Genre/Tags: Romantasy, Bloody, Violent, King, Queen, Goddesses, War, Fantasy, PNR **TW Blood. Death. Grief. Dark Elements.

Author: Carissa Broadbent 

Story Rating: 5 Stars

Narrator: Amanda Leigh Cobb & Aiden Snow

Narrator Rating: 5 Stars

Length: 19 hours & 27 minutes

Audiobook Buy Links: Audible or Amazon

Love is a sacrifice at the altar of power.

In the wake of the Kejari, everything Oraya once thought to be true has been destroyed. A prisoner in her own kingdom, grieving the only family she ever had, and reeling from a gutting betrayal, she no longer even knows the truth of her own blood. She’s left only with one certainty: she cannot trust anyone, least of all Raihn.

The House of Night, too, is surrounded by enemies. Raihn’s own nobles are none too eager to accept a Turned king, especially one who was once a slave. And the House of Blood digs its claws into the kingdom, threatening to tear it apart from the inside.

When Raihn offers Oraya a secret alliance, taking the deal is her only chance at reclaiming her kingdom—and gaining her vengeance against the lover who betrayed her. To do so, she’ll need to harness a devastating ancient power intertwined with her father’s greatest secrets.

With enemies closing in on all sides, nothing is as it seems. As she unravels her past and faces her future, Oraya finds herself forced to choose between the bloody reality of seizing power and the devastating love that could be her downfall.

Full of heartbreak, redemption, bloody intrigue, and heart-pounding action, The Ashes and the Star-Cursed King is the gutting second installment of the Crowns of Nyaxia series and the conclusion of the Nightborn Duet. It is perfect for fans of From Blood and Ash and A Court of Thorns and Roses.

Review: 

**THIS IS BOOK TWO OF WHAT IS CURRENTY A DUOLOGY FOR ORAYA AND RAIHN. THERE WILL BE SPOILERS FOR BOOK #1. I ALSO USE ONE VISUAL DARKER QUOTE. 

Did you really think, Vincent whispered in the back of my mind, that I wouldn’t account for you, too, my little serpent? I flinched. Once, I’d craved his voice so fiercely. Now, it brought with it a wave of complicated emotions.

**There is a TLDR section at the bottom of this review with an overview. 

So, I always knew this book would get off to a rocky start. Because Raihn, the vampire Oraya grew feelings for during the Kejari, and feelings are not something Oraya likes having, and the man she’s loved as her father for sixteen years, Vincent the Nightborn King, hmm, let’s just say they did not mesh well at the end of book #1, The Serpent & the Wings of Night.  

This book picks up post Kejari, the vampire trial. Oraya is vacillating between sadness and anger, which can happen with grief, but then you add a layer of betrayal and you have a complex cocktail of feelings – sorry, Oraya, there’s that word again. The depressive grief wins out over betrayal for a while. Totally understandable. 

My father lived in the hazy moments before I opened my eyes every day, caught between waking and dreaming. I treasured those moments, when my nightmares had faded but they’d yet to be replaced with the grim shadow of reality.

I know what it’s like to have people die. Family. Those you love easily, and those you’ve had a complex relationship with. It all hurts. However, a while after losing that person you had a complex relationship with can allow you to grow into your full potential. Not always, but often. I understood Oraya’s start to this book. The relational complications. All Vincent was to her and also wasn’t. The potential of Raihn who, understandably to her in the beginning, did not potentiate in the way she thought. Trusting someone when you have never allowed trust to form a part of your vocabulary, then feeling like that backflipped on you. I understand why some readers felt she needed to avenge Vincent. But Oraya is half vampire and that side understands the violent past and present of that nature. She is also half human and she has hurt for sometime about that, but had never been allowed to grieve it prior. She’s been lied to about it. Now, bit by bit, she has her emotional reins loosened about what that fully, holistically means for her. And you can’t keep a stabby gal down.    

As Raihn is wont to say when Oraya gets pissed-off face or fires up, “There she is.” I know it annoyed some readers but I liked it. What it stood for. It was Raihn recognising what Oraya was feeling. That she was coming back into herself. Like at the Kejari when Oraya fought against almighty odds. Every time Raihn says “there she is,” Oraya was getting her dander up, at Raihn or someone or something else she didn’t like. It wasn’t always for the right reasons but, equally, it was also for the right reasons. It meant Oraya was on the journey to be who and what she is meant to be. Not who or what someone is telling her she could or could not be. Oraya is a fighter. She’s bloodthirsty. She’s a motherfucking queen and I was ready for her to shine. 

Meanwhile, Raihn is dealing with a wife that is angry with him and hurt by him. He thinks about another woman in the past who showed him kindness when there was no other. Now, with Oraya’s pain, he is drawn back to that difficult time once again, and all because of another Kejari.

