Swordheart

For me, one outstanding feature of T. Kingfisher’s fiction consists of her protagonists’ irresistibly distinctive voices. Halla, heroine of SWORDHEART, is no exception, although this book (unlike the horror novels) is narrated in third person rather than first. A widow in her thirties, she has just inherited the estate of her husband’s great-uncle, for whom she has kept house since her husband’s death. Her great-uncle by marriage, although stingy and eccentric, was always kind to her in his way. The postmortem gift of his house and fortune, however, proves far from a boon. Her in-laws, outraged at the bequest, want her to marry her unappealing cousin-in-law, Alver. Locked in her room, Halla rationally analyzes the pros and cons of either accepting that fate or killing herself with the only lethal instrument available to her, an ancient sword hanging on the bedroom wall. I love the pragmatic way she struggles with the logistics of stabbing herself.

When she manages to wrest the weapon out of its scabbard, a man appears from thin air. Long ago, Sarkis was cursed to become one with the sword, taking flesh when it’s drawn and vanishing when its wielder sheaths it. The total healing that occurs in the latter status (including the regrowth of amputated appendages) makes him immortal, a “gift” that he considers part of the curse. He has no clear idea of how many centuries he has existed in this condition because he spends the time “inside” the sword in a sort of suspended animation, barely conscious. The spell obligates him to serve the weapon’s wielder, who retains ownership of it until he or she dies or voluntarily gives it away. Therefore, Halla finds she has acquired an unkillable bodyguard. After he breaks her out of her makeshift prison, they decide to travel to the big city and enlist the help of an order of priests -- the Temple of the White Rat -- specializing in legal problems, among other practical matters.

On the way, it soon becomes clear that Halla’s trusting nature would get her into serious trouble without Sarkis’s protection. At their destination, the order assigns an advocate, Zale, to return home with Halla and bring a lawsuit to reclaim her rightful inheritance. Zale, a character with an entertainingly dry wit and a relentlessly calm, logical attitude, presents as nonbinary. The text doesn’t make a point of this fact; Zale is simply referred to without comment as “they.” In one of my favorite scenes, they and Halla devise a series of experiments to find out whether everything detached from Sarkis’s body vanishes when he dematerializes into the sword. (It does; he agrees to the urine experiment but draws the line at such tests as having a fingertip removed.) Naturally they stumble into obstacles and dangers along the way; that's how quest stories / road trips are expected to unfold. During the adventurous journey, as the reader would guess, Halla and Sarkis progress from constant annoyance with each other through respect and friendship to romantic attraction. Sarkis considers himself unworthy of love, quite aside from his magical link with the sword, because of the circumstances that led to the curse. Incidentally, their first love scene is one of my favorites, in not only Kingfisher's works but romances in general. It's so delightfully *practical.* And I'm crazy about fictional couples who actually *talk* about -- and during -- sex.

Gradually we learn fragments of his past. When he reveals the full truth to Halla, she reacts to the revelation with believable distress. Their reconciliation doesn’t come without effort, while the ultimate showdown with her in-laws looms, its result not a foregone conclusion. The heroes' triumph doesn't feel easy to me, considering the kidnapping of Zale and Halla, along with the theft of the sword by a treacherous character who'd appeared friendly. Even when those crises are overcome, how can Halla and a warrior who’s also a sword, sort of, find happiness? The dialogue constantly sparkles, even in the midst of problems that seem insoluble. Every stage along their quest kept me enthralled. Although their troubles eventually reach a satisfactory resolution, the epilogue contains a teaser for a potential sequel. That book, DAGGERBOUND, is scheduled for August 2026.

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

Observation

Outside my window, snow is sifting down 

Like bakers' sugar, superfine, caster sugar

Turning bare trees to bleached coral

With dark drop shadow under-branches.

There's a knot hole in an ash, feet from my window,

The size of a breakfast grapefruit,

A chunky ruddy squirrel is nesting in there

Well, I do not intend to emulate the poet Robert Frost's "Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening."

For one obvious thing, my lines don't rhyme. If I spent time on it, I am sure I could rearrange

the lines and word pictures, and the result might be comforting, soothing and pleasant to read aloud

but I am more interested in observation, couched in some sibilance, alliteration.

I wonder what is about the same size as a grapefruit, but is both more evocative and rhymes with plenty of words. A boxing glove would be too big, too red, too suggestive of violence, and not worth using for the possibilities of "love", "dove", "above", "trove" (the latter is an eye-rhyme.)

Have you looked at bare ash and mulberry trees after snow? Coral is the right image, I think. Allegedly, there are 141 words that rhyme with coral. "Sorrel" and "quarrel" might have possibilities, but I wouldn't want to branch off into a discussion of my neighbors' possible lack of "moral" fiber for cutting down sources of winter shelter and food for wildlife.

The squirrel is probably a "grey" squirrel, but she is a dirty orange color, and her nesting material looks a lot like shredded phragmites (a bleached-ochre colored invasive species of reed-like grass). Red-wing blackbirds love to nest in it, by the way, as herons don't seem able to get through it.

There's nothing that rhymes with "phragmites", and if one called it "frag", only a lake and streams enthusiast would understand the allusion, although, a lot of words rhyme with "frag".

"Ruddy" means "reddish". In church today, our pastor perorated on the prophet Samuel seeking out David, eighth and youngest son of Jesse the Bethlehemite, for the purpose of anointing the next king to succeed Saul. David had to be fetched from the distant fields where he was a shepherd. He was described as "ruddy", and our pastor explained that this meant that David was healthy, athletic, and studly like a football player.

In fact, "ruddy" probably meant that David had a working man's tan from being out in the sun, the wind and the weather in the course of his shepherding responsibilities.

I've written before on the importance (in my opinion) of selecting the best word possible to communicate a thought or image. To do that, one needs an extraordinary vocabulary, the diligence to double check that the meaning of the word is --in today's parlance-- what you think it is.

