Title: The Queen and the Cure
Author: Amy Harmon
Rating: ★★★★★

“I saw you,” he said against her lips. “And I never looked away.”

After finishing The Bird and the Sword, I was curious to know more about Kjell and was ecstatic to learn that there would be a sequel focused on him. It’s easy to get your hopes up about a book, only to be frustrated and crestfallen when it doesn’t live up to your expectations. Thankfully, I was not disappointed by this book as The Queen and the Cure was everything I had hoped for and more.

Amy Harmon continues to impress me as a writer and storyteller. Her writing, as always, is beautiful and possesses a lyrical quality, and her ability to create magical, enchanting stories is unparalleled in my eyes. Kjell was a wonderful character in the first book, and I’m glad the author decided to tell this story solely from his point of view, because he made an amazing protagonist. Kjell is flawed, devoted, loyal, compelling, and stern. He is both a tough warrior and a compassionate healer. He’s one of my favorite characters that I’ve ever read. 

“He was a warrior. He was not a man who loved or nurtured. He’d been given a gift that was so at odds with who he was that he wanted to howl in frustration and sink his sword into something lethal.”

The romance in the story was both wonderful to read about and heartbreaking. The relationship between Kjell and Sasha was so beautiful and pure, and yet completely devastating. I could feel Kjell’s longing and Sasha’s desolation as if it were my own. 

“There were no secrets, no sorrows, nothing hidden, nothing lost. They saw not what would be or what had been, but only what was.
She saw him.
He saw her.
And they saw nothing else.”

Amy Harmon has once again blown me away with another one of her stories. The Queen and the Cure was just as incredible and enchanting as I hoped it would be. These stories will no doubt stay with me always.