The Songbird & the Heart of Stone: Book 1 of the Shadowborn Duet

By Carissa Broadbent

Book Overview

#1 New York Times bestselling author and BookTok sensation Carissa Broadbent returns with a brand new novel in the Crowns of Nyaxia series, The Songbird & the Heart of Stone, where A Court of Thorns and Roses meets Dante's Inferno, in an epic fantasy romance of love and treachery between mortals and gods. Features beautiful case art and a detailed map.

In the descent to the underworld, a bride of the sun must choose between the light of her redemption... or a dark love that defies the gods themselves

Mische lost everything when she was forcibly Turned into a vampire - her home, her humanity, and most devastating of all, the love of the sun god to whom she had devoted her life. Now, sentenced to death for murdering the vampire prince who Turned her, redemption feels impossible.

But when Mische is saved by Asar, the bastard prince of the House of Shadow with a past as brutal as his scars, she's forced into a mission worse than execution: a journey to the underworld to resurrect the god of death himself.

Yet, Mische's punishment may be the key to her salvation. In a secret meeting, her sun god commands her to help Asar in his mission, only to betray him... by killing the very death god she'll help resurrect.

Mische and Asar must travel the treacherous path to the underworld, facing trials, beasts, and the vengeful ghosts of their pasts. Yet, most dangerous of all is the alluring call of the darkness - and her forbidden attraction to Asar, a burgeoning bond that risks invoking the wrath of gods.

As her betrayal looms, the underworld closes in and angry gods are growing restless. Mische will be forced to choose between the redemption of the sun or the damnation of the darkness.

Crowns of Nyaxia Reading Order:
The Serpent & the Wings of Night
The Ashes & the Star-Cursed King
The Songbird & the Heart of Stone

Crowns of Nyaxia Standalones
Six Scorched Roses (short novel)
Slaying the Vampire Conqueror

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1250367786
• ISBN13: 9781250367785
• Release Date: November 2024
• Publisher: Bramble
• Length: 448 Pages
• Weight: 1.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.6" x 5.7" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

Light, Death, and Everything In Between

I loved everything about this book. It was dark, emotional, romantic, and completely impossible to put down—the exact kind of fantasy I want to disappear into. The death magic, shadows, and darkness in this story were especially my thing, but what really got me was how it treated light and dark as more complicated than simply good versus evil. You cannot have happiness without sorrow, life without death, or light without shadow. I loved the way this book kept pushing at that idea and asking who gets to decide what is “good” in the first place. It would have been so easy to make one side unquestionably right and the other unquestionably monstrous, but this story has so much more heart than that. People are still people, even when they are feared, different, or powerful—and that matters. The emotional stakes, the magic, the characters, the romance, all of it just worked for me. I had so much fun reading this and loved it far more than I expected to. I immediately started the next book because I was absolutely not ready to leave this world yet.

Beautiful

From my perspective, this might be the best one of the three so far. I could relate to Mische so much — I was also devout to my (Christian) god and then groomed abused, left only with scars to heal. I loved this book and can’t wait for the next one!