Tag: 9 Rating

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Book: “The Bird and the Sword” by Amy Harmon

Publishing Info: CreateSpace, May 2016

Where Did I Get this Book: own it!

Where Can You Get this Book: Amazon | IndieBound | WorldCat

Book Description: Swallow, Daughter, pull them in, those words that sit upon your lips. Lock them deep inside your soul, hide them ‘til they’ve time to grow. Close your mouth upon the power, curse not, cure not, ‘til the hour. You won’t speak and you won’t tell, you won’t call on heav’n or hell. You will learn and you will thrive. Silence, Daughter. Stay alive.

The day my mother was killed, she told my father I wouldn’t speak again, and she told him if I died, he would die too. Then she predicted the king would trade his soul and lose his son to the sky.

My father has a claim to the throne, and he is waiting in the shadows for all of my mother’s words to come to pass. He wants desperately to be king, and I just want to be free.

But freedom will require escape, and I’m a prisoner of my mother’s curse and my father’s greed. I can’t speak or make a sound, and I can’t wield a sword or beguile a king. In a land purged of enchantment, love might be the only magic left, and who could ever love . . . a bird?

Review: Now that I’ve discovered Amy Harmon, I’m probably going to just systematically work my way through her catalogue. And, surprise, surprise, when I started looking through her book list, I discovered several books I’d already flagged on my TBR list. I’d had my eyes on this one for quite a while, but now that I knew I already liked the author, it was a no brainer to get my hands on a copy as soon as possible!

Lark was born with a powerful gift, the ability to influence things around her with her voice. But in a land where magic is outlawed, Lark’s mother, in a final act as she’s lying dying in front of her small daughter, locks Lark’s voice away to protect her. Now, silenced and moving through a world that only wants to use her, Lark finds herself caught up in great wars and the fate of a nation. But will the love a King be enough to unlock her voice and with it a power that could save them all?

This is the second book that I’ve read recently that features a protagonist who can’t speak for most of the book. The last one was the middle-grade novel “Gallant.” It’s a particularly challenging choice for an author to make as it greatly limits one of the primary ways that writers establish relationships between their characters. But Harmon definitely pulls it off here. She does find a few work-arounds for this trait later on in the book, but I like how well Lark stands on her own without the use of her voice.

The book is written in first-person, so the reader is fully within Lark’s head right off the bat. We see her isolation, feel her inability to direct much of her life, and know her frustration when those around her seem to be using her and her abilities for their own benefit. Her arc is that of someone who starts out feeling powerless discovering their inner strength and becoming a powerhouse by the end of the book. And while her abilities can be amazing at times, sometimes its the quieter moments of inner strength that really cement Lark as the impressive character that she is. She stands in the face of criticism and even her own insecurity to hold on to what and who she loves.

I will say that there were times when her magical abilities were almost a bit too powerful. But by the end of the book, Harmon did come out with a villain who was a powerful enough force to challenge even Lark. But this more straight-forward conflict, while exciting and action packed especially in the final action scene of the book, was for me the less compelling of the stories. Instead, I was more invested in the quieter, slow-build romance and tragedy between Lark and the King. There was so much heart here, and while the two end up together quickly, the romance itself is slow to fully establish itself. They each need time to understand the other’s motives fully. But this slow burn makes their eventual full commitment to one another all the more sweet.

Harmon has a solid, lyrical writing style. It’s not overly flowery, but she also nails creating highly emotive scenes and characters. In a lot of ways, it’s similar to Juliet Marillier’s style. Of course, that makes it a hit for me! Fantasy fans looking for a sweet romance in a stand-alone novel should definitely check this one out!

Rating 9: Beauty and power all found within a quiet but determined leading lady make this one an excellent read!

Reader’s Advisory:

“The Bird and the Sword” can be found on these Goodreads lists: Slow-burn romance and Fantasy Romance.

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Book: “The First Girl Child” by Amy Harmon

Publishing Info: 47North, August 2019

Where Did I Get this Book: from the library!

Where Can You Get this Book: Amazon | IndieBound | WorldCat

Book Description: Bayr of Saylok, bastard son of a powerful and jealous chieftain, is haunted by the curse once leveled by his dying mother. Bartered, abandoned, and rarely loved, she plagued the land with her words: From this day forward, there will be no daughters in Saylok.

Raised among the Keepers at Temple Hill, Bayr is gifted with inhuman strength. But he’s also blessed with an all-too-human heart that beats with one purpose: to protect Alba, the first girl child born in nearly two decades and the salvation for a country at risk.

