The Friday 56: The Bird and the Sword

The Friday 56 is a weekly blog meme hosted by Freda’s Voice. Join us every Friday and share an excerpt from a book you’ve been reading.

Rules:

*Grab a book, any book.
*Turn to page 56 or 56% in your eReader.
*Find any sentence (or a few, just don’t spoil it) that grab you.
*Post it.
*Add your (url) post here in Linky. Add the post url, not your blog url. It’s that simple.

**Be sure to leave a link to your Friday 56 post in the comments!**

“‘This is every letter of the alphabet. Every word in our language is made from these letters.’

I could hardly breathe. I clasped my hands against my chest to calm my heart and stared down at the beauty he’d created. Then I raised my eyes and it was my turn to smile. I couldn’t hold it in.”

I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed Amy Harmon’s fantasy novel The Bird in the Sword. In this excerpt, Lark, who was never taught to read or write, is overwhelmed with joy at seeing the full alphabet being written down for her to learn. You can read my full review here. Cover is linked to Goodreads.

Goodreads Synopsis:

      “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?”