The Serpent and the Wings of Night
Crowns of Nyaxia • Book 1
by Carissa Broadbent
Why You'll Love This
A human girl raised by the vampire king enters a death tournament to prove she's more than prey — and her most dangerous competitor might be the one keeping her alive.
- Great if you want: enemies-to-lovers with genuine stakes and a dark world
- The experience: propulsive and tension-soaked — the slow burn earns its heat
- The writing: Broadbent writes vulnerability and violence in the same breath, no wasted scenes
- Skip if: romantasy tropes feel too familiar — this hits the beats
About This Book
In a world where humans exist to be hunted, Oraya has spent her entire life learning how not to die. As the adopted human daughter of a vampire king, she occupies an impossible position — protected enough to survive, vulnerable enough to never feel safe. When she enters the Kejari, a brutal tournament run by the goddess of death herself, survival stops being a daily scramble and becomes the only thing that matters. What unfolds is a story that earns its tension honestly, pairing life-or-death stakes with the kind of slow-burn emotional undercurrent that makes readers lose sleep over fictional people.
Broadbent's prose has a propulsive quality that keeps pages turning without sacrificing atmosphere — she builds her vampire world with enough texture to feel genuinely immersive rather than decorative. What sets this book apart is how carefully it handles Oraya's interiority: her wariness, her hunger for power, her resistance to connection. The romance develops through action and consequence rather than convenience, and the result is a dynamic that feels genuinely complicated. Readers who have grown tired of fantasy that mistakes darkness for depth will find this one doing the harder work.