I got into bed, but didn’t sleep. Nessanyn’s words floated through my mind, this time with a cynical tinge that was distinctly mine.
Who wins?
Well, Nessanyn sure as fuck didn’t.
And Oraya didn’t, either.

Then there are the vampires who resent his newly found power and status as King after Nyaxia’s Heir Mark gift – Shadowborn, Hiaj, even his original house, Rishan, they’re predominantly gunning for him. The vampires who don’t want him in power can take a ticket and stand in (a very, very loooong) line. How dare a lowly Turned slave come out on top. How dare he become the Nightborn King. To add to all of this, he has residual trauma from over seventy-years spent as a slave under Neculai, then his time under Vincent’s and Hiaj rule. And the same goddammed nobles are still swanning around, being pricks. Raihn wears a smile, a sneer, gives occasional speeches like Neculai once did, but he does not get the same respect from the nobles. He married Oraya after the Kejari because she saved him – he loves her and wants her safe in return – but it seemed shady at the time. Oraya is the previous Hiaj Nightborn King’s daughter. In the Rishan’s minds she’s the enemy and he should have killed her. And as much as Raihn feels he puts on a good show, no matter if he pretends publicly to show cruelty toward Oraya, something these vampires all respect, it’s pretty unmistakable he has feelings for her. His crown is shaky as fuck for multiple reasons. 

There are several attempts at easing into vampire society and none of them go well. Ballgowns and blood. On the first occasion, Raihn calls all the nobles to the Nightborn Palace in Sivrinaj to bow before him. It’s the norm but also risky. Things don’t go two thumbs up well. It’s not that he didn’t expect it, he did. He punishes one of the nobles, someone Raihn already loathes, when he calls Oraya a whore. Meaning he rips Marta’s head off, something I found extremely satisfying. However, Marta’s cousin and equally noble prick, Simon, won’t see it Raihn’s way. There’s going to become further support problems. And, my god, Simon turns into the freaking Terminator. Enjoy that! Anyway, in a shock move, Vale, one of the most respected Rishan vampire nobles, sweeps in and bows before Raihn, taking the offered position as his general. Vale has a newly Turned  wife as well. All in all, the first ballgowns and blood night scares a few, while mostly slapping a Band-Aid over the sharp edges of the vampire Houses. It’s simply buying time. Raihn has a few people behind him. Apart from Mische, his best friend, everyone else is somewhat sketchy. Including the most dodgy of them all, Septimus – he who likes to bet on outcomes and is all about self.

To make Raihn’s early fraught rein – cough cough – better, Septimus speculates that Vincent used seers when he was in power to give him an edge. There have been rumours. This could be valuable to Raihn if he can find those god blood pieces used by Vincent. Sure, it’s not the usual for vampires to use seers, but Vincent was incredibly powerful for his two-hundred-year reign. Searching the Nightborn Palace doesn’t yield much so there’s a push to find these items that Vincent probably would have hidden. He was nothing if not secretive. The directive is for Raihn to travel to Vincent’s original home town, Lahor. While it’s not realistically the best time, his shaky reign and all, Raihn wants Septimus off his back. If they do find some god blood items that’s a bonus for them, not him. Raihn, rightly, presumes Oraya will be interested in visiting Lahor to discover more about her father. Vincent shut down talk about his family as well. Road trip it is. Although they literally fly there. 

Lahor is a remote city of the House of Night, and to put it mildly, a creepy shithole. This part of the story was extremely gory and giving Children of the Corn: Dystopian Vampire Edition vibes. We have Vincent’s crazed sister, Lady Eveleana, ruling a decrepit castle like it’s something out of Home Castle Beautiful, with her little army of vampiric Turned and bonded blondes who are way too young, giving it massive ick factor. And Eveleana is a traditionalist around humans – they’re prey and livestock. She’s also not shy about using a bit of vampire taxidermic lepidoptery as well. Runs in the family. Anyway….You just know there’s nothing good coming out of Eveleana’s backstory. In book #1 we learn what happens to the family line of a new King. Seeing the aftermath was something extra.   

The Narrators: I was so, SO happy to have a male narrating alongside a female. I love it when authors do that. It makes the book better. There are romantasy books out there I refuse to buy in audio because they lack male narration for the MMC. I’m not alone in this as I talk to other readers. I already know and enjoy listening to Aiden Snow. He has a lovely deep-timbred voice. I must admit he wasn’t how I expected Raihn to sound but he was really, really good in his narration. Clear and strong and heartfelt. I’ve never heard Amanda Leigh Cobb previously but she has a good voice. Clear. I felt she truly embraced Oraya’s personality. My recommendation if you like a bit more of a visceral experience, go the audiobook version. The story lends itself beautifully to audio, and Cobb and Snow deliver.      

