). In the first few chapters, the author includes a lot of details about clothing styles, food, and buildings that help the read get a real feel of what it is like to live in a place that may be vastly different than the surroundings they are accustomed to.
2. The concept. It really is a fun premise, especially with the inclusion of the fuzzy blanket stories (Aladdin, Bluebeard, etc...) we are familiar with.
3. The ethnic diversity that book the encompasses.
4. The last few chapters of the book. This is when ALL the action happens. If the rest of the book was this fast paced, I would have liked it better.
And, then there were the things I didn't like:
1. The middle of the book was SO BORING! With a premise like this, the entire novel should be chock full o' mystery, magic, love, and mayhem! Some of the chapters do contain these things, but the rest is so boring that it will make your eyes water. Ahdieh also has an extremely repetitive writing style that can become tiresome. Remember when I said that the descriptions of clothes, settings, and food are interesting? They're interesting in about the first three chapters, then they become redundant. For example, I understand that a character is going to get his clothes dirty by kicking up dust riding his horse through the sand. It really only needs to be said once or twice. Yet, it seemed like this was repeated during every single one of the 500 times Tariq went gallivanting through the desert on his horse. We get it. already! I honestly think this is a first-time published author flaw that will remedy itself as she releases more books. In this book, though, I just found that the middle of the book suffered badly from repetitive boredom.
2. The sexist nature of the book rattled me a little bit. I swear if they had refereed to one more woman in the book as a whore, I would have dove down into the ink and paper and throat punched someone. I understand we are dealing with cultural differences, here, but this is never okay for a Riot Grrrl. I also wasn't pleased with the sex scenes that I would consider rape. Honestly, the sex scenes are over in the blink of an eye. They are very weirdly worded and you have to read them over and over again to make sure you know what the heck is happening. I got the feeling that the author didn't really want the reader to realize that they were having sex. Why? Because two of the three sex scenes are rape. I understand that she's voluntarily married him and it's their wedding night and so on and what forth... Still, this book is targeted toward teen girls. A teen girl might read this and think, "Oh, it's okay to do it when you don't want to..." Glossing over rape scenes and refereeing to women as whores = not okay.
3. I never really bought into the love story between Shazi and Khalid. He presumably murdered her best friend and rapes her, yet she is supposed to think he is Prince Charming. Meanwhile, he picked her out of several young women only because she's more physically attractive (or braver for volunteering) than the others. It doesn't make a lot of sense. In the end, when the action picked up, I was kinda rooting for them. But, overall, it wasn't believable to me.
4. As hard as I tried, I just couldn't really connect with any of the characters. Jalal was okay, he was actually my favorite, but I saw very few good qualities in the others. Tariq, when not riding through the desert kicking up sand, was kinda useless. Shazi was meant to come off as tough, creavite, and fearless, but, in the end, just seemed to be a weak, smitten kitten. No matter the reasoning behind his forced destiny, Khalid was a jerk's jerky jerk. Despina was just too Debbie Downer. None of them were very likable.
I know I'm in the minority, here, but I just thought the book was okay. The last few chapters kinda made me want to read the second one, but I'm not sure if I will or not. She's working with some really rich background material with the Arabian Nights theme, so maybe the second book will steer away from the issues I didn't like and be an all-around better book. For me, though, the Wrath and the Dawn just didn't live up to the hype I'd been hearing all around me. There are readers who claim it is the best book in the universe, so maybe you should check it out for yourself.
Author page: http://reneeahdieh.com/books/
