Riveting Game of Thrones meets Arabian Nights story
by Renée Ahdieh (Author)
The Book:
Every dawn brings horror to a different family in a land ruled by a killer. Khalid, the eighteen-year-old Caliph of Khorasan, takes a new bride each night only to have her executed at sunrise. So it is a terrible surprise when sixteen-year-old Shahrzad volunteers to marry Khalid.
But she does so with a clever plan to stay alive and exact revenge on the Caliph for the murder of her best friend and countless other girls. Shazi's wit and will get her through to the dawn that no others have seen, but with a catch . . . she may be falling in love with a murderer.
Shazi discovers that the villainous boy-king is not all that he seems and neither are the deaths of so many girls. It's up to her to uncover the reason for the murders and to break the cycle once and for all. "So you would have me throw Shazi to the wolves?"
The Book Reviewed:
The setting is luxurious! Adhieh paints a swanky scenery of sweet-smelling foods, colorful silks and damask, stern warriors wielding scimitars and falcons. The setting is certainly one of the favorite charms, and keeps the book exciting.
This one got off to a slow start for me. Didn’t buy the fact that the caliph (named Khalid) would be so spellbound with Shahrzad’s storytelling that he would delay killing her just to listen to the rest of her story.
Shahrzad irritated me as well, as her conduct seemed flippant and reckless, despite the fact that her life hung in the balance. The alternating viewpoint of her childhood love Tariq, who set the wheels of a rebellion in motion after finding out about Shahrzad’s impulsive choice to wed the caliph, kept me going at the start. But happily, it got better.
In general, I really liked this and would recommend it. My main criticism seems to be with the 1,001 Nights backstory, which Ahdieh only had limited control over. Khalid feels inconsistent in his handling of the curse which requires him to kill his brides.
First he elects to kill all these girls to avoid his other subjects anguish, but then stops to save Shahrzad, even though he knows it will cause more death and make all the prior girls’ deaths pointless. But, setting that aside, the story and characters were brilliant. I will be reading the next one!