One also needs to spend time being observant of the world around one, so one has the mental rolodex of images for all seasons, and maybe to keep a private collections of the best of them.

Although Shakespeare described nature as "red in tooth and claw", a lot of nature is peaceful and soothing if one takes the time to watch and listen attentively.... especially when it is snowing.

All the best,

Rowena Cherry 

SPACE SNARK™ 

https://www.spacesnark.com/  

https://www.rowenacherry.com

Oldies But Goodies {Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: The World of the White Rat with Swordheart and The Clocktaur War by T. Kingfisher, Part 1 by Karen S. Wiesner

Oldies But Goodies

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Review: The World of the White Rat with Swordheart and The Clocktaur War by T. Kingfisher, Part 1

by Karen S. Wiesner 

Beware potential spoilers! 

T. Kingfisher's medieval fantasy The World of the White Rat (sometimes called The Temple of the White Rat) is an umbrella series that includes The Saint of Steel series, which I reviewed not long ago on the Alien Romances Blog, as well as Clocktaur War (with two books) and the novel Swordheart. 

 

I purchased the deluxe hardcover edition of Swordheart that came out in February 2025, a reissue of the November 2018 novel. The deluxe copy has gorgeous turquoise sprayed edges with a silvery turquoise foil stamp of a sword on the cover and custom decorated endpapers. This as-untraditional-as-it-gets medieval romance has been described as The Princess Bride meets bodyguard romance. Halla, a widow, inherits her dead husband's wealthy uncle's estate, but greedy relatives scheme to steal it from her. The great-aunt Malva locks her in her room until she agrees to marry her son, the clammy-handed Alver, a milquetoast mama's boy. Halla sees no other recourse but to kill herself--what she sees as her only means of escape. To that end, she pulls down the decorative sword that's been hanging on her bedroom wall for as long as she can remember. Probably to ensure her clothing doesn't get bloody, she undresses and prepares to run herself through, something she quickly discovers is easier said than done. When she finally comes up with a plan for how to do that, she unsheathes the weapon and a knight appears, promising to serve the wielder of the enchanted sword. You know, after he gets over the shock of seeing her buck naked. 

Sarkis is anything but a hero--gaining immortality and servitude as punishment for his crimes in life is how he came to be forged into the sword in the first place. But he agrees to help the curvaceous chatterbox any way he can--at first, at least, in large part because he has no choice but to obey the sword owner. After the two escape the estate, they begin a journey to the Temple of the White Rat, where Halla hopes to get legal help to stake a claim on her unexpected inheritance. 

This amusingly irreverent order worshipping a rat is made up of lawyers, healers, and other community service workers. Various followers of this temple played roles in the four books of The Saint of Steel, and I believe at least one Temple of the White Rat character from that series makes a reappearance here (but I'm not entirely certain**). Also, gnoles (a race of talking badgers that are a part of human society in this medieval world) are included in Swordheart. I think the gnole Brindle was in one or more of The Saint of Steel stories. Additionally, members of the Order of the Sainted Smith (specifically, the vaunted woman blessed by the Forged God with the skill to imprison Sarkis and his two companions), the Hanged Motherhood, and The Dreaming God religious order dedicated to slaying demons (all mentioned in The Saint of Steel) make appearances here in various degrees. The amorous paladin Jorge that Slate meets up with in the first book is one of three paladins for The Dreaming God, and he also appeared in Paladin's Faith. I love that kind of continuity in connected stories. 

**It's difficult to keep track of minutiae in such a vast network of main, secondary, and ancillary characters and world-building elements. Mixed up in this is the fact that every single book in The Saint of Steel as well as Swordheart is impossibly long and, in my opinion, bloated with unforgivable romantic apprehension which produces angst more suited to teenagers than adults between the romantic couple spotlighted in each volume as the individuals try to talk themselves out of falling in love with each other, and for no good reason. This distress is a massively disappointing substitute for true sexual tension and relationship development. Sadly, all of Kingfisher's romance-slanted stories I've (so far) read suffer from this malady, in my opinion. 

In any case, Halla and Sarkis' journey is long and fraught with never-ending hilarity at times bordering on (fortunately, mostly fun) ridiculousness, contradictory tender mawkishness sprinkled with shocking vulgarity (another common trait of Kingfisher's anti-romance stories), and plain good entertainment. A weird thing about this particular story is that there isn't a whole lot at stake, so there's little plot tension, and yet almost nothing seems to go right for either of the two main characters. These minor issues that crop up are in the foreground and develop because of character-inspired "clumsiness" (for lack of a better description). They aren't usually the main plots going around viable twisty turns. They're just random situations that crop up to thwart Halla and Sarkis's progress toward their goal. For example, they're robbed at one point because Hallas stupidly trusted some woman who asked for her help at an inn. The female turned out to be part of a gang of robbers. Minor problems like that happen more frequently in this story than, say, a plot element that goes off on a necessary bender. Instead, in Swordheart, legitimate plot developments tend to go smoothly, almost without a hitch. As a result, the external plot comes off as almost too easily resolved. 

Also, the stakes didn't feel quite high enough. The worst thing that could have happened at the end of Swordheart was that Halla would have a) gotten the inheritance and taken Sarkis as her life companion (best case scenario), b) been forced to marry a man she didn't care for (worst case scenario), or c) just fended for herself in the world without either man or the money (middling scenario). None of those options seemed particularly end-of-the-world in the spinning of this novel. 

While the lack of critical, escalating tension and high stakes didn't exactly make the story and its full-fleshed-out characters drastically less enjoyable, this aspect did make the novel a bit less memorable than it could have been with higher stakes and less easily resolved external conflict. 

I liked (didn't love) this low-key, off-the-cuff tale that included an okay romance that's mildly similar to Shrek, with a very unlikely pair cast as hero and heroine who, by all logical estimations can't possibly end up with a happily ever after but somehow do. I also loved dipping back into Kingfisher's well-constructed medieval world that feels like home now. 

