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/
Posts
