I stumbled upon a few gorgeous pieces by PhantomRin on Tumblr (tagged below) and I was so drawn to them that I had to search for the book they came from. The Bird and the Sword by Amy Harmon is a story about a young mute girl named Lark who becomes part of a terrible prophecy. Before the king murders her mother, the Lady Meshara proclaims, “…you will lose your soul and your sun to the sky.” Following these last words, she sets the curse in place and takes away her daughter’s voice— for they are both witches who practice in “telling”; a type of magic honed by words only. Lark then lives alone with her corrupt father who is constantly vying for the king’s throne, leading a lonely life until she is noticed by the newly crowned prince, Tirus, who had been present upon her mother’s beheading.
The world-building in this book was interesting. There are four main embodiments to being a witch: spinner, teller, changer, and healer. The spinners can weave gold out of anything, the changers can shape shift, the tellers (who are naturally the most gifted) can hex anyone/thing with their words or thoughts, and the healers are…well, healers.
The political dynamic is intriguing as well, because we start the book with the king slaughtering the protagonist’s mother in front of a whole assembly of royals and guards. So you’d assume that he would be more involved in the book, but only a mere chapter later it is reveled that he died and his son, Tirus, who is the love interest, became king. However, don’t let this discourage you. Without spoiling, I can say this slight confusion of the king’s sudden death gets resolved in the end during a bizarre plot-twist.
Lark is a very gentle character. I’d call her soft-spoken if she actually spoke in the novel, but you do get to see her communicating with other characters via her mind and telepathy powers. I think that when we read these types of novels we always expect the main character to be a sword wielding bad bitch with a lust for vengeance (which isn’t necessarily a bad trope in my honest opinion), but in this scenario Lark’s power comes from her ability to cause things to happen with her words alone. The irony isn’t missed.
Titus, on the other hand, is also a soft character, if you could call a warrior king soft. He is cursed with transforming into a bird every night, and over time these transformations become more and more potent until one night he barely changes back into a man. His brother, Kjell, forces Lark to help him in whatever way she can even though she swears that she isn’t a healer.
Kjell, like many others, fear the witches and is an adamant believer in killing their kind for being “more” than the rest of the world for having such abilities. (Seriously, the amount of irony in this book is comical.) There were plenty of moments I wanted to tell the characters that “they’re not doing it right” but I feel that way about most books so I’ll let this one slide.
The writing had a nice flow to it, and was a bit lyrical and dreamy. I liked how fast-paced it made the story. So much so that I started it around Monday evening and finished it early Tuesday morning. This one is definitely a short read, and a great one to help get you out of a reading slump.
I didn’t enjoy the ending as much because I felt like it was rushed and there were many elements that could have been further explained or explored. It tied everything up nicely and there isn’t a cliffhanger, but moments that you would have waited for since the prologue were covered in little over a few pages. Also, there were very few characters and, thus, very few perspectives to view this story from. Usually this wouldn’t bother me but because both main characters were like-minded it seemed as though the whole story was dimmed in comparison to what it could have really been.
This was 3.5/5 stars for me.
Anthology of V. 