Excerpt from The Bird and the Sword

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme. Read the rules and more teasers at The Purple Booker. Anyone can play along.

I read a mystery/thriller book last week that was so pedantic and emotionless that I kept waiting for the surprise twist that everyone was so flat because the protagonist was really insane and had just imagined the previous thirteen years. But no… it was just… written that way…

I am now reading The Bird and the Sword, by Amy Harmon, which is a welcome change! I don’t read a lot of fantasy, but this is definitely one that I would recommend. Warring kingdoms and intrigue, a little bit of magic, and of course the romance between star-crossed lovers… It’s a fun, well-written piece, in great contrast to that other book!

My mother made words. She was a Teller, and her words were magic. She spoke and the words became life. Reality. Truth. My father knew it, and he was afraid. Words can be terrible when the truth is unwelcome.

Amy Harmon, The Bird and the Sword

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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 sell 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?

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