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 know 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/