In the note in the back of Swordheart, the author said she intended to write a trilogy that includes Sarkis's two companions in life, Angharad and Dervish. She also said she was already working on the sequel--Angharad's story specifically. However, on her website, when asked if there will be a sequel to Swordheart, she says, "I hope so. For some reason, the Dervish’s story just does not want to come out. I’ve tried everything short of an icepick. Hopefully it will unjam at some point. I’ve got about 15K on it, and it’s not dead, it’s just…slow." On Goodreads, it says Swordheart #2 (which I assume includes one of the two stories of Sarkis's mercenary companions who were bound into magic steel as punishment for their crimes), Daggerbound, is to be published in January 2026. On my Libby library app, I discovered an actual back cover blurb for the book, which tags Dervish as the main character in the book. There, it states the book will be released August 24, 2026. Who knows which is correct? The deluxe edition of Swordheart #1 is probably in preparation for the upcoming release of the sequel. I may review it if/when it's released, as well as any future follow-ups. Note: I'm unclear whether the author has finished Angharad's story that she claimed to be working on in the Swordheart author note, but it seems that the Dervish story may have unjammed itself and become #2 in the trilogy instead of #3.

Next week I'll continue this review with the two books in Clocktaur War. 

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website and blog here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog and her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/

Thornhedge

THORNHEDGE, by T. Kingfisher (reviewed by Karen in mid-December), is a unique, emotionally stirring re-vision of “Sleeping Beauty” from the viewpoint of the fairy who casts the sleep spell. I'm a big fan of fairy-tale retellings, especially those that offer fresh angles on familiar classics. THORNHEDGE flips the perspective on the original tale's malevolent antagonist and innocent victim. Suppose there’s a very good reason why the princess shouldn’t be allowed to wake up? The protagonist, Toadling, a were-toad (it makes sense in context), has spent countless years lurking outside the deserted keep within its nearly impenetrable barrier of thorns and brambles, guarding the magic that keeps the princess in suspended animation. Meanwhile, the outside world rolls on through catastrophic historical events, such as a devastating plague, of which Toadling knows nothing until a curious knight arrives on the scene.

At first she only wants him to go away, but loneliness and the intriguing novelty of having someone to talk with overcome her reluctance to interact with the stranger. We gradually learn her background and the truth of the princess in the tower in a series of flashbacks as Toadling reveals her story to the knight. Born human, daughter of a minor king and queen, she was snatched from her cradle and replaced by a changeling. Since the fairies’ sole purpose for this action is to place the changeling with an unwitting family, they usually abandon the human child. The protagonist was found by greenteeth, marsh-dwelling faerie creatures; instead of eating her, as they often do with children, they lovingly raised her as one of their own. Growing up more fay than human, she learned water magic and shapeshifting into a toad. Later, she got instruction in spellcasting to prepare her for her destined mission -- to save her real parents from impending danger. Time in faerie unfolds at a different speed from mortal time; in this case, many years pass in faerie during mere hours or days in the mundane world (the reverse of the more common lore). So Toadling arrives in the royal court on the day of her substitute’s christening. A slip of the tongue makes her prepared spell go disastrously wrong. She’s barred from faerie and stuck with watching over the little changeling princess.

Halim, a Muslim knight who’s far from distinguished or wealthy, has little or no interest in tourneys or fighting in general. Instead, he has an insatiable drive to investigate mysteries and an open-minded, compassionate nature. When Toadling gives up trying to drive him away, they become friends of a sort as he attempts to break her “curse” by every method he can think of. Once he accepts her insistence that she herself is not cursed, he decides to enter the keep and convinces her to help him. Maybe they can find a way to free Toadling from her centuries-long vigil and exile from her home. In Toadling and Halim, Kingfisher has created two more of her typically thoughtful, quick-witted characters who don’t fit into the patterns of the roles they would play in most traditional fantasies or fairy tales. Their dialogues are delightful and the bond that grows between them deeply moving in a quiet way. Kingfisher’s afterword labels this book a “sweet” story, and I agree. Though there’s no hint of a potential sequel, I’d love to read the further adventures of these characters. In my opinion, THORNHEDGE is practically perfect, except that it’s too short.

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt

Oldies But Goodies {Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: The Saint of Steel Series by T. Kingfisher by Karen S. Wiesner

 

Oldies But Goodies

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Review: The Saint of Steel Series by T. Kingfisher

by Karen S. Wiesner

 

 

Beware potential spoilers! 

To describe T. Kingfisher's medieval fantasy The Saint of Steel series as romance is a bit off the mark. No doubt it has lateral shoots toward it but those tendrils into the genre are anything but conventional. The language and love scenes are unexpectedly crude, the way erotica can sometimes be, though all volumes frequently dip into the (frequently eye-rolling) tender mawkishness of traditional romance offerings. I suspect strongly that the author intended exactly this unorthodox straddling of categories when she was writing it. 

Whatever its classification, for the most part, I found it to be a breath of fresh air. Full disclosure: For all intents and purposes, I stopped reading romances (other than the young adult variety) about twenty years ago. I can't really say that was a conscious decision. More that I'd expanded past the romance-heavy books that dominated the reading of my twenties and early thirties. And, admittedly, I no longer cared for the requisite love scenes that were so much a part of this genre. I discovered another nice thing about audiobooks is that you can fast-forward past sections in 15-second intervals. I did that a lot with these. In any case, it was a bit strange for me to take up a romance series--unconventional as this was--again after all this time away. 

Once I'd finished with Kingfisher's audiobook of A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking (I reviewed it recently on this blog), the only available audiobooks by this author on my library app were these four books in The Saint of Steel series. Weirdly, all of them were available to check out there and then, so I was able to listen to them back-to-back. The fact that they were readily obtainable when none of her others were made me wonder if they weren't any good. Luckily, I found that wasn't the case. I also learned that when something is "DRM free", as I think this series is, it means that unlimited electronic copies are distributed. No waiting lines! Nice for readers, probably not so much for the author or publisher. 

