“The wrath and the dawn” by Renee Ahdieh
Do you like romance novels? Do you also happen to love traditional fairy tales? Well, look no further, because I have the one book I think you will absolutely love! But let’s get to know more about the book first, shall we?
First of all, the book is called “The Wrath and the Dawn” and it was published in 2015 in the USA. The story was written by Renee Ahdieh, a Korean-American woman who graduated from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, and its genre is described as young adult literature, but it makes for a good read even for older people. Nowadays it has a sequel named “The Rose and the Dagger” and as of November 5th, 2019 the story made its debut as a web comic, on the “Webtoon” app.
But why characterize it as a fairy tale? Well, the answer is pretty simple. The author was inspired by the traditional Persian fairy tale of “One Thousand and One Nights” due to her husband’s Persian background. As a result, the plot is more or less the same but with a twist. So let’s go into some more detail.
In the kingdom of Khorasan, the 18-year- old king, named Khalid, is cursed to marry a woman each night only to have her killed the next morning. After her best friend Shiva dies this way, Sharhrzad decides to get her revenge by volunteering to be the queen and killing Khalid, the king. She manages to survive the first few nights by telling Khalid stories and leaving them unfinished, while she tries to find his weaknesses, but ends up falling in love with him in the process.
In the meantime, Shahrzad’s father, who knows dark magic, Jahandar, and her fiancé, Tariq, are planning a revolution under the name of the “White Falcon” in order to kill Khalid and get Shahrzad back. When Tariq goes undercover to pay Shahrzad a visit in the palace, he is heartbroken to realise that she is in love with Khalid. In the end, Jahandar uses his dark magic and creates a fire storm in order to create a distraction for Tariq to infiltrate the palace and “rescue” Shahrzad, while Khalid is on a business trip. Shahrzad ends up reluctantly leaving the palace with Tariq, as Khalid watches his kingdom being burned to ashes from afar.
As a romantic fairy tale, the book contains a love triangle between the three main characters, Shahrzad, Khalid and Tariq. Shahrzard (or Shazi in short) is the main protagonist of the book. She is a bold, daring and protective 16-year-old woman, who is not afraid to risk her life in order to get revenge for the loss of her loved ones. Her childhood sweetheart and fiancé, Tariq, is a simple-minded and blunt young man, yet really impulsive but kind and sweet to all. Finally, Khalid is the secretive and cold to all, yet really sensitive 18-year-old king of Khorasan, who Shazi ends up falling for.
The main themes of the story are death, love and wrath. Throughout the book, the people introduced to the reader have experienced the loss of a loved one. The author successfully conveys the way people deal with death or the loss of someone close to them. Some of them fear death (Shahrzad), some make reckless decisions due to the pain of a loss (Shahrzad, Tariq, Jahandar), some choose to endure the pain of the loss and hide it deep within them (Khalid and Jalal) and finally some choose to die in order to deal with the pain (Khalid’s first wife and Shiva’s mother).
The second theme of the book is love and how hard it could be for someone to deal with the emotions it makes them feel. Due to the book introducing the concept of “enemies to lovers” and a love triangle between Shazi, Khalid and Tariq, the theme of love shines through the book and makes it more interesting. The author writes about Shazi and Tariq’s kind of love, the innocent and childhood-like kind of love that doesn’t hurt and Khalid and Shazi’s kind of love, a love that requires much strength and care for it to blossom, a kind of forbidden and unexpected love. In the end, Khalid’s approach to the concept of love wins Shazi over, and Tariq respects her decision while still having feelings for her. The theme of love is the one that captivates the reader because it is analyzed really well in the book.
Lastly, wrath is the underlying reason for most of the decisions of the characters and also the reason behind the curse that started it all. It is described as the drive for Khalid’s first wife’s father to curse Khalid, as the sole reason why the late king murdered his wife (Khalid’s mother), why Shahrzad volunteered to be the queen and why her father decided to use dark magic to save her. All these reckless decisions were made only because of the wrath that some people tried to bury within them.
Besides the themes that are the most prominent throughout the story, the author also uses a fair amount of symbols in the book. The most memorable of which are the dawn, the rose and the dagger. The dawn is thought of by all people as a new beginning, the start of something new. However, dawn cannot only be the symbol of a beginning, but also the end of something. The author decided to highlight the latter part, by making one girl be executed every dawn due to the curse, which marked the end of their lives. Furthermore, the rose symbolizes the strong and frail woman Shazi is, from her father’s point of view, while the dagger symbolizes the lethal yet mesmerizing woman Shazi is, from Khalid’s point of view.
Looking back at it, although I don’t particularly enjoy reading books, I would totally recommend reading “The Wrath and the Dawn”. It is a book that lets you know a little bit more about the Persian heritage and makes you become interested in knowing more about it. Furthermore, the author really captivates the reader’s interest and conveys the feelings of the protagonists vividly, causing their heart to flutter or break depending on the situation. Because of the beautiful and detailed descriptions, one has the opportunity to accurately imagine what it would be like to be part of the beautiful kingdom of Khorasan. All in all, the plot, the characters and the author’s way of writing really complement each other, and they personally made me excited to read more of the author’s works. Lastly, despite the fact that the book narrates the love story of two complicated people, which is a quite popular trope in romance books, the book was very interesting and exciting to read, so I would definitely encourage people to read it and personally, I will make sure to read the sequel in the near future.
And as always, don’t forget to…
“Make it a story worthy of you.”
-Khalid-
Μπάκα Αλεξάνδρα (Β3), Πρότυπο ΓΕΛ Ευαγγελικής Σχολής Σμύρνης