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The Wolf and the Crown of Blood

The Broken Accords, Book 1

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The Wolf and the Crown of Blood

By: Elizabeth May
Narrated by: Victoria Aston, John Hartley
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Summary

A princess and a war-weary god met in the ashes of a broken city, forging a pact in blood and sacrifice.

Now, centuries of fragile peace are on the brink of collapse...

Bryony Devaliant was born to die – again and again. In Vartena, royal blood is the currency of peace, with every monarch sacrificed and resurrected to appease the gods. But when rebellion stirs, the god-king sends his deadliest weapon to restore order – an immortal assassin known only as the Wolf.

Evander has perfected the art of killing over centuries – until his latest target becomes the one person he cannot destroy. When forbidden desire burns between the assassin and the sacrificial princess, their connection threatens the fragile boundary between gods and mortals. And when that boundary shatters, empires crumble. Because when gods fall in love with mortals, mortals are always the ones to break.

©2026 Elizabeth May (P)2025 Recorded Books Dark Fantasy Fantasy Ghosts Horror Royalty Science Fiction
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Critic reviews

'I couldn't breathe in The Wolf and the Crown of Blood fast enough... I never wanted to leave this world!' (Tricia Levenseller, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Shadows Between Us)
'This series opener delivers on not just epic fantasy, but epic action and romance as well.' (on To Cage a God) (Kirkus Reviews)
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I love this book,I would whole heartedly recommend it, when you read it ,it's like your are with them and living in their world.

The wolf and the crown of blood.

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Plot is fab, characters have depth, lots of delicious conflict and revelations.
The ending was perfect. Can’t wait for book 2.

Narration was awful:

Bryony’s voice didn’t know how to pause at the end of sentences and so everything blurred together. It wasn’t that it was super fast, just all muddled together in a really distracting way. As someone who usually listens at 1.5 speed it’s a big deal for me to say I struggled with the weird pace.

Wolf’s voice was good but there were so many narrator swallows that gave me the ick and took me out of the story - why weren’t they edited out?!

The book is everything I love in a story but this narration dragged it down for me. If the narrators are the same for book 2 I’ll be switching to reading instead.

Story- 6 stars, Narration - 3 stars

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Narrators the guy was brilliant. Female was hard to listen to after half way through book. Story started and middle brilliant but last 10 chapters it lost its spark

The wolf of the crown and blood

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I loved this story, great world building, characters and level of spice. However although I loved the male narrator the female narrator really let the whole thing down for me it was rushed at points and fairly monotone throughout with very little distinction between female characters. Also done in a dual narration style rather than duet which I think works better. Great book though perhaps better to read than listen.

Great story but narration could have been better!

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Oh, this was perfect. Packed with yearning, angst, character development, forbidden love, angry gods and generational blood debts and more than enough threads for future stories.
Bryony and Evander's story is timeless and true.
My only criticism is that their story deserved much, much better narrators. The narrators weren't bad by any stretch, just far off what should have been on offer for such a phenomenal start to what's sure to be an epic series.

Phenomenal Start to an Epic Series

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