Review: The Ashes & the Star-Cursed King by Carissa Broadbent

I’m probably going to be in the minority with this review, but I was disappointed with this book.  While I had a lot of questions about the first book in the series (The Serpent and the Wings of the Night) I did like it.  This book picks up pretty much where the first book ends.  Oraya and Raihn are dealing with the fallout from the Kejari.  Raihn has to figure out how to be king while Oraya is hiding behind her hate.  When they’re together (they like to spend a lot of time avoiding one another) it’s feigned amusement from Raihn while Oraya lashes out.  Oraya is already prickly, but she’s especially so now.  It takes 57% of the book before Oraya gets out of her head enough to go with her feelings.  Even then, I have to question if she would have done that if there weren’t such horrible extenuating circumstances.  The constant push/pull between them was exhausting and often left me wondering if I could last to whatever their HEA is.

Oraya is a complex character, especially given the way she was raised.  But after all the revelations that came out about Vincent, I find that I hate her mourning a man who did not treat her well.  He never gave her what she craved, until it was oh so conveniently too late, and hid so much from her.  I kept waiting for her to get angry at Vincent, but she seems to direct that anger at Raihn instead of where it needed to go.  We spend 50% of the book like this.  As I said above…exhausting.

The last 1/2 of the book brought a lot of action, the story moved along quickly and we learned a lot more about Oraya as well as the relationship between her parents.  We also had Raihn exacting the last of his revenge on people who treated him as a lesser person because he was Turned.  This last half was the part of the book that I really enjoy.  That’s not to say it didn’t have its moments (Vincent and your stupid secrets in the sand….I’m looking at you) where I wanted to toss my iPad across the room.

This is the end of the duology for Raihn and Oraya, however, there will be more to the series according to the author’s note at the end. That said, I feel like there are still too many things hanging from this arc of the story that I have to wonder if this will tie together with the next set of books and if they do, how.  In the end, I found that I’m going to let this one lie here and be done with the series.