The Serpent and the Wings of Night review

The Serpent and the Wings of Night is a vampire tournament book with a human girl in the middle of it and a rival she should not trust. Heat 3 of 5. The scenes are on the page, and they come late. Enemies to lovers. Adult shelf. If you want blood first and kissing second, this is your book.

Some customers at my counter would stand there a full ten minutes before they asked to see anything. They weren't shopping. They were deciding whether they could afford to want it.

Oraya stands there for most of a book.

The cover promises a human among vampires, and a fight to the death

The setup, through the first act and no further. Oraya is human. The Nightborn vampire king rescued her as a child and raised her as his daughter, in a court full of predators. She enters the Kejari, which Shelf Awareness describes as "a tournament to the death in which the victor is granted a boon by the goddess Nyaxia." To get through it she makes an alliance with Raihn, a vampire from one of the two rival houses her father conquered two centuries ago.

A human. A house full of predators. A partner whose family her father put under his boot.

That's a promise with a knife in it.

Broadbent first self-published it in August 2022. Bramble picked it up and reissued it as a $29.99 hardcover, and Publishers Weekly called it an "enemies-to-lovers romance" and said "Fans of dark romantasy won't want to miss this."

Where it keeps the promise

The alliance is the engine, and it is airtight. They are in a tournament where only one walks out. They need each other to get far enough to kill each other. That is enemies to lovers with the clock built in, and it's the best version of the trope, because the hate can't just evaporate. Somebody has to decide what to do about it.

And the fear is the good kind. Ann Radcliffe wrote in 1826 that terror "expands the soul, and awakens the faculties to a high degree of life," and that horror shuts it down. Oraya can see the edges of the thing that might eat her, every day, across the dinner table.

That's terror. She has to keep looking, and so do you.

And Broadbent tells you the hard parts before you start. The front matter carries an author's note listing violence, torture off the page, a flashback of rape with consent withdrawn, self-harm, emotional abuse, slavery and references to sexual abuse. I sold rings with the stone grade written on the tag for eleven years. I respect anybody who puts the grade on the tag.

Where it does not

The heat is a 3, and you will wait for it.

Media Bleach lists "Explicit romantic/sexual scenes," so it clears the open door on my scale. But Katherine Jimenez, reviewing it at Long River Review, says it plainly: "Unfortunately, the sex came in late." She was three hundred pages in with nothing. When the scenes arrived she called them "well-written," and she recommends the book to readers who "read more for the plot than the sex."

I'd put that on the tag in bigger letters than the vampires. If you bought it on a spicy vampire recommendation, you're in for a long damn stretch of layaway before the case opens.

It's also not the whole story. This is book one of the Nightborn Duet. A duet tells you its terms up front: two books, one story. The ending comes in the second one. That is a fair contract and I'll take it. Just don't walk out of the store thinking you paid in full.

Readers ask

Is The Serpent and the Wings of Night spicy?

Yes, and late. Media Bleach lists explicit sexual scenes. Long River Review's reviewer reached page 300 before any arrived. On this site it's a 3: open door, not frequent.

Is The Serpent and the Wings of Night a standalone?

No. It's book one of the Nightborn Duet, inside the larger Crowns of Nyaxia series. The story finishes in book two.

Does The Serpent and the Wings of Night have trigger warnings?

Yes, from the author herself. Her note lists violence, torture off the page, a flashback of rape with consent withdrawn, self-harm, emotional abuse, slavery and references to sexual abuse. The Trigger Warning Database adds anxiety attacks, whipping, and the recounted death of a wife and child.

Was The Serpent and the Wings of Night self-published?

Yes. Broadbent self-published it in August 2022. Bramble reissued it in hardcover, then in paperback in 2024.

Who should read it

Read it if you want enemies to lovers where the enmity has a body count and a schedule. Read it if a deadly tournament is a selling point for you and the kissing can wait.

Skip it if you came for the spice and want it by chapter ten. And read the author's note before you buy. She wrote it for you.

Sources, opened 3 November 2026: the Kingston Frontenac Public Library catalog record for the series, the Bramble edition and the author's note; Author Wars for the August 2022 self-publication and the 2024 paperback; Publishers Weekly and Shelf Awareness for the hardcover and the setup; the Trigger Warning Database and Media Bleach for content notes; Katherine Jimenez at Long River Review for where the heat lands; the University of Alberta's text of Radcliffe's "On the Supernatural in Poetry." The heat scale is this site's own.