In a land where magic is feared and forbidden, Lark has a magical gift. When she is a child, her mother takes responsibility for Lark’s small act of magic and is killed in punishment. Just before she dies, she curses/predicts that Lark will not speak again, and that if the girl dies, so will her father (who otherwise doesn’t seem very interested in keeping her alive).

When Lark is grown up, she is discovered by the king of this country, and he takes her away to his castle, thinking to use her magic. Of course they fall in love (yet another girl reluctantly falling in love with her kidnapper, I’m getting pretty fed up with this trope!) and she ends up bringing freedom to not just him but the whole country.

This book was supposed to be a lyrical, poetic, dark fairy tale. I found it to be simplistic and naive, almost childish. Like a short story inflated into a novel, it just didn’t have any weight. The characters are few and shallow. The world around them barely exists. We get little insight into their thoughts and feelings. The plot is cliched and predictable, and several of the basic premises of the plot are, according to the rest of the book, not even possible. And the language is overly flowery rather than lyrical. It’s as if it was written by a teenager. Bleh.