The premise of this series is that an order of berserker paladins loses the Saint of Steel they serve when he dies. Unthinkably--to me anyway--in this fictional medieval time period the series is set in, these saints are venerated as gods; in fact, the words "saint" and "god" pretty much mean the same thing here. After his death, his followers go on a mad rampage of death before they're broken. That's covered in a short prologue in Book 1. Years later, the seven survivors have been taken into the service of the (irreverent but amusingly so) Temple of the Rat, made up of lawyers, healers, and other community service workers. Here, they can again do good. 

By nature, paladins are selfless, chivalrous, and honest to a fault. However, these knights are forever in danger of losing themselves to the berserker rage (called the black tide) they can't control once its unleashed. I loved how natural the world building in this medieval setting is in the author's hands. She does medieval effortlessly, as if she herself actually lives in that time period. 

There are four books in this series:

Paladin's Grace, Book 1 (2020)

Paladin's Strength, Book 2 (2021)

Paladin's Hope, Book 3 (2021)

Paladin's Faith, Book 4 (2023)

 

In Paladin's Grace, the knitting paladin Stephen is the focus. Grace is a perfumer he rescues one night and then the two become embroiled in a conspiracy plot against the crown prince as well as investigating necromantic serial killings in which the victim's heads are chopped off; black magic clay heads are then implanted into the corpses to make an army of monsters. 

This story had some clichéd romantic elements. Stephen was such a do-gooder he was always worrying about losing control whenever he and Grace found themselves in a compromising sexual situation. Frequently, that led to sex between them being tabled, which got a little stale after a while. Grace is also the victim of a philandering husband who made her believe she was frigid and so she spends a lot of wasted time pushing Stephen away on that premise. The first actual love scene was a little icky for me--as far from romantic as it gets. I wanted to shout, Please, close the door! I believe the author wrote it the way she did to avoid all potential for purple prose or swooning. She may have gone a little too far on that point. I learned after that to fast-forward to get past these excruciating scenes. That said, the rest of the romance and suspense plotlines were, at turns, fun, funny, sweet, and even heartwarming. The happily ever after between Stephen and Grace was, fittingly, out of the ordinary for a romance novel as well, in that the couple didn't have a picket fence and 2.5 kids in their future. They would both continue as they had been, only now they were together. I really liked that Grace's best friend Marguerite was a very avant garde character. The reader didn't know what she might do next. I also liked the introduction of a race of talking badgers that are a part of human society in this medieval world. 

Book 2 in the series, Paladin's Strength, takes up paladin Istvhan's (mentioned in Book 1) story. He's paired with Clara, a very large (nearly his own considerable size), capable woman who's a nun from a secretive order. Clara is hiding something shocking and intriguing that really adds something to the story. Her sisters have been kidnapped. She doesn't know why, but she intends to find out. Istvhan's company--that she originally thought was a band of mercenaries--helps her and, along the way, finds out that the necromantic serial killer from Book 1 is still on the loose. 

There's also a gnole in this story, as there was in Book 1 (I don't think it's the same one) who accompanies Istvhan's company. I loved this interesting, unexpected character. Additionally, we got to revisit Stephen and Grace's happily ever after, which was nice. I liked the main characters, their amusing repertoire, and the romance that seemed joyfully inevitable despite their circumstances. However, as in Paladin's Grace, the angst that Istvhan and Clara go through about whether they should be allowed to fall in love and have sex with each other gets really annoying with such a long book. Teenagers are less angsty than Kingfisher's couples in this series. At one point (64% into the 16-hour audiobook), Clara thinks to herself, What's wrong with me? I should have been riding this man until we both walk funny. That about sums it up. Just do it already! The author also has far too many albeit plausible (but still annoying) interruptions getting in the way of sex. The overwhelming build-up tends to make the actual event disappointing when it finally comes. I'm beginning to fear the entire series might suffer from this particular malady. 

In general, I enjoyed this story and its characters very much, though it was far too long. There were two external plotlines and both got the full treatment. While I think they were both well done, the book seemed nevertheless excruciatingly endless. The angst could have been blessedly cut and taken with it a good one or two hundred pages. 

The gay paladin, Galen, mentioned in Book 1 and having played a large role in Book 2, is in the spotlight in Paladin's Hope. In the first book, we learned that he's struggled more with survival after the Steel Saint's death than the others. His nightmares used to end in a berserker rage, but he's found that being on the road helps temper the bad dreams quite a bit. He now goes weeks or longer without having one. 

In this story, Galen is paired with a lich-doctor (a physician that works among the dead, determining causes of death for city investigations) named Piper. Piper has a useful, intriguing skill that aids him in his profession. He calls it "wonder working"--when he touches a dead body, he can see what happened the last few seconds of their life before death. When a tenacious and brave constable gnole decides there are too many mysterious bodies piling up, he enlists Piper and Galen's to help him find the source. That's the only suspense plotline in this book, and that made it a lot shorter to get through, which was nice. Unfortunately, Galen and Piper are just as tormented with worry as the previous couples, so fast-forward, fast-forward, fast-forward! 

Side note: The Saint of Steel series books are also associated with some of Kingfisher's other titles set in the same medieval fantasy world. The umbrella series is referred to as "The World of the White Rat" and includes The Saint of Steel as well as Clocktaur War (with two books) and the novel Swordheart. I intend to read all of those soon and maybe review them here. The reason I mention this is because, in this story, Galen talks about how he'd had some experience with "wonder" (mechanical and possibly magical) doors and machines. The two stories in the Clocktaur War may tell this story Galen references. I'll have to see. Early in Paladin's Hope, Galen, Piper and the gnole are forced behind a wonder door, into a labyrinth filled with deadly traps they'll have to get through to escape. 

