The Cup

The Moroccan Empire, Book 1

By: Melissa Addey

Narrated by: Darla Middlebrook

The city of Kairouan in Tunisia, 1020. Hela has powers too strong for a child - both to feel the pain of those around her and to heal them. But when she is given a mysterious cup by a slave woman, its powers overtake her life, forcing her into a vow she cannot hope to keep.

Trapped by her vow, Hela loses one chance after another to love and be loved. Meanwhile, in her household, a child is growing into a woman who will become famous throughout the Muslim world. So begins a quartet of historical novels set in Morocco as the Almoravid Dynasty sweeps across Northern Africa and Spain, creating a Muslim Empire that endured for generations.

©2018 Melissa Addey (P)2025 Melissa Addey

very good

Loved it !! this story. the narrator is so fantastic it's like your really there!! good overall

A truly great book!

Heal helps her daddy sell his slaves, because she can see things others cannot and her insight helps her daddy get the best price. One day while helping her daddy at the sleep auction Haula is given a red wooden cup from a mangled slave who looked to be on her last leg. Little does Bella know her life will never be the same again… and she blames this cup for everything. While still young she falls in love with a man who dies and she blames her self and makes it all that she will forever serve his family until they are happy again, but that seems hard to come bye. She blames herself for everything the crippling of a slave boy the massacre of her whole villageEtc but is Is Hella and her red cup to blame? This book is so good! Every now and then you run across a book and you’re like why did I not hear about this before and this is the book I cannot wait to read the next book in this series. Melissa Daddy has a talent for making you feel as if you know what it was like to be back then it’s bedtime and that place. She is the best at describing the scene so well you feel like you were there. I love her historical fiction books and cannot get enough. I wish she had more on Audible. I highly recommend this book to those who love historical fiction at its best, because this is truly at its best!

The Cup

I found this book to be better than I expected.Hella,a healer,atones her whole life for a debt that she feels she owes a family.Darla Middlebrook was a very good narrator.I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.' 

A different view on Eastern Culture & lifestyle

We seem to have a glut of western/English romance stories. So to read of a very different tale in a region which is often steeped in mystery and cultural differences, gives this armchair voyeur, a glimpse at a world
very different to my own.

Historic book from Morocco about a gifted healer

This book is set in Morocco, about 1000 years ago. Hela's father is a slave trader and she has powers, even as a child, to help her father get the best price for the slaves he is selling. Her mother is an herbalist healer, and Hela learns quickly from her mother and becomes an even better healer. An old slave woman gives Hela an old, carved, wooden cup at the opening of the book. Hela and her cup become legendary, but Hela inadvertently may have killed someone. She decides to atone for the death and spends years in service to another family.

This is a fascinating story. The author is skilled at writing from 1000 years hence. I listened to the audio book and the narrator is excellent. She has an exotic voice and does character voices well. The author provided me with a copy of the audio book. This is my honest review.

I recommend this book for mature audiences because of some of the subject matter.