Raihn: There was some wonderful growth for Raihn. I wasn’t Raihn’s biggest fan in The Serpent & the Wings of Night. Like the Hiaj’s head guard, Jesmine, once told Oraya about Raihn, ‘he’s pretty trouble’. I appreciated that. The whole Kejari ending was problematic and Raihn didn’t handle it well. I now know more about that. He didn’t have much of a choice once Oraya threw him for a loop with her decision to save him. He also knew what lay ahead. He would have to be somewhat leashed otherwise his sponsor, for want of another word, would pull support and much needed troops after Raihn’s bit of regicide. It left him in an untenable position and the last book ended badly for Oraya. Not quite Nessanyn bad, Neculai’s wife, she died, but Oraya has been left deeply hurt. No one is more aware of this than Raihn. But, man. He really let Oraya soar in this book. He let her come into her own and helped her step out from under Vincent’s shadow. I thought Vincent was an incredible character in book #1, and even though he’s dead, he gets poignant air time here. I enjoyed that. There is still that ruthlessness but also melancholy and the full understanding that love was something he just wasn’t able to fully connect to in a way  humans need. The author did an incredible job of delving into multiple complex relationships and doing them justice. 

I stopped short.
I couldn’t help it. I needed to just take a minute to look at her. Her wings were out now, the red shockingly vibrant even under the moonlight. Her gown glittered like the night sky itself. And her posture– she held herself like such a queen.
Sometimes I found it impossible to imagine how Oraya had ever thought of herself as helpless. She was the most powerful person I’d ever met.

Oraya: I loved her in the first book, I loved her even more here. She can still hear Vincent in her head. Not quite as much, but often enough to help her fight. Not enough, though, to stop missing him. She’s mad at him for keeping pertinent details from her, both emotionally and from the standpoint of being the heir to the Hiaj crown. If she had become his Coriatis, as was planned, would he have shared it all then? She can use his sword, the Taker of Hearts, as it responds to Vincent’s blood within her. Her blood. She wields that sword well. She takes no shit from anyone once she gets her legs back underneath her. There is the justified hurt and anger toward Raihn, he killed Vincent. Toward Vincent for making her believe he was her only family. So yes, Oraya had some hurdles to overcome, but she did. She had to work out how to make the Hiaj vampire guards work with the Rishan’s. Rival Houses = no easy feat. Raihn was always there to nudge her but she was the one who took the steps. Then ran. She didn’t stop loving Vincent. Sadly, though, he never told her anything about her deceased mother, which she desperately wanted to know, and he absolutely could have given her that. But things took a turn. And even though she is dead, her mother came through for Oraya and Raihn, too. A nice touch.   

  All this time, I had been trying so desperately to decode my father’s past, my father’s secrets, to find the power I needed to reclaim my kingdom. How fitting that in the end, it was my mother who gave me the answer.

I cannot begin to plumb the depths of all the events in this book. It’s a lengthy read at 626 pages or a tick under 20 hours of audiobook listening. I actually started out reading then switched over to audiobook. There’s a lot going on. Multiple battles on multiple fronts, both personal and physical.  Multiple times when Raihn saves Oraya and vice versa. The Hiaj and Rishan guards working together is a first. Others join as well. Oraya and Raihn have a protective love of humans. Not something other vampires share with them. Humans are considered food. Oraya, though the Hiaj Queen, remains half human, Raihn remembers his time as a human and has always liked to mingle in amongst them, drinking their “piss beer.” While Oraya was healing her heart, Raihn had already put steps in place around the human districts. Together, the future looks bright.

TLDR: The Ashes & the Star-Cursed King offers plenty. Action. Bloodshed. Violence. Power struggles. My god, Simon becomes the freaking Terminator. I just kept thinking those iconic words –  ‘I’ll be back.’ Wow. Dude would not freaking die! There is the right balance of sex. Excellent world building. Multilayered character development. Excellent romance. Carissa Broadbent really poured her heart and soul into the MCs. Where I had doubts in book #1, I had none – z e r o  d o u b t s – here that Raihn and Oraya are meant to be anything but together. Forever. I hope she writes another book with this pair, and there’s certainly an untied thread or two she could delve into with them. There are other books in this series but Mische, as lovely as she is, isn’t what I’m looking for in a FMC. I might read Lilith and Vale’s story, Six Scorched Roses. 

Overall: 

If you like bloody vampires. Some nasty vampires. Vampires who bite. A kickarse female lead. Some excellent romantasy. Second chances. Plenty of action. A fantastic fantasy world. A MMC who supports and lifts up his partner, it doesn’t have to be about him, no putting her down to make him feel better. And if, like me, you enjoy some good payback and are fine with the ensuing bloodshed, then here’s your book. Loved. It. 5 Stars!