In the course of the book, readers briefly get to see the happily-ever-afters of the two previous couples, which I enjoyed. I liked the fully-fleshed out characters and the new mystery plot in this tale that's nicely focused without too much expansion from that point. 

 

The final book in the series, Paladin's Faith, features Marguerite and paladin Shane, her bodyguard. She's trying to escape a former employer who's part of a powerful organization that wants her dead. Along the way, the couple have to dodge a demon-led cult that's out to get them. Additionally, Marguerite, Shane, and another paladin--a female named Wren--go undercover to hunt for an artificer who's crafted a device that could devastate the world. Also, though I never really thought about it before, the suspicious death of the Saint of Steel that all these paladins served is brought up in this book as yet another suspense angle. 

Again, this story was far too long and overburdened with subplots upon subplot. Combine this with yet another angsty romance between two people who spend far too much time telling themselves they can't anything with the other, and it's a surefire recipe for overload. Sigh. The female paladin Wren, who's like a sister to Shane, added an interesting viewpoint to this tale. Despite the negatives, I did enjoy the overall story, the compelling cast of characters, and the multi-faceted mysteries were capably handled from start to finish. 

Note that according to the author, though there are seven surviving paladins, these are the only four stories she intends to write (well, Wren is a paladin and a good chunk of her story was told in this last book, so perhaps we can say five stories were told within the four books, leaving potentially two untold), though further entries aren't out of the realm of possibility in the future. I expect Kingfisher didn't initially anticipate writing more than a trilogy with The Saint of Steel but Marguerite probably got a lot of requests for a story of her own. I for one would have felt disappointed without finding out what happened to her after Book 1. 

To sum up, if you're looking for something unusual and unconventional in your romance reading, this series is certainly worth your time. Beware the teenager apprehension you'll get around every corner between the couples, but, alas, that's what audiobooks and fast-forward buttons are for. 

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website and blog here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/

Bryony and Roses

In this 2016 fantasy novel, recently reviewed by Karen, T. Kingfisher retells “Beauty and the Beast” with some variations unique to her. As in Robin McKinley’s ROSE DAUGHTER (whose influence Kingfisher cites), the heroine is an avid gardener, and roses play a central role. Bryony, however, far from beautiful, is the plainest of the three sisters, a pragmatic young woman whose third-person narrative viewpoint is tart, self-aware, and tinged with snark. Unlike the heroines of other versions, she doesn’t much care for roses, considering them more trouble than they’re worth and often outright vicious -- all those thorns. (Kingfisher also portrays roses negatively in a contemporary horror novel, A HOUSE WITH GOOD BONES.) The backstory follows the classic pattern, a widowed merchant losing all his wealth and property except for a cottage in a remote village, where he retires with his three daughters.

In this novel, both parents have died already, leaving the young women on their own. Bryony’s sisters are affectionate and hardworking rather than vain and jealous as in the classic tale. Holly is as practical and astringent as Bryony, while Iris is beautiful, delicate, and romantic. As the novel opens, it’s Bryony who gets stuck in a snowstorm and takes refuge, with her pony, in the mysterious, palatial manor house. After being feasted and sheltered, she tries to take a rose for Iris, provoking the Beast’s wrath. She delivers a chest full of coins to her home, packs a supply of plants and seeds, and returns to the Beast’s mansion. The house proves to be sentient and eagerly helpful almost to the point of smothering. As Bryony cultivates her garden and grows to care for the Beast, she finds that he can’t talk about the crucial elements of his past. The magic forcibly prevents him. As in some earlier adaptations, she dreams of a seductive man. Both the dreams and the house itself, though, have sinister undertones.

This version is darker than any other I’ve seen or read, with a climax verging on horror. The Beast’s origin story reveals him as neither an innocent victim of a malicious curse (as in the familiar fairy tale) nor a selfish brute needing to reform (as in the Disney version). He did bring his punishment upon himself, but the penalty was disproportionate to the offense, and he has long since repented and matured. The background of his transformation -- and that of the house -- is eerie and otherworldly in genuine fairy-tale style. To my delight, he doesn’t revert to human form at the end. That denouement has always felt like a letdown to me, no matter how well written or acted.

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

This Year, I Resolve....

In October, I learned that a window of publishing opportunity was going to close at the end of 2025 and I promised myself (and others) that I would compile a book of property renovations (before and after pictures with short commentary).

The window closes this week, and I blew my deadline, so 2025 goes out on a note of regret. It did not help that I have been almost literally prostrate for the last six weeks with an excruciatingly painful back injury, but that is an excuse and not a justification for lackadaisical planning.

I resolve to plan better in 2026. Of course, planning is no use if one lacks the discipline to follow through.

Does a well-filled out desk calendar provide discipline? Or is it merely a reminder of dates, deadlines, and intentions? Anyway, I resolve to fill out my desk calendar. Perhaps I won't forget my sister-in-law's birthday if I add a "mail-a-card" memo a couple of weeks ahead of her big day.

What are other writers suggesting for their New Year's Resolutions?

As most writers know, "ideas" cannot be copyrighted. It's the "expression" of ideas and the descriptions of thoughts, feelings, gestures and actions that --rightly so-- are protected by copyright laws and common decency.

Another resolution of mine: continue to give credit by name and url when recycling other people's ideas.

Talking of other people's ideas.... To-Do list-maker Kristina Adams suggests that writers ought to resolve to read 52 books (by a variety of other people) every year. 

That seems daunting. My thought would be, read 52 reviews a year. This is easily accomplished by simply following this alien romances blog and reading Karen Wiesner's reviews, also those of Margaret Carter.

Of course, you do also have to read and re-read some of the "greats" in your genre and in other genres, but perhaps one a week is indeed too aspirational.

