The Bridge Kingdom

The Bridge Kingdom is the first novel of Danielle L. Jensen's Bridge Kingdom series, published in 2019. It is a political fantasy romance set in a storm-ravaged world where one structure, the bridge, is the only safe crossing between two kingdoms, and whoever holds it gets rich while the kingdoms on the other side go without.

Lara is a princess raised in secret and trained for one job: marry into the Bridge Kingdom and open it from inside. She arrives as a bride and a spy, certain that King Aren is her enemy and that she will be the instrument of his downfall. Her homeland is one of the kingdoms the bridge starves, which is the argument she was raised on. She has been prepared for the marriage since childhood, and her training covered everything except the possibility that the enemy king might be right.

Aren turns out to be nothing like the man she was briefed on. As Lara learns how the bridge actually works and who it keeps poor, the story she was given stops making sense, and she has to decide which kingdom deserves to survive her. Jensen keeps the two of them close and the politics practical: the marriage, the trade and the crossings are all part of the same problem. Her family and her handlers are waiting for results, and the people she has been sent to deceive are the only ones treating her as a person.

The book is the first of a series and began as a self-published novel before print editions from Random House Worlds and others. It establishes Lara, Aren, the bridge and the two kingdoms on either side of it, and the volumes that follow widen the same conflict over trade, water and who gets to cross.