The Rules Of Survival Are The Same: Never Trust, Never Yield, and Always – Always – Guard Your Heart.

I recently finished reading The Serpent and the Wings of Night by Carissa Broadbent. This was OwlCrate's December '23 adult book. This is book #1 in The Crowns of Nyaxia series.

This exclusive edition features an exclusive cover designed by @ruavegraphics, with a reversible dust jacket by @imjenndove, a foiled case design by @niallgrant, and foiled end pages by @alicemariapower. The book is also digitally signed by author Carissa Broadbent on an author page designed by @divineliterary with an author's letter bound into the book, and features sprayed edges.

POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT

  Rating: 4.25/5 stars

"The adopted human daughter of the Nightborn vampire king, Oraya carved her place in a world designed to kill her. Her only chance to become something more than prey is entering the Kejari: a legendary tournament held by the goddess of death herself.

But winning won’t be easy amongst the most vicious warriors from all three vampire houses. To survive, Oraya is forced to make an alliance with a mysterious rival.

Everything about Raihn is dangerous. He is a ruthless vampire, an efficient killer, an enemy to her father’s crown… and her greatest competition. Yet, what terrifies Oraya most of all is that she finds herself oddly drawn to him.

But there’s no room for compassion in the Kejari. War for the House of Night brews, shattering everything that Oraya thought she knew about her home. And Raihn may understand her more than anyone – but their blossoming attraction could be her downfall, in a kingdom where nothing is more deadly than love."

Oraya is a human girl who was adopted by Vincent, the Vampire King of House of Night, when she was eight years old. For full context, there is also the House of Blood and House of Shadows, but they are irrelevant for now. Every 100 years the Kejari takes place, a tournament, where people all over Obitraes can participate. The contestants have to go through five trials over the period of four months to win. The winner will get granted one wish by Goddess Nyaxia the mother of all vampires. The House of Night is kind of divided into two rival vampire clans: the Hiaj and the Rishan vampires. Basically, the whole story of The Serpent and the Wings of Night is that Oraya goes through trials and has to ally with Raihn to survive the tournament. 

Reasons why I enjoyed this book:

The world that Carissa Broadbent created with this book is amazing. Vampires always get romanticized in books and I love that this book shows a different side. Vampires are savages, brutal, bloodthirsty, and really don’t give a flying fuck. Humans are pretty much livestock here and it’s amazing. Savage vampires meet The Hunger Games. 

The trials and tournaments are probably my favorite plots. Authors can really get creative with coming up with all kinds of games and trials and part of the fun is theorizing what could happen next. And the fact that each of the trials in this book was connected to Nyaxia’s story was so interesting to read. There were so many gods and goddesses mentioned in this book that it will open so many doors for future books in this world and I can’t wait to learn more. The author said that she plans five more books in this series and I have some theories for what the next book might be about, but for the rest, I really have no idea where she wants to take this story and I can’t wait to learn about it.

I knew their relationship (Oraya and Vincent) had me by the throat. I have to be honest here and say that Oraya and Vincent’s relationship was the MVP for me and that’s not a shade at Oraya and Raihn’s romance. I’ll come back to that later, but my depraved brain was lowkey shipping Oraya with Vincent. He calls her little serpent, how can you expect me not to fall for this?! Vincent was such an interesting character to me .. his duality was so hot. On one hand, he is this savage king who rules with an iron fist and has no problem burning a city with 500k men, women, children, humans, or vampires to the ground. On the other hand, he is a nurturing father and his one and only weakness is his little serpent. 

The complexity of their relationship spoke to me. Vincent was definitely the kind of father who raised Oraya with tough love. He protected her, he taught her how to fight, he taught her how to be hard, he taught her how to be efficient, he taught her how to be ruthless, but most importantly he taught her how to survive in this cruel world of predators. He took away part of her humanity. But underneath all the hard exterior he is such a softie for his little serpent. Every time Oraya barely survived one of the trials and she saw Vincent's reactions to it.. my heart.

Part of Oraya’s journey was realizing that even though she loved Vincent, she knew he was not a good man. These conflicting feelings made the story more compelling. 

I liked Oraya as the female main character. Even though her character isn’t very original, since she has many of the typical fantasy protagonist traits such as the chosen one, a weak human that turns powerful, I still like how she questions her own humanity despite being still human. Oraya had the chance to turn her back on this vampire world and find a safe place among the humans, but I love how she says that she rather stay in this place and make a change than be ignorant and safe. 

Her quest for power is admirable and I want to see more what her vision is for Obitraes. It feels like this cruel world can’t sink any lower with all the war that has been raging on for quite some time and I’m curious to see how Oraya will handle all the problems. 

Oraya and Raihn have kind of a reverse grumpy-sunshine situation where Raihn is not really sunshine, but compared to grumpy paranoid Oraya .. you should say he is. While I do love a good reverse grumpy-sunshine dynamic it took me a while to warm up to their relationship due to my inability to stop shipping Oraya with her father until I had to realize that this would never happen and they worked well together. I think my problem with Raihn’s character is that he was so nice and normal compared to all the other vampires? In a world full of backstabbing, cunning, and ruthless killers .. Raihn seemed dare I say boring in comparison. I needed more angst, more drama, more backstabbing between the couple and the second half gave that to me. 

Another thing that works in Raihn and Oraya’s favor is star-crossed romance of two rival clans. Their romance is very slow burn, but I’m happy to report that the smut scenes that we got were pretty good. My favorite was the biting scene that was.

What didn't work for me:

There was quite a lot of tell and not show in this book that bothered me a bit.

This is such a dumb thing to be petty about, but why does everyone and everything have a fantasy name, and Vincent's name is Vincent????

It took me a bit to warm up to Raihn. Not because he is not likable or a badly developed romance or anything. Something happens toward the end that as long as I live I will never forgive Raihn for, but at the same time, it makes his character so much more interesting and complex. 

Before reading The Serpent and the Wings of Night I was very impressed with the 4.54 rating this book has because it’s so rare that the first book in a series gets rated so high, but after reading it.. I can’t lie, I can understand why people enjoy it so much. This series will be a very most popular romantasy series in the future and compete with the SJM fans and the Fourth Wing girlies.

Check out The Serpent and the Wings of Night, and discover what happens when you're raised by vampires. Don't forget to check out book #2 Ashes and The Star-Cursed King.

Happy Reading :)