If you have earned money from writing, find out if you can set up an IRA. No matter how paltry the initial sum, your IRA does not pay capital gains tax, so you can day trade. Use the discipline of a calendar. Sell high and buy back low. You don't have to "pick a top" or for that matter "pick a bottom", just decide what is a reasonable profit, set a Good Till Cancelled limit price to sell, and wait for your stocks to sell. Then, set a Good Till Cancelled limit price to buy the same stock back for less. Repeat.

Never sell for a loss in an IRA. If the stock account is something other than an IRA, you need a calendar to make sure that you wait 31 days after selling for a loss before buying back for less. Also, if you are going to "harvest" losses, make sure you set your dividend investment instructions to "Pay Cash" rather than "Reinvest" or your dividends might create a partial "wash sale".

Erica Verillo has an excellent blog about new years writing resolutions, especially about recycling older works, with a link to publishers who accept previously published articles.

Her last name is also an object lesson in the importance of proof-reading. AI seems to make it harder, not easier, to write cleanly and accurately. Spell check routinely revises unfamiliar words to something its programmers recommend ("verily"). 

There appears to be general agreement everywhere I looked that blogging is still important... having your own blog or vlog, guest blogging, inviting guests to your blog. Blog regularly (weekly), and interact.

Writers are recommended to make writer friends and interact with them, bounce ideas off one another, share passages from a work -- some sources suggest that one needs 12 different readers to read the same page, because 12 readers might read the same words differently, like the six men of Hindustan to learning much inclined who went to "see" the elephant though all of them were blind.

Advisors agree that it is very good indeed to try writing poetry, or writing in another genre, or trying a style or topic that one dreads.

Above all, the bottom line is.... the bottom line. You cannot publish a blank page, you cannot sell a work that is not finished.

Recommended resources for writerly New Year's resolutions:

Erica Verillo

https://curiosityneverkilledthewriter.com/2025-new-years-writing-resolution-for-writers-recycle-your-work-c3d7813b3343

Kristina Adams

https://www.writerscookbook.com/new-years-resolutions-for-writers/

Wishing you all a productive, prosperous and Happy New Year,

All the best,

Rowena Cherry 

SPACE SNARK™ 

https://www.spacesnark.com/  

https://www.rowenacherry.com

EPIC Award winner, Friend of ePublishing for Crazy Tuesday   

Fellow-Passengers to the Grave by Karen S. Wiesner

 

Fellow-Passengers to the Grave

by Karen S. Wiesner 

I've spent the last several years trying to find exactly the right word to describe a situation in which a choice by someone else is made that you don't necessarily celebrate, support, or even agree with--and yet you nevertheless go along with it in compassionate graciousness. 

Like clothes I'm discarding as just not quite right, I've tried on several words that are close to the sentiment I'm striving for yet don't fully cover it. In each case, for a few minutes, I think "That must be the word I'm looking for." Then a little time passes and I realize yet another term is inadequate to describe it. Over and over, I've tossed inefficient sentiments away, and I anticipate, by the end of this article, I'll shelve another incompetent wanna-be. Here's my reasoning for turning close-but-no-cigar options aside: 

Respect, these days, suggests a ladder that must be climbed. Frankly, the connotations make me squirm. It should mean "worthy of regard" and every person on the planet receives it by simple virtue of being part of the human race. Yet we've turned this term into some kind of an obstacle course in which we test the worthiness of someone and, if they're found lacking, we withhold basic human regard. Aren't equal rights a foundation that demands we learn to see every living being as worthy of respect, and therefore we don't pass judgment on their personal decisions? 

Accept implies one person is in the high position of having a say in the private choices another makes. No one is and no one should. Everyone has free will, not just one. I have no right to question someone else's choices, whether to agree or disagree with them, especially if I don't want my own dissected and then ripped to shreds in endless debates as if someone is heading a "God of the Universe" committee. When it comes to someone else's beliefs, we have to have that kind of humility. Who do we think we are if I supersede other humans' judgments in how they run their own lives? 

Tolerate is another term that's not quite right. With this one, there is a willingness to accept the feelings, habits, and beliefs of others that are different from our own. Unfortunately, this one has also become a bad word in terms of the negative connotations it suggests. For religious people, the word seems to demand a compromise of principles or the condoning of bad behavior, which is not at all the direction we should be going. On the other side of the coin, for some it infers, "You have to agree with me--or else." So often, "But I won't give the same courtesy" is the unspoken tagalong to such a selfish sentiment in behavior if not verbally. It's so easy for people to convey by their intolerance that their own beliefs are superior; therefore, other human beings must change to suit them or else punishment will be meted out in the form of spurning, bullying, or far worse violence. Where's the freedom in that? Don't compassion and the right to our own opinions matter anymore? 

Forbear is a word I found when I went to an online dictionary and looked up synonyms of the previous words I discarded. I was impressed with this term on the whole, since it conveys patient restraint and discernment rather than harsh sentencing. Here, too, though, there's undoubtedly a bit of negativity, probably because of its connection to banking and because the phrase "long-suffering" tends to join it too often. You can almost see someone rolling their eyes, sighing loudly, and saying grudgingly, "Well, all right, I'll practice forbearance, but only if I absolutely have to." If not for that, this particular word might be one of the closest I've discovered to what I want to convey in this situation. 

 

Recently I had a new thought on this subject (bear with me; there's a parallel coming): We human beings breathe air because we have to in order to survive. In the same way, when another person makes a decision we would almost rather they hadn't--and yet we have to live with that choice--we need to convey something like respect, genuine acceptance, tolerance, and certainly patient, restrained forbearance because we realize that our opinion is beside the point and a non-factor. Our response has to be the same as needing air to survive. It is what it is. Our feelings don't factor into other people's choices. They can't. They unequivocally don't. They shouldn't. Straightforward accommodation on our parts is the only acceptable response. This term implies displaying selfless hospitality, of seeking to meet the needs of others above our own, serving their best interests, and humbly and willingly bending like a reed if we can provide assistance to those in need around us. 

