Reviews with content warning for Injury/Injury detail - The Ashes and the Star-Cursed King

"But that’s what happens when one person gets to shape your entire world. They can make it into whatever they want, and you’re stuck inside those walls, whether they’re real or not.”

For a holiday read, this book wasn’t all that sunny. Picking up from right where The Serpent and the Wings of Night left off, you call tell that The Ashes and the Star-Cursed King was the answer to all of my political-based questions I had while reading the first book, and controversially I actually enjoyed all of the politics more than the Hunger Games-esque battles to the death in the first novel.

This book is a monster – nearly seven hundred pages. And yes, like with the first book, I feel it’s too long.

This review contains spoilers for the first novel in the series, The Serpent and the Wings of Night.

World-building: 4 stars.

As already established, I feel like this book is a lot stronger in terms of developing the world around the events. We get to understand why certain ‘Houses’ within the vampire world dis/like one another, and the history behind why Raihn’s sudden rise to power was so controversial. The first book felt very separated into ‘The Trials' and ‘The Human District’, so bouncing between different locations both made sense, and was appreciated on my end.

I still don’t understand what a Coriatis bond is.

Characters: 3 stars.

Obviously a lot of the characters appear in the first book, but the new characters were, by the end, reasonably fleshed out. I did have a couple of “who???” moments when names were raised, but I do feel like the improved writing (I’ll touch on this in a moment) made my confusion easier to clarify.

If Raihn says ‘There she is’ one more time, by the way, I might hurl my Kindle out the window. I get it, it’s a repeated dialogue for a reason, but I feel like writing the same line more than five times gets irritating. I get it, Oraya’s determined, but please word it in a way that’s more descriptive as opposed to a motif that falls flat.

I do also feel like the enemies to lovers dynamic had more weight here, considering Raihn literally killed Oraya’s father. However, with the amount of times she tries to justify her father’s behaviour in this book, the enemies portion falls flat once more. Make Oraya despise him, loathe him, not just go “he killed my dad but he’s hot”.

Pace: 2 stars.

My main critique of this book comes in the form of the pacing. It felt super slow at points, and I feel like some events could have been heavily condensed down. The action scenes, specifically one towards the end, felt rushed in comparison to filler conversational scenes, and overall it did make finishing this book a struggle.

Writing: 3 stars.

I will say, though, that the writing in this book is a lot more bearable than the first. Now, I’m not sure of the chronology in terms of when Broadbent wrote each novel and novella, but it’s clear that she learned from the first novel and Ashes does feel like a better-written book overall. Again, it’s far too long (maybe if we cut out all the ‘There she is’ lines, we’d be down to 400?). Don’t get me wrong, there were still moments that made me want to curl into a ball, but not as many as Serpent.

Something of note is that, unlike the first book, this book follows the perspective of both Raihn and Oraya. I do wish the first book was written in the same way, both because I found it much easier to read this way, and because the difference in structure set my autism off and I still don’t know why (it gave me the same vibe as when books in a series are different sizes). Overall, I do feel the writing is better, but still did not completely click with me.

Side note: the male audiobook narrator for Raihn did have me giggling and kicking my feet, so now I fear I understand why people find Raihn attractive, however I am not including that as a positive within this review as that’s down to a man’s vocal cords, not the book itself.

Overall rating: 3.5 stars.

I do feel slightly redundant giving it the same rating as Serpent, however while there were improvements in terms of the writing and world-building, the characters and pacing do bring the score down. I will say that I am in no rush to pick up the third book when it releases in November, but I probably will one day.

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coveredinivy's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.0

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theresamothinmyroom's review against another edition

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adventurous mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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aliceloyallaleon's review

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adventurous dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

Good read, better world building than the first, personally prefer the enermies to lovers tension from the firsf than the establishing trust relationship of this book.

This book's plot is more original than serpent and the night but the book dragged for the first 100 pages, but it gets good. Likes the exploration of loss

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elledanie's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional hopeful mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

Love love this Crowns of Nyaxia series 😭🤩 Def recommend if anyone is in the mood for an action-packed fantasy romance with dual POV, winged vampires, kings & nobles, battles/war, magic, and a little mystery.

There’s more plot than romance, and I wouldn’t say it’s super ‘high’ fantasy—there is a map, but the world, races, magic, gods, etc. aren’t too complicated or confusing. The writing style is very readable and so fun with all the diff callbacks and character relationships.

If it’s not a Coriatis bond then I don’t want it! 🫶 💁🏻‍♀️

“Loving Oraya was terrifying.
It required me to see things I didn’t want to see. Face things I didn’t want to face. Allow another soul to witness parts of myself I didn’t even want to acknowledge.
I now felt like such a fucking fool that I had never thought of it in that way, with that word, until this moment.
Of course it was love.
What else could it be, for someone to see that much of you? To see so much beauty in the parts of someone that they hate in themselves?
I almost wished I hadn’t had the realization, because it made what loomed ahead that much more devastating. Easier to have nothing to lose.”

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bookwyrm25's review against another edition

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dark emotional hopeful reflective sad

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

I really struggled on whether to rate this 4 stars or 4.5 stars, which is very disappointing because the first book was one of my top books of the year. However, it was mind blowing and amazing, but went on at LEAST 100 pages too long. Maybe even 150 pages too long. They didn't need to have

Orya almost die SO MANY TIMES only for her to heal in ONE DAY and come back so much stronger somehow. Once or twice sure, but it happened like 4 times in this one singular book and it ate up 50-100 pages each time. I think for the elongated scenes and the almost dying so many times subtract half of a star for me, only because the emotional turmoil this book put me through and the slow burn of it all made me so freaking happy otherwise.

Otherwise, the book was heart wrenching and amazing and I loved every moment of their relationship. I loved the development Orya made and how devoted Raihn is. I love all the side characters, and I loved seeing Vale and Lillith again. Amazing book. I cried multiple times! (out of joy!) And also, severe daddy issues! I get it girl. Man was a terrible father....

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