A review by merries
The Serpent and the Wings of Night by Carissa Broadbent

adventurous lighthearted mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

“Do you want to change this world, little serpent? Then climb your cage until you are so high no one can catch you.” 

I was never one to dabble in the Romantasy genre until this year, when I decided that for the sake of my mental health, I needed a break from the Literary Fiction cave I’d found myself dwelling in. I had, of course, picked up a few Romantasy books on a whim whenever I’d been book shopping, this book being one of them, and out of all of the plots this one seemed the most engaging to someone not entirely used to the genre. 

Now, coming from a background of Literary Fiction and existential dread, I like my books to have substance, a hint of morally dubious behaviour, and sometimes eye candy. I will say this book met, in my opinion, two of those criteria. Controversially, I found this book to have a degree of substance in the sprinkling of political world-building, morally dubious behaviour in terms of immense daddy issues, but the eye candy was... lacking for me. Perhaps that’s because ripped to fuck redheads aren’t my type (no offence). 

Delving into the serious part of this review, I’ll cover four topics: world-building; characters; pace; writing. 

World-building: 3 stars. 

I get confused easily. And, when listening to the audiobook while reading the actual, physical book, I found myself having to pause and just sit, wondering “Has this bit been explained to me yet?”. I know this is technically a series, while simultaneously a duology (can we class it as that?), and that I can’t expect everything to be explained to me instantly, but I feel this book should have had a glossary of some kind like others I’ve picked up pre and post this series. 

Characters: 4 stars. 

Overall, I found the characters pretty interesting. I will say that Mische is not interesting enough to me for me to pick up the third book in the series straight away, but Raihn and Oraya were intriguing. Plus, daddy issues. What can go wrong? 

I will say that I found the daddy issues more interesting of a dynamic than Raihn and Oraya wanting to slurp each other’s blood every fifty pages, but hey. I do also feel that, for an enemies to lovers romance, the enemies section didn’t ‘enemy’ enough for me to root for them as lovers, but the plot twist at the end of this book built up that intrigue again heading into The Ashes and the Star-Cursed King. 

Pace: 3 stars. 

The pace was pretty consistent, however I feel like this book both suffers from being 100 pages too long and 100 pages too short. There were a few moments that I didn’t feel were important enough to be included, but there were characters like Ibrahim who I just genuinely did not care for, so when a certain scene towards the end of the book happens, I was too indifferent to react.  

Furthermore, I remember at one point there being a two week time skip which ended up with “Oh by the way, Raihn and I are a bit more chill with each other now” and I felt that was a massive injustice to their dynamic. 

Writing: 2 stars. 

This is not me saying the writing is bad, by any means. There were some moments I found interesting and the action scenes on the whole were done well. My main critiques are towards some rather peculiar moments, and the fact that some of the dialogue made me want to curl up into a ball and roll down a hill. 

Examples include: 

“I’d wondered about it at first, especially since vampires fucked like rabbits...and Raihn looked like he was probably very good at sex.” (How does someone just give off 10/10 bedroom energy? Enlighten me.) 

“’I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t here to win,’” he said, somewhat apologetically, before he hurled a fucking star at me.” (Oraya’s inner monologue does sometimes read like a child who has learned the word ‘fuck’ for the first time.) 

“’I know some vampires have a taste for human sex, but-’ ’Vincent is my father,’ I cut in, disgusted. ‘Right. At least if he was fucking you, I could make sense of it.’” (I know I said daddy issues was the more interesting dynamic, but... not like this.) 

“We stayed off to the side-far away from the borderline-orgy that was happening in the centre of the room, which would have been a very awkward place to be with my father.” (I feel like I can’t explain this. It just gave me the ick.) 

Overall rating: 3.5 stars. 

I did enjoy this book; it was a nice 500-something page palette cleanser, and I did start the second book immediately after reading the first, but the writing and just my brain being confused does bring the rating down overall to a 3.5. If you want to read this book, just don’t take it too seriously! The real fun comes from when you realise that this book is a tad goofy – intentional or not. 

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