But, no, once again, a word for a moment holds brilliance, then falls short in the next span of time. Accommodation also lacks perfection in conveying what I'm looking for because of the negative climate we live in. In today's world, accommodating someone else's wishes indicates having to force ourselves to do something for a dubious or moot "good cause". 

Sigh. I suspect this search of mine is a lost cause because no such word actually exists. Alternately, humans may change the meaning or intention of language by popular opinion, or, bottom line, our experiences with certain words shape us emotionally for good or ill. One man's truth is another's trash. Not everyone derives the same meaning we do with words. 

Nevertheless, at Christmas-time, I always think of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. My search for the perfect word fits this theme. One eloquent quote for that timeless story that comes to my mind is how we're all "fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys". "Creatures bound on other journeys"--intimates that we have nothing in common with each other, no means of finding mutual understanding or the slightest reason to get along and work together. Do we actually think that way? We've all gone that route a time or two in our lifetimes, as unpleasant as it can be to admit in retrospect. But the key to integrating as fellow-passengers on this journey we call life is in the accommodation of others, mutual cooperation, and realizing we're not alone in this world. We can't live as though no one and nothing else but ourselves matters. Consider: 

You do you. Allow me to do me. Let others do them. 

You don't have to like everybody but do at least strive to get along. 

The best way to love someone is not to judge; it's not your place. 

Do to others as you want done to yourself. Yes, even if you don't get the same in return. 

Pay it forward "blindly" so as not to judge the person you're trying to help--do it as an act of gratitude to those anonymous ones that gave generously in your own life. 

Compromise and accommodation are often the only paths to peace. 

A gift that's earned or merely a repayment of a debt isn't a gift. The best gift is that of self, bestowed magnanimously. 

Anne Frank said, "No one has ever become poor by giving", but, serendipitously, many become rich by giving of themselves. This accommodation binds instead of breaks the individual as well as the whole. Let's find a way to live in peace on our journey together, fellow-passenger. 

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/

In the Bleak Midwinter

Merry Christmas!

Recommended: A 2024 book about the dark side of the winter holidays, THE DEAD OF WINTER, by Sarah Clegg, subtitled "Beware of Krampus and Other Wicked Christmas Creatures." It's an entertainingly readable blend of historical and folkloric scholarship with a casual, conversational tone.

Once upon a time, Saint Nicholas devoted much more attention than nowadays to chastising the naughty children as well as rewarding the nice. Rather early in his history, though, he acquired minions to take over the harsher aspects of his gift-giving role. Other scary creatures lurk in the cold months of the northern hemisphere, too.

The chapters begin with anecdotes about the author's personal visits to locations associated with the creatures and customs surveyed in the respective chapters. She continues with a detailed examination of the history and significance of each topic. Her wry, often funny footnotes remind me somewhat of Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels. Maybe it's a British thing? The book includes an index, endnotes, and a selected bibliography for each chapter.

The introduction, "The Year Walk," narrates the author's visit to a graveyard on Christmas Eve to enact a ritual for glimpsing shadows of the future. Chapter One, Lords of Misrule: How the chaotic, transgressive revelry of Carnival migrated to the Twelve Days of Christmas. Chapter Two, Monstrous Visitors: Mummers' plays and house-to-house "guising" as fearsome monsters begging for drinks and other treats. Chapter Three, Horse Skulls and Hoodenings: Wassailing and the Welsh Mari Lwyd (yes, a person wearing or carrying a horse's skull) and related creatures. Chapter Four, Punishing the Wicked: Krampus and his child-snatching, often cannibalistic kin. Chapter Five, The Christmas Witches: Befana and less benign female prowlers of winter nights, including, surprisingly, a dark side of Saint Lucy. Chapter Six, Old Gods: The solstice rituals at Stonehenge, leading into a discussion of efforts, often mistaken, to trace surviving seasonal beliefs and customs back to ancient pagan deities and rites, by scholars such as the Grimm brothers and James Frazer (author of THE GOLDEN BOUGH). The epilogue explores possible reasons for the Victorian pleasure in ghost stories at Yuletide and the "modern embrace of the darker side of Christmas."

Also, for related entertainment, take a look at this Extra Mythology video (part of the Extra Credits series) compiling all their previous animated short podcasts on Christmas creatures, including Krampus and several others, plus a discussion of Dickens's A CHRISTMAS CAROL:

Extra Mythology Christmas Stories

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

Oldies But Goodies {Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review of Three Retold Fairytale Selections by T. Kingfisher by Karen S. Wiesner

Oldies But Goodies

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Review of Three Retold Fairytale Selections by T. Kingfisher

by Karen S. Wiesner 

Beware potential spoilers! 

 

I bought Nettle & Bone because I'm currently devouring just about everything with author T. Kingfisher's name on it. I didn't know what to expect, beyond that it was dark fantasy, though hardly what most people think of when it comes to a fairy tale. The back cover blurb tagline, "This isn't the kind of fairy tale where the princess marries a prince. It's the one where she kills him" pretty much says it all. Or at least I initially thought it did. I can't really say why it reminded me of The Hunger Games, but something about the heroine Marra in the first handful of pages struck that chord of "responsible heroine takes matters into her own hands" when everyone around her fails to act the way they should. 

In Nettle & Bone, Marra is the youngest of three princesses. She herself is as far from "princessly" as it gets. In order to provide safety for their kingdom, her parents agree to the political marriage of Marra's eldest sister Damia to Prince Vorling. Months later, Damia is dead and Kania, the middle sister, is now Vorling's wife. Marra is sent to a convent. Before long, it becomes clear that Kania is trying to stay pregnant in order to escape the abuses of her cruel husband. Marra and Kania's queen mother knows that her daughters are being abused by this prince, but she chooses the safety of the kingdom above that of her own children. Though it'd be easy to judge the woman on that basis, this story is set during a time when females--not even queens or princesses--had many, if any, options. It was a man's world, and submitting was usually the only real option. Few have Marra's bravery, let alone her willingness to act to right the wrongs she sees in the world around her. There's a curse on all children born in the prince's family, something Marra knows has to do with the godmother who blesses each at birth, and she begins to search for a way to save her sister. 

