A Word So Fitly Spoken

The Severed Realms, Book 1

By: T.A. Lawrence

Narrated by: Fajer Al-Kaisi, Nikki Massoud

One stunning bride. One wedding. One night with the king. One execution come morning. Rinse and repeat.

When the fae king of Naenden returns home to his palace only to find that his human queen has committed treason by conspiring to assassinate him, he has the queen executed and decrees that once every mooncycle, he’ll marry a human woman from the kingdom, only to execute her the following morning.

Unless one woman offers herself as a sacrificial bride for the rest.

Asha isn’t worried about being chosen, of course. The decree was quite clear about beauty being among the top criteria for being selected as one of the king’s unfortunate brides. Asha is no beauty thanks to the illegal magic that inhabits her body, leaving her scarred and missing an eye. The same magic that occasionally possesses her voice so it can amuse itself by telling a never-ending story with a string of horrible cliffhangers.

The problem is Asha might not be a beauty, but her sister Dinah is. When Asha realizes Dinah is in danger of being selected as the king’s sacrificial bride, Asha decides she can’t live with that risk. So she offers herself instead.

Except on the night of their wedding the king grants Asha a final request. Naturally, she asks to tell her sister one last bedtime story. Naturally, the king eavesdrops.

The question is, will the story save her life or ruin it?

A tale of love and betrayal, vengeance and sacrifice, magic and romance, this imaginative retelling of 1,001 Nights will keep you guessing with each word.

©2023 T.A. Lawrence (P)2023 Podium Audio

Not what BookTok sold it as

This book is fine, but IG and TikTok sold it as a spicy fantasy romance and that’s not really what it is. They kiss… and that’s it. Nothing else is even implied, but maybe that’s part of the sequel?

The last 2-3 hours have a plot/climax that to me, really kind of came out of nowhere and to solve this the author just said earlier characters lied, rather than acknowledge that some of the stuff didn’t make sense with the story she’d already been plotting out.

Like I said, the book was fine, but not what it was marketed as and I wish I had saved my credit for something else.

I saw a TikTok about the book by the author and had to listen

An ugly, poor, merchant girl sacrifices herself to marry the cruel king to save her sister. He vows to marry and kill a human girl every moon cycle until he stops morning the loss of his first wife (that he killed).

It was a great story!

It had me hooked really fast. The ending made me pretty sad though. I loved all of it except I didn’t care for the male narrator. A beautiful tale and I’m excited for the next book.

Beautiful Storytelling

I was fully immersed in the story at all times. It had me grinning wide and heavy hearted in equal measure. Absolutely loved it and I’m eager for more of the story.

A delightful blend of several fairy tales with enough twists to always keep you guessing.

Absolutely loved it, fast paced, very intriguing. A dozen plot twists all wrapped up in a nice package with intense plot and fantastic details with all the fairy tale favorite elements. Great world building and character creating to the point you can’t tell friend from foe. Epically good read!