Book Review: "The Serpent and the Wings of Night"
Carissa Broadbent's new romantasy is a richly-told and sexy blend of vampire romantic horror and epic fantasy.
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As is so often the case these days, The Serpent and the Wings of Night came to my attention quite by accident. I was dropping some books off at my local library when this book happened to catch my eye and, once I saw that it was a romantasy with vampires, I thought, “Why not?” This might be enjoyable. Sure enough, the story hooked me from the first page, and once I started reading it I simply could not put it down. Now, I have to admit that when it comes to vampire fiction I’m much more of an Anne Rice kind of gay. However, there was something about the way that the story sought to introduce vampire lore into the genre of epic fantasy that appealed to me, and I think that Carissa Broadbent does a very good job of weaving together these two disparate strands.
When the story begins Oraya is the adopted human daughter of Vincent, the king of the vampires. She has decided to enter a grisly contest-cum-sacrifice in honor of the goddess Nyaxia, who is essentially the mother of all vampires and, after she does so, strikes up an unlikely alliance with an enormously powerful vampire named Raihn. Slowly but surely she finds herself drawn closer to Raihn, who is far more complicated–and, ironically, more human–than she could ever have imagined. At the same time, she also has to grapple with some very unpleasant and challenging realities about Vincent.
Even though she is technically a human, Oraya still exists in a very liminal state, since she has been taken under the wing of and trained by none other than the king himself. While this gives her a great deal of power, it also comes to take a greater and greater toll as Vincent begins to show just how ruthless he can and will be when he feels that his power is threatened. We’re never left in any doubt that she loves him, even as she also increasingly comes to see his methods as going beyond the pale. More sinisterly, he also refuses to see her as actually human; instead, she is something different, something better than the rest of her kind. The novel deftly allows us to see into Oraya’s complex loyalties, particularly since Vincent is the only family she’s really ever known.
It’s when she meets the vampire Raihn, however, that things begin to change, and not entirely in ways that are welcome to this young mortal woman trying to forge her own destiny. In some ways this book is very much an enemies-to-lovers story, but I think it might be more accurate to say that it’s a reluctant-allies-to-passionate-lovers sort of tale, which to me makes it more interesting. Once these two recognize one another’s talents, they begin to build a respect that, slowly but surely, turns into something more. Broadbent has a firm control over her narrative, and while it’s obvious from the beginning that these two characters are going to end up together in one form or another, she doesn’t rush us into anything, letting the pressure and the tension build until neither we nor the characters can take it any longer.
And whew, those sex scenes. Unsurprisingly I don’t find myself caught up in the heat of hetero sex in either books or real life, but I’ll admit that Broadbent had me sweating a bit there. What’s more, it’s not as if the sex is meant for mere titillation–though there’s nothing wrong with mere titillation, in my humble opinion. Instead, it’s clear that this moment of intimate physical union is an opportunity for both of them to be vulnerable in a way that they can never be outside of the boundaries of their unorthodox relationship. The stakes of the contest in which they are engaged are far too high, and their own pasts far too filled with trauma and darkness, for this to continue.
There are some very dark aspects of Oraya’s story, but Broadbent wisely doesn’t let these overwhelm her protagonist. Yes, Oraya has suffered some sexual trauma in her past, but these earlier horrors don’t drown out other elements of her character, nor are they extraneous and meant to simply titillate. Instead, these moments in her past have shaped who she is in the present, and they give her the determination to make the world better for those other humans who are subject to the predations of their vampiric overlords. While she is hardly a perfect person–who is?--there is still something quite laudable about her goals that makes her easy to cheer for, even as we as readers have to accept that there are limits to how much she will be able to accomplish.
Vampires have long made for fascinating thought experiments, and that proves to be the case here, particularly since Oraya has a foot in both worlds. This gives her a unique insight into their behaviors and their foibles, which is why she is able to overcome them with so much ease. Broadbent’s lush and evocative prose allows us to see them for the monsters they are even as, at the same time, we come to recognize the many layers they each possess. There are also more than a few twists and turns and narrative surprises that force both Oraya and the reader to contend with the fact that not everything in this treacherous world is as it seems.
Overall, I found The Serpent and the Wings of Night to be a compulsively readable blend of fantasy and vampire fiction. Like the blood-sucking creatures who stalk its pages, it sinks its fangs into you from the first page and doesn’t let go until the very end. The worldbuilding is as rich and textured as the prose, and though the actual geography of the story is limited, it’s clear that there is much more to come in the sequel.
I know one thing for sure. I can’t wait to see just where this story goes and how Oraya and Raihn figure out the next steps in their tortured relationship.