First, Marra seeks out a powerful gravewitch (also called a dust-wife) who can communicate with the dead. The lone wolf dust-wife gives her three impossible tasks, and, after Marra inconceivably manages the first two of them, the dust-wife gives herself over to joining her foolish quest in killing the prince. The two are joined by the dust-wife's chicken familiar and the sweet, if somewhat half-there, bonedog Marra resurrected. The dust-wife clearly didn't want to be part of a group, let alone a family, but this isn't something she can resist for long. Along the way, they recruit a disgraced knight named Fenris and Marra's own godmother Agnes. 

Nettle & Bone was, initially, written in a non-linear fashion. In the opening scene, Marra is crafting the bone dog. However, the narrative soon begins to circle back around to explaining how she got to that point. I found this very awkward and not terribly compelling. Also, it seemed odd and not entirely convincing to me that Marra started the book telling us she was going to kill the prince despite the fact that Kania hated her, and Marra had known this truth about her sister for most of her life. To start with a character intent on murder without a strong enough reason why took me a little time to swallow. At first, I thought Marra's motivation for acting came down to her realization that, if Kania was killed by the prince, as their eldest sister had been, then Marra would be next in line to take her place. She had to stop that at any cost. That meant killing the prince. However, even that wasn't the full reason. I was soon persuaded that, more often than not, sisters love each other--even when they claim the opposite. It didn't matter Kania's feelings for Marra, whether once upon a time or currently. Kania was being treated as if she was little more than a punching bag and a baby factory. Didn't her personal happiness and well-being matter, or only the collective whole that make up their kingdom? That struck me as a much better motivation than I'd first assumed drove Marra. 

Still, I wasn't enamored of the main character right away (similarly, the heroine in The Hunger Games took a very long time and two full readings of the series to really grown on me). Some fifty pages in, I began to wonder if this story was worth reading. It was around Chapter 7, when Marra and the dust-wife visited the goblin market and rescued Fenris, that I was stunned to acknowledge I could no longer put the book down. I'd gone from half-hearted reading to voraciously being glued to the pages. The appearance of noble and selfless Fenris made Marra somehow human, the way she hadn't quite seemed to be earlier, as she'd focused so single-mindedly on the path set before her. Not long after that, Marra's godmother Agnes joined the crew. She was so scatter-brained, hilarious, and interesting, I just loved her. Soon the reader learns that Agnes, as a magical fairy godmother, isn't just good at blessing newborns with good health, but she also has the power to just as easily curse any being and destroy lives in the process. Yet Agnes has made a deliberate choice not to use her power for evil. 

As lovably impatient and grouchy as the dust-wife feigns to be, she's becoming irresistibly drawn into this group as I myself was being hooked. Fenris described them as "Five of us. Five is a fist. Five is a hand on the enemy's throat." A fist includes a hand, and this is what holds people together as a family and in friendships in the physical sense. Along the path of their quest, this unit had become a family, and I wasn't ready to let them go when the story concluded. I want to see them all again, but the author claims a sequel isn't in the offing. Sigh. I hope that changes, but we'll have to see. 

I'm so glad I didn't stop reading this book that, admittedly, took too long to capture me--though, at least when it finally did, it was irrevocable. I urge everyone who liked The Hunger Games series or loves a fairy tale turned on its head to stick with this one, even if the beginning is a little tough to get through. It's well worth the effort. 

I believe this book is one of many that could be described as "reimagined and unconventional fairytales" by this author. I'm a huge fan of things like that (see my Woodcutter's Grim Series https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/woodcutters-grim-series.html). In trying to get a handle on some of the other books Kingfisher has written in this vein that include a reinterpretation of beloved fairytales, I came up with this list of her selections, arranged below on the basis of publication dates: 

The Seventh Bride ("Mr. Fox"/"The Robber Bridegroom", and other variants) 

Bryony and Roses ("Beauty and the Beast")

The Raven and the Reindeer ("The Snow Queen") 

Thornhedge ("Sleeping Beauty")

A Sorceress Comes to Call ("Goose Girl")

Hemlock & Silver ("Snow White")

In the case of Nettle & Bone, the story doesn't encompass any one specific fairytale--more of a subversion of everything that's been done rolled into one. 

 

Released in 2015, I was able to get the audiobook of Bryony and Roses from one of my library apps. Bryony and her sisters are just getting by after their merchant father's death. But when Bryony stumbles into what she thinks is an abandoned manor to escape a snow storm, she meets Beast, who could be a monster or her fate and future. This clever retelling had a lovely romance that was developed over time, through trials, and much shared experience. The story was very unpredictable, considering how well known the original is. I loved that. The characters were compelling and witty. I was rooting for them even after the dark secret the Beast hid was revealed.

 

Released in 2023, I listened to the audiobook of Thornhedge from the library app. The voice actor had a halting way of reading that was a bit annoying. Luckily the story was short (under four hours). In this reimagined version of Sleeping Beauty, an unconventional knight meets the caretaker of Thornhedge. Toadling is kind of a toad shapeshifter created by fairy magic. She makes it clear that, chivalry aside, waking the sleeping princess might just be the biggest mistake he'll ever make. Luckily, this knight isn't really what most people think of when they imagine a knight--but he is what Toadling longs for. The romance was subtle and sweet, and I enjoyed the author's unusual take on a favorite fairytale of mine. 

Kingfisher thrives at unique and unorthodox perspectives with riveting, fist to the gut twists that come out of nowhere. Nettle & Bone, in particular, would make an amazing film. If you're a fan of reimagined fantasy tales of romance and adventure, whatever you do, don't miss even one of these. I plan to review the rest of Kingfisher's reimagined fairytales when they become available through my library apps. 

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website and blog here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/