They killed her. She came back. They will wish they hadn't.
A Vietnamese-myth romantasy · Cinderella by way of Gone Girl
The silenced point of view
Every child in Vietnam is told the tale of Tấm — the orphan, the cruel stepmother, the half-sister Cám, the lost slipper, the king. And then the part they hurry past: they murder her, and she will not stay dead. Oriole, twin trees, a loom that curses in the dark, a persimmon that hides a woman — she comes back, and back, and back.
This is that story told from inside her patience. Not the good girl who got rescued. The woman who refuses to stay dead — reincarnation as resistance, softness as disguise, patience as a blade. And a king who must learn to love not the festival-girl, but the fourth face of her, the one death carved.
Launch scarcity
The first fifty readers lock the full six-book Daughters of the Dragon cycle at Cycle-Pass price and get their name woven into the loom of the launch. When the counter hits 50, the door closes at this price.
Why this book exists
Feminist myth-retelling is almost entirely Greek. Vietnamese myth is the empty shelf.
| Title | Silenced-woman POV | Non-Western myth | Karma engine | Grace, not gore | Fade-to-black |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| TẤM (this book) | Yes | Vietnamese | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Circe — Madeline Miller | Yes | Greek | No | Partial | — |
| Song of Achilles | Partial | Greek | No | No | Yes |
| Clytemnestra — C. Casati | Yes | Greek | No | No (revenge) | — |
| Kaikeyi — V. Patel | Yes | Indian | Partial | Partial | — |
| The Wrath & the Dawn | Partial | Persian/Arab | No | Partial | Yes |
| ACOTAR / Fourth Wing | Yes | Invented | No | No | Open door |
Same epic shape the market already loves — swapped onto the mythos, the karma line (gieo nhân nào, gặt quả đó), and the woman's interior that the Greek shelf never had.
One tide, six daughters
A six-book cycle from the dragon-and-fairy first wound. Each book, a silenced myth reclaimed; grace passed forward, tide to tide.
1The Cycle Pass unlocks every book as it lands — and the two already live: PEARL and THE NAKED SAINT.
Screen-rights endgame
A murdered peasant queen returns from death four times — bird, tree, loom, and fruit — until she must choose between the vengeance the world is begging her to take and the far harder freedom of setting the knife down.
Cinderella by way of Gone Girl — the fairy-tale rise, then the cold, patient reckoning. Pan’s Labyrinth meets Circe, folded through Vietnamese folk-horror.
6 × 50′ prestige limited series. One death per act; the loom’s click as the recurring sound-signature; the persimmon as the poster.
Persimmon-orange against loom-indigo over a dark cycle ground. A single fruit on a silent loom — the sweetness no one thought to open.
Choose your door
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From the author’s house
Gieo nhân nào, gặt quả đó — plant well, harvest well.
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If this fed you
This story is about grace handed from one girl to the next down the tide. If it moved you, water someone else’s garden — tip what you can, or gift the Cycle Pass to a reader who needs it.
TẤM is an original work of literary fiction by Alan Spark, retelling the traditional Vietnamese folktale Tấm Cám from the protagonist’s point of view. Canonical figures (Tấm, Cám, Bụt, the goby Bống, the king) are drawn from the public-domain oral tradition; the interpretation, interior voice, and prose are the author’s own. Book Two of the Daughters of the Dragon cycle. Published September 5, 2026.
Content: mature themes (murder, grief, the fairy-tale’s inherited violence) handled with restraint; romance is warm and fade-to-black. Not suitable for young children as a bedtime version.
Income & FTC: the author earns affiliate income from LegalShield, Kangen Water/Enagic, and EZPZ Credit Fix. Links may be referral links. Results vary; nothing here is legal, financial, or medical advice. Purchases support an independent author.
Terms: personal reading license, non-transferable except via a gifted Cycle Pass. © 2026 Cường Phạm / Alan Spark. All rights reserved.
Code-only access. Enter the key to unlock the full cycle library.