Now the fate of Saylok lies with Alba and Bayr, whose bond grows deeper with every whisper of coming chaos. Charged with battling the enemies of their people, both within and without, Bayr is fueled further by the love of a girl who has defied the scourge of Saylok.

What Bayr and Alba don’t know is that they each threaten the king, a greedy man who built his throne on lies, murder, and betrayal. There is only one way to defend their land from the corruption that has overtaken it. By breaking the curse, they could defeat the king…but they could also destroy themselves.

Review: February was a fantastic reading month for me. Just hit after hit, loving them all! I think there was only one or two where I was maybe middling on, but the rest were all 4-5 stars from me! This is especially impressive since many of these reads were from authors who were new to me and were books that I had only heard about briefly here and there. That includes this one, a book that I haphazardly added to my TBR list after spotting it on a few fantasy booklists. But, yet again, we have another great one!

“The world is not kind to women.” So says many of the women living their lives out in Saylok, a land of powerful warriors and mysterious druids. So, too, said Bayr’s mother when, after birthing Bayr, nearly alone and friendless, she curses the land to produce no more girl children. Thus the world Bayr grows up in is one of growing desperation as no girls are born year after year and a cruel king leads the land into an uncertain future. That is, until the birth of Alba. Bayr and Alba form an early connection as children, but the hope that came with her birth quickly fades as the years continue without any other girls. As they come to age, powerful forces, both magical and political, become to come to a head and only Bary and Alba can see a future for their land.

Just like “A River Enchanted,” I think this book description is a bit misleading. Yes, Bayr and Alba’s story is central to the book, but they are only two of the main characters. And honestly, they might be the lesser two. We first meet Dagmar, a druid and the brother of Bayr’s mother. It is he who witnesses the curse in the making and takes Bayr under his wing to watch him grow. We also meet Ghost, a woman who has been forcibly taken to this land as Saylok’s men become desperate for the wives who can no longer be found among their own people. Different for both her strange washed-out coloring as well as her foreign upbringing, Ghost makes her way in the shadows of existence before also meeting up with Dagmar.

It is through these two’s tale that we really dive into some of the important themes of the book such as parenthood, devotion, and faith. Both are tested in all of these things throughout the book and handle the various challenges thrown at them in unique ways. Their stories are full of tragedy, but highlight the power of the individual when they put others before themselves and remain steadfast to what they know to be true.

This is definitely a slower book. The story takes place over twenty years or so. As such, you can see why Dagmar and Ghost’s stories are so prevalent. Bayr and Alba are growing up through much of it. But I will give credit to the author for this: I rarely enjoy stories that heavily feature children, and Bayr and Alba are both that through much of the book (Alba’s even a baby during a decent chunk of it), and yet I thoroughly enjoyed the slow exploration of their lives and how they are each shaped by each other and the events going on around them. All of these smaller moments are important as the book builds up to the larger decisions they each must make later in the book.

Again, given this format of the book, the romance of the story was greatly reduced from what I expected going in. That said, while the book wasn’t what I thought it was when I began it, it turned out to probably be a better read because of this change. Instead, the book has a much grander focus, not only on the themes I mentioned earlier, but also on women and feminism. In many ways, this is a fairly traditional fantasy world. Men hold all the power: on the battlefield, on the throne, and in the halls of magic. Fantasy readers will all immediately be familiar with this setting. But the author doesn’t simply go and flip the table on this. Instead, she takes a much more subtle and nuanced route in pointing out the limitations and dangers of women’s lives. She also explores the unique strengths and power that each woman holds as well. By the end, some of these power dynamics have indeed changed, but they did so in a manner that was both believable and satisfyingly

Rating 9: Perfectly executed tragedy reveals the true beauty of the power of love of all kinds.

Reader’s Advisory:

“The First Girl Child” can be found on these Goodreads lists: Amazing Books that are Barely Known and Best Stand-Alone Fantasy Book.

This post may contain affiliate links for books we recommend.  Read the full disclosure here.

