The Sequel That Earns Its Devastation

Second books in duologies have a structural problem: the surprise is gone. The tournament that drove The Serpent and the Wings of Night is finished. The identity twist has landed. The reader knows who Raihn is and what he did.

Carissa Broadbent's solution is to make the second book about consequences, and it is the best decision she could have made.

The Ashes and the Star-Cursed King opens with Oraya in ruins. Vincent (the vampire king who raised her, who protected her, whose love was real and monstrous in equal measure) is dead. The man she trusted, the man she chose, took the crown by betraying her at the moment of her greatest vulnerability. She is a prisoner in the kingdom she was raised to inherit, and she no longer knows the truth about her own blood.

What It's About

Raihn now rules the House of Night, and he rules it badly, not through incompetence, but through circumstance. He is a Turned vampire in a court that worships bloodline purity. He was a slave. His own nobles are actively working against him. And the House of Blood, the most feared of Nyaxia's three houses, has sunk its claws into his kingdom and is pulling it apart from the inside.

When Raihn offers Oraya a secret alliance, she takes it, not out of forgiveness, but because it's the only path back to her kingdom and her revenge. To hold that power, she'll need to unlock an ancient magic tangled up in Vincent's most closely guarded secrets.

And she'll need to decide whether she can love the man who destroyed her.

Why It's the Best Book in the Series So Far

Three things make this sequel exceptional.

The grief is real. Broadbent refuses to simplify Oraya's relationship with Vincent. He was controlling. He lied to her for her entire life. He was also the only person who ever protected her, and he loved her in the broken way that damaged people love. Oraya's mourning is complicated, angry, and unresolved, and Broadbent lets it stay that way instead of resolving it into something neat.

The romance is earned through work, not chemistry. Oraya and Raihn already have the chemistry, book one established that. What Ashes does is force them to rebuild trust from nothing, and Broadbent makes them earn every inch. Raihn doesn't get forgiven because he's beautiful or because he explains himself well. He gets forgiven because he spends the entire novel making choices that cost him, repeatedly, in favor of Oraya's autonomy. The line that thousands of readers have highlighted ("I have nothing but you. So I am letting you go") is the thesis of the book.

The political stakes escalate correctly. The House of Blood is genuinely terrifying, and their infiltration of the House of Night provides a threat that isn't a rehash of the tournament. Broadbent's worldbuilding (the three houses, Nyaxia's cosmology, the politics of Turned versus born vampires) expands without becoming exposition.

Where It Struggles

The middle third slows considerably. Oraya's search for the ancient power tied to Vincent's secrets involves a stretch of investigation and travel that lacks the propulsive urgency of the surrounding sections.

The dual POV (Raihn gets chapters here) is a mixed success. His interiority is welcome and humanizes his betrayal, but it also removes some of the delicious uncertainty that made book one's tension work. When you know exactly what he's feeling, the question of whether to trust him becomes less agonizing.

Some readers find the resolution too merciful given the scale of what Raihn did. That's a fair critique, and how you land on it depends on how much you believe redemption should cost.

The Velvet Coven Verdict

The Ashes and the Star-Cursed King is why people don't shut up about this series. It takes the fun tournament fantasy of book one and turns it into something considerably heavier: a story about what you do when the person you love is also the person who broke you, and about whether power is worth what it takes to hold it.

Oraya's arc from a human raised as a weapon to a woman who chooses her own crown is one of the strongest character journeys in modern romantasy. And the final act (which we won't spoil) is the kind of ending that sends readers straight to their group chats.

The Nightborn Duet ends here, and it ends right.

Quick Reference

  • Author: Carissa Broadbent
  • Published: 2023 (Nasyra / Bramble)
  • Series: Crowns of Nyaxia, Book 2: Nightborn Duet finale
  • Pages: 565
  • Setting: Obitraes: House of Night, House of Blood
  • Tropes: Enemies to lovers, betrayal, grief, political intrigue, forced alliance, slow burn
  • Spice level: 4/5: explicit, emotionally integrated
  • Status: #5 NYT Bestseller, 500,000+ Goodreads ratings