Between Dragons and Their Wrath

• Author: Devin Madson
• Genre: Fantasy
• Publication Date: July 27, 2024
• Publisher: Orbit
• Series: Shattered Kingdom Trilogy #1

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review.

From Aurealis Award–nominated author Devin Madson comes a new sweeping epic fantasy full of dragons, alchemical magic, and forbidden romance that unfolds as three people in a shattered empire become entangled in a looming revolution.

When dragons rage, chaos reigns.

Conquest built the Celes Basin, now enemies once more threaten its borders. But when the Lord Reacher declares himself supreme ruler to enforce unity, old angers erupt, threatening to tear the basin apart from within.

Tesha, a glassblower’s apprentice with a talent for poisonwork, becomes a false tribute bride as part of a desperate political plot. In the Reacher’s court, she’s perfectly placed to sabotage him, but her heart has other plans.

Naili is laundress to an eccentric alchemist, a job that has left her with strange new abilities that are slowly consuming her—and attracting the notice of the city’s underground rulers. With time running out, she’ll have to gain power by any means just to survive, let alone change the world. 

And in the desolate Shield Mountains, sharp-shooting dragon rider Ashadi protects the basin from the monsters of The Sands beyond, but when an impossible shot pierces his dragon’s glass scales, he becomes the hunted one.

As chaos sweeps across the land, Tesha, Naili, and Ashadi must fight to survive political enemies, long-buried secrets, and monsters both within and without.   

After reading The Reborn Empire recently, I fell in love with Devin Madson’s storytelling, and I couldn’t help but jump at this chance, even though I was already overloaded on ARCs. Luckily, this was an audiobook, which I don’t have much of a backlog on, so I was able to get started on it quickly. 

My big concern with reading fantasy novels as audiobooks is that they are going to be sprawling or complicated, and I won’t be able to follow along as easily when listening to it versus when reading it. That only happens once in a while, and it was a little difficult for me to get into the audiobook at first, but I restarted it and took some notes, and then it was easier to follow the story and really get into everything. It is told through the eyes of three main POV characters, each narrated by a different person (Soneela Nankani as Naili, Lauren Fortgang as Tesha, and Ron Butler as Ashadi). The characters are written in very different writing styles, making each of them distinctive. Naili is written with an especially flowery and romantic touch, talking about the smell of emotions, almost in the style of Stephanie Garber with a little less whimsy. Tesha is distinctly a schemer, and the type of person who is used to picking up skills quickly, so she finds it frustrating when she doesn’t pick up something as fast as she is used to. And Ashadi has that combination of confidence and swagger that nobles have. Each of them have their strengths and weaknesses, and we get to see a lot of change in them over the course of the story, which is one of my favorite things to see. 

The characters each give us insight into a different area of the Shattered Kingdom and offer a birds-eye view into a kingdom on the verge of war … and rebellion. They’re all written so perfectly for the roles that they play in the book, and I really liked getting to know them. Although I liked Tesha immediately, Ashadi took a little bit to grow on me, and Naili took the longest for me to really like and identify with, but we eventually got there, and that’s all that matters. It didn’t hurt that she’s voiced by one of my favorite narrators, so I was happy just listening to Soneela Nankani reading until I really got into her storyline. I also loved the queer-centric world that Madson built, much like her other series. 

Any time a leader declares himself supreme anything, it’s a bad sign for the society they’re in charge of. And in this story, Lord Reacher has valid threats to his kingdom, but uniting the Shattered Empire isn’t going to be that simple, and trying to by declaring himself to be supreme ruler pushes his realm nearly to the point of rebellion. Each of the characters plays a very different role in this story: Tesha is an insult bride placed close to Lord Reacher in an effort to sabotage him, but her heart threatens to get in the way; Naili works for an eccentric alchemist as a laundress and has developed strange new abilities, soon catching the eye of the local crime underworld; and Ashadi, a dragon rider who seems to be too smart for his own good when he starts asking questions he shouldn’t, and isn’t willing to let it go, ending up on the run. 

Overall, this was a fantastic story, and it was told wonderfully in audiobook format, once I got past the first three chapters and had the stage set. Madson’s real strength is in the realistic and frequently witty banter between characters that makes her stories so enjoyable. The plot and characters and the world building and character development are also great, but if conversation is stilted, it just doesn’t feel like it’s as good of a book. Naturally, the story leaves off on a cliffhanger and we’re forced to wait for the next book to be written and released, which isn’t going to be soon enough. That would have been immediately after finishing this book, but I’ll just have to keep myself busy in the meantime reading other books while waiting.

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