Notes from the Shelf

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The Serpent and the Wings of Night by Carissa Broadbent is the first in the Crowns of Nyaxia series. The first two books are a duology following Oraya and Raihn. There are plans for seven books total, with the other five focusing on side characters from the first two.

Oraya is a human stuck in a vampire’s world, having to constantly watch her back as everyone wants to kill her. That is, everyone except her adoptive father Vincent, the Nightborn vampire king. He saved Oraya during a raid on her hometown, bringing her to the castle and training her to become a warrior, an efficient killer of vampires.  Her greatest wish is to become a vampire strong enough to make her adoptive father proud. But with Turning having a small survival rate, it’s decided she will enter the Kejari, a legendary tournament held every couple hundred years by Nyaxia, the goddess of death and vampires.

Whoever wins the Kejari can have any wish granted, and Oraya wants more than anything to become as strong as her adoptive father, to repay him for his kindnesses.

In order for her to win the five trials of the Kejari, she must form an alliance with a mysterious rival. Raihn is a Rishan, an enemy to her father’s crown. He’s a ruthless vampire, an efficient killer, her greatest threat in the competition… and someone Oraya is oddly drawn to, growing to trust him in spite of her instincts. But while the brutal trials are taking place over four months, war is brewing within the House of Night, changing everything Oraya thought she knew about her home, and throwing into question who, if anyone, she should trust.

This book started off slow to me, with the first 50 or so pages hard to get into. I also struggled with getting past that it just seemed like Hunger Games at first, but with vampires. However, after the first 50 pages it was faster paced, and I enjoyed the interactions between Oraya and Raihn. The last 50 pages were so crazy, I couldn’t stop reading. There were so many reveals one after the other, and now I’m left with a lot of questions, which I hope the second book will answer. I’m not sure if I particularly liked the ending though. I think it kind of tore away all of the character growth Oraya had.

Oraya had started the book as a weak but confident human and ended the book perhaps as the opposite, finding she had more magic and physical strength at her disposal than she had thought, but at the same time she seemed more timid and emotionally weak, no longer being able to trust anyone after she had let in others to trust. I’m hoping to see Oraya stepping more into her own, hopefully regaining the confidence and finding someone she can truly trust in the second book.

I give The Serpent and the Wings of Night 4 stars.

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