Book: “A River Enchanted” by Rebecca Ross

Publishing Info: HarperVoyager, February 2022

Where Did I Get this Book: Edelweiss+

Where Can You Get this Book: Amazon | IndieBound | WorldCat

Book Description: Jack Tamerlaine hasn’t stepped foot on Cadence in ten long years, content to study music at the mainland university. But when young girls start disappearing from the isle, Jack is summoned home to help find them. Enchantments run deep on the magical Isle of Cadence: gossip is carried by the wind, plaid shawls can be as strong as armour, and the smallest cut of a knife can instill fathomless fear. The capricious spirits that live there find mirth in the lives of the humans who call the land home, but that mischief turns to malevolence as girls begin to go missing.

Adaira, heiress of the east, knows the spirits only answer to a bard’s music, enticing them to return the missing girls. But there’s only one bard capable of drawing the spirits forth by song: her childhood enemy Jack Tamerlaine.

He hasn’t stepped foot on Cadence in ten long years, content to study music at the mainland university, but as Jack and Adaira reluctantly work together it becomes apparent the trouble with the spirits is far more sinister than first thought and an older, darker secret lurks beneath the surface, threatening to undo them all.

Review: There’s another cover for this book listed on Goodreads, as well, so I’m not sure exactly which one will be used when the book comes out (I suspect one cover is the U.S. cover and the other U.K.?) But I preferred this one, so that’s what we have here! The colors are lovely and the flowers speak to an important part of the story itself. It wasn’t the cover I saw when I requested an ARC, however, so what really drew me in was the description itself which made it sound like the kind of fantasy novel that Juliet Marillier would write. And that’s all I needed!

It is a dark and stormy night and Jack Tamerlaine is returning to his island home, a land riddled with magic and mystery. After spending his last years learning music, he never planned on returning. That is, not until he received a summons from his childhood rival and the heir to the land, Adaira. Once home, he discovers a mystery of young girls going missing. But it’s unclear whether magical forces are at work or whether it’s the war-like people who occupy the other half of the island who are behind the disappearances. Adaira’s hopes, however, expand beyond simply recovering the missing girls; she hopes to finally bring together both sides of the island, something that hasn’t been attempted for years after the last try went so badly wrong that it struck at the core of magic itself.

I really loved this book. Right from the very first moment, it starts off with the type of lyrical, atmospheric writing that I love to see in fantasy fiction. There’s something about this style that lends the story a fairytale-like feeling, even if the tale itself is completely original and not drawing from any well-known folktales. Ross’s language was able to fully ground the story in a mystical land where words that are spoken can travel on the wind to ears far away, where powerful beings can be summoned with the right strums of a harp’s strings, and where legends as old as time still live and can be stumbled upon if you take a wrong turn while wandering off the roads.

For all of this excellent world-building, the author was equally good at centering the story around several different characters who had very different arcs and challenges throughout the story. The book description misrepresents the characters at the heart of this story. We do, of course, spend a good amount of time with Jack and Adaira. Jack’s story is one of homecoming, full of memories of people who now, essentially, no longer exist being so changed now after the passage of time. He must learn to reconcile the emotions and views of the child he was when he left with what he sees now: flawed people all trying to do the best they can. Adaira’s story is bit more simple; she’s introduced as a beloved and competent leader of her land and, for 99% of the book, that’s what she remains. There are several twists towards the end that give her story more heft, in hindsight. But I was also fully satisfied with her more straight-forward arc on its own as well. However, while Jack and Adaira are central characters, and their slow-burn romance and attempts to solve the mystery of the missing girls drives much of the story, there are two other characters who also get a decent amount of page time.

Sidra and Torin are two “older” characters, probably in the mid-thirties or so? Together they have raised Torin’s daughter whose mother died shortly after her birth. Through these two, the story dives into some deeper topics involving duty, loss of faith, and the commitments that we have to one another that can lead to love, even if they didn’t start as such. These two other characters were both a surprise but also the firmer foundation upon which the rest of the story worked. While I enjoyed Jack and Adaira, their story was more straightforward and, to some extent, predictable. But through Sidra and Torin, we are able to explore an aspect of love much less often touched upon: the kind that develops slowly, over years, and, like faith itself, relies as much on our decision to love and to believe as anything else.

I strongly recommend this book to fans of fantasy fiction, especially those who enjoy literary fantasy or fairytale fantasies. It’s also a refreshing example of adult fantasy fiction and how you can incorporate the “new love” romance that is typically found in YA fantasy while also touching on themes more often found in adult stories.

Rating 9: Lyrical and atmospheric, this story touches on love of all kinds and delves into all the beauty and pain that can be found there.

Reader’s Advisory:

“A River Enchanted” isn’t on any Goodreads lists yet, but it should be on “Music in Fantasy.”