The Wrath and the Dawn & The Rose and the Dagger
The Wrath and the Dawn was a book I picked up after seeing/listening to a panel about diversity in books. Along with Sabaa Tahir, Marie Lu and Aisha Saeed, Renee Ahdieh shared some very insightful points about diversity in books. I’ve now covered three of the four author’s debut books and I look forward to reading Aisha Saeed’s Written in the Stars very soon!
Synopsis
Every dawn brings horror to a different family in a land ruled by a killer. Khalid, the eighteen-year-old Caliph of Khorasan, takes a new bride each night only to have her executed at sunrise. So it is a suspicious surprise when sixteen-year-old Shahrzad volunteers to marry Khalid. But she does so with a clever plan to stay alive and exact revenge on the Caliph for the murder of her best friend and countless other girls. Shazi’s wit and will, indeed, get her through to the dawn that no others have seen, but with a catch… she’s falling in love with the very boy who killed her dearest friend.
She discovers that the murderous boy-king is not all that he seems and neither are the deaths of so many girls. Shazi is determined to uncover the reason for the murders and to break the cycle once and for all.
Review
When I decided to start a YA book club for teenagers at the book store I work at, I really wasn’t sure what sorts of books they would really take to. We selected The Young Elites by Marie Lu (review to come!) as the first book and thankfully all the girls (all 3!) who attended raved about their love of fantasy. It made me seriously wish there had been such a breadth of choices in the genre when I was in high school. After The Young Elites, we moved on to The Wrath and the Dawn, because I was also trying to make my way through all of the authors I had seen speak on a We Need Diverse Books panel at Book Con and like Sabaa Tahir’s An Ember in the Ashes, I was just so excited to read about some ethnically diverse characters in The Wrath and the Dawn.
Renee Ahdieh is officially one of my favorite storytellers. She has a way of telling a story that hearkens back to the times when oral storytelling was the only way of storytelling. As I’m currently reading her newest book, I found it only appropriate to rave about her first duology. The synopsis accurately captures the essence of the plot, but the characters are very complex and the publisher’s marketing materials (the synopsis) doesn’t quite capture their essence. Shazi is a fiercely loyal and very opinionated character who does not change her mind easily. She is easily one of my favorite female protagonists and is exceptionally well rounded. Khalid is rich in his depth and motivations and the two are very well matched both in temperament and strength of will and character. The characteristics of the romance aspect of the story make it very accessible for readers who are looking for a more “traditional” YA and it’s a great transition into fantasy for those who aren’t entirely sure how to flex their imagination muscle (i.e. brain) to enjoy a magical world that has it’s roots in our own world but with some delightful twists and turns that are both unexpected and spectacular.
The first book ends on a pretty huge cliffhanger, but as both books are readily available, you won’t have to wait long to know what happens!
Rating: 8 out of 10 stars
Celebration of Books 
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