A sweeping and tragic debut novel perfect for fans of The Wrath and the Dawn and Megan Whalen Turner. This young adult novel is an excellent choice for accelerated tween readers in grades 7 to 8, especially during homeschooling. It’s a fun way to keep your child entertained and engaged while not in the classroom.The Bird and the Blade is a lush, powerful story of life and death, battles and … is a lush, powerful story of life and death, battles and riddles, lies and secrets from author Megan Bannen.
Enslaved in Kipchak Khanate, Jinghua has lost everything: her home, her family, her freedom . . . until the kingdom is conquered by enemy forces and she finds herself an unlikely conspirator in the escape of Prince Khalaf and his irascible father across the vast Mongol Empire.
On the run, with adversaries on all sides and an endless journey ahead, Jinghua hatches a scheme to use the Kipchaks’ exile to return home, a plan that becomes increasingly fraught as her feelings for Khalaf evolve into an impossible love.
Jinghua’s already dicey prospects take a downward turn when Khalaf seeks to restore his kingdom by forging a marriage alliance with Turandokht, the daughter of the Great Khan. As beautiful as she is cunning, Turandokht requires all potential suitors to solve three impossible riddles to win her hand—and if they fail, they die.
Jinghua has kept her own counsel well, but with Khalaf’s kingdom—and his very life—on the line, she must reconcile the hard truth of her past with her love for a boy who has no idea what she’s capable of . . . even if it means losing him to the girl who’d sooner take his life than his heart.
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The Bird and the Blade has everything I want in a novel: vivid characters, sumptuous prose, romance, funny dialogue, and a sweeping storyline in an intricately researched world. This story will break your heart — but it will remake it, too.
This book is gorgeous. The prose? Amazing. The characters? Fantastic and complex. The story is unlike anything I’ve read, and the pacing is so unique and perfectly done that by the end, it was like fifty puzzle pieces coming together at once. Not to mention the setting. Mongolian fantasy with elements of Persian culture and Han China?
If you like history, if you like travel, if you’re interested in intrigue and hidden pasts and star-crossed lovers, this is the book for you. Do yourself a favor and read it today.
I loved this book. It kept me hooked from the beginning and stayed with me long after I finished it. I really connected with the characters and cried like a baby at the end.
This is another book that took me a while to read. I got a copy from the library where I work before last summer to read. The author was once not only a teacher in the school district where I work, but she also was a librarian in the Kansas City, Kansas Public Libraries which are partnered with my school district where I am a librarian. Any way, I got to meet her earlier this fall when she was part of a panel at the Barnes and Noble where I work, and then she came to visit students at my school a couple weeks ago. I didn’t get this read until last month, because I wanted to make sure to have it read before she came to discuss it with my students. As usual it was another one that blew me away, and I couldn’t believe I’d waited so long to finally pick it up and read.
So more specifically about the book itself, I loved the history and all the research the author did to make the story so full and vivid. She wrote in the way that always makes me want to learn more about the time period and what truths she added to the story and what was actually what happened. There was so much edge of the seat tension about halfway through the book and all the way to the end. Then, I could barely put it down the last day I was reading it, read over 100 pages that day, and the ending, well, the ending gutted me!!! It was good, and if you know what the opera it is based on is about, it is what should happen. But still! Gah! Loved it, even as I hated it. Great story, and can’t wait to read more by this author.
At once haunting and compelling, this tale of love and loalty will wreck you. Exquisite from the first note to the last.
The Bird and the Blade is a tale filled with magic and mystery. It will entrance you from the first page. Meticulously researched and beautifully executed, this story will linger long after you have finished reading.
I’ve never read a book quite like this one–a retelling of a tragic opera filled with gorgeous ancient poetry, set in a part of the world I know very little about, deeply romantic, filled with surprising plot twists, sprinkled with both foul and anachronistic language, largely a travel story . . . yet I could hardly put it down!
I loved Jinghua, Khalaf, and Timur, the ghost, the fascinating premise, the cleverly inserted hints, the heartbreaking losses, the impossible situation, and the heart-rending yet somehow satisfying conclusion. And this from me–a devotee of Happily-Ever-After! But . . . there is so much love!
It took the author ten years to write this book, and it is a beautifully hand-crafted work of art.
Just . . . Wow.