Hello everyone!
So a long time ago, in blog terms that is, I wrote a post regarding a retelling of Arabian Nights, this one being titled A Thousand Nights. And then, what I promised myself and anyone who really reads this blog, was that I was going to read The Wrath and the Dawn and compare the two books side by side, or at the very least point out differences and similarities.
That being obviously other stuff besides the retellings of Arabian Nights, of course.
And then what I did was conveniently forget about the lot of it, meaning I didn't get around to actually even reading this book until very recently, and go figure but when I went to check on when exactly I wrote the first blog, it was six months ago.
I really do ace these things, I know I do.
Now, that being said, I have to mention I'm a big fan of Arabian Nights - in fact, I actually have a gilded book in Slovene of one translated version of the thing, which is so huge I need to sit down when I'm reading it.
Yeah, you could probably whack someone over the head with the hardcover and they'd drop. Nifty weapon of choice!
Back to books and the Nights again.
Renee Ahdieh does a slightly different job of retelling this whole thing, mainly because she keeps it a lot closer to the original.
If you recall, in A Thousand Nights, we don't even know the name of our heroine, nor do we actually get to see many stories that get told, which is kind of the point. The original premise of Arabian nights is that, by telling stories night after night, always leaving her husband handing with a clif hanger, the bride saves her life, gives birth to three sons in the meantime, and eventually the whole thing gets chucked aside,, leaving her as the undisputed queen.
While A Thousand Nights didn't have that setting, The Wrath and the Dawn actually did, to a degree.
Sharzad, or Shazi for short, wants to marry - and murder - Khalid, because he has married and murdered her best friend, Shiva.
On a side-note, it took me FOREVER to figure out Shiva wasn't her sister but her best friend. Honestly, sometimes this stuff could be just a little bit clearer, you know? It would make my life a whole lot easier.
So this is what Shazi does: she gets married. And she tells Khalid a story, leaving him hanging by dawn - and furious.
But she doesn't die.
And just when you think her luck is going to hold, she actually almost gets strangled by a silken chord, but her hubbie dear saves her at the last minute. Not that it endears him to her, obviously. I'd kind of have a hard time trusting the man myself, and I like to think I'm a pretty forgiving person.
Afterwards, however, even though tensions run high, Shazi begins to see things ... differently. She notices things about her husband and realizes there's more to it than just the wish to murder innocent girls.
Now, recalling the original again: the khalif murdered each of his brides after the wedding night because his first wife had cheated on him, and only in this way could he make sure they'd be faithful.
Talk about trust issues.
In this one, however, we steer closer to Johnston's retelling of the story, as Khalid is cursed: his first wife hung herself off the balcony by a silken cord, and her distraught father had dabbed in dark magic to place the curse on Khalid. He has to murder one hundred wives for the one who took her own life, or else it won't rain and his people will die.
There's ALWAYS a catch, isn't there?
The additional catch here being that Shazi is an expert archer, and among other things slowly gets under the skin of both her protectors and the family members surrounding her and Khalid, making her mission difficult ... then impossible.
Khalid figures it out. He actually kneels down so she can do it, but she can't.
That's love for you. And the proof that hate is just one step away from it.
Of course there are complications: like the neighbouring overlord who thinks he's so smart, and who obviously wants the khalifate for himself; and Shazi's childhood sweetheart who is under the impression that she needs saving, when in reality, she really doesn't.
Things come to a head when her own father goes into the same kind of black magic we've already mentioned, setting fire to the capital by unleashing a storm, and allowing previously-mentioned sweetheart to go grab Shazi. She doesn't want to go along at first until she realizes the storm and fire are her father's doing, and then demands to be taken there. And not only does the captain of the guard - Khalid's cousin, natch - agree, but he actually makes the guys promise they won't let Shazi come back.
Which is just a big question mark over my head.
What game is he playing? After seeing how good Shazi and Khalid are for each other?
Oh, did I mention Khalid was out of town when this happened? Obviously he wasn't there, so he's now hurrying back to a burning city and he'll find his wife gone. Yeah. One more letter of regret to write, like the ones he wrote after each murdered wife prior to Shazi.
A lot of people had issues with this book, saying that the characters were fairly one-dimensional and especially that the heroine was a lot less complex than in the original Arabian Nights. Me, I enjoyed the love story as it unfolded, and I can't wait to read the second book in this duology (I sincerely hope it stays a duology, by the by; authors are sometimes weird that way in changing their initial ideas).
I also found out there are two prequel novellas, and one in-between the two main books, so I'm sinking my claws into those as soon as humanly possible, as well!
And, as I've said before, I love Arabian Nights. I loved this retelling just as much as the other one. Guess I'm just a fan of this kind of thing.
xx
*image not mine
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