Oldies But Goodies
{Put This One on Your TBR List}
A Sorceress Comes to
Call by T. Kingfisher
by Karen S. Wiesner
Beware spoilers! Of late on the Alien Romances Blog, I've been reviewing "reimagined and unconventional fairytales" written by T. Kingfisher. I came up with this list of her selections, arranged below on the basis of their publication dates:
The Seventh Bride ("Mr. Fox"/"The
Robber Bridegroom", and other aberrations)
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 my first take on Kingfisher's loose renderings of fairytales, I reviewed Nettle & Bone, which is basically a subversion of everything that's been done in a fairytale all rolled into one, along with Bryony and Roses and Thornhedge. After that, I reviewed The Seventh Bride by itself.
In preparation for reading A Sorceress Comes to Call, a 2024 fantasy release focused on "a dark retelling" (which is what it's been described as in reviews and summaries), I refreshed myself on the 1815 German tale "The Goose Girl" published in Grimm's Fairy Tales by the Brothers Grimm. You can find it online free in many different places.
The crux of that story is that a mother trusts a maid who works for them to ensure her princess daughter gets delivered safely to the prince she'll be marrying. The mother (not apparently a witch?) makes some supernatural preparations to that end--namely, ensuring their magical horse Falada goes along and by giving her daughter a handkerchief that's been enchanted. En route (and long story short), the princess loses her charm (literally, it falls out of her bosom and gets washed down the stream; bye-bye enchantment--it floats out of the story from that point on, out of sight and out of mind) while the maid declares mutiny and forces the princess to swap roles (and clothes) with her so she can pose as the princess. Meanwhile, the real one becomes her maid. This schemer extracts an oath from the princess to prevent her from telling the truth to the royal family she'll be marrying into. The maid anticipates becoming rich and pampered for the rest of her days. It's a brilliant plan, really, until they get to the castle of the bridegroom. The real princess is sent to care for the geese, the horse is promptly beheaded, and the maid is whisked away to prepare for her happily-ever-after.
Alas, the destiny of royalty can't be hidden or squelched under rags and menial labor…you know, or something. When the princess lets down her golden hair, the boy Conrad she works with is possessed with the desire to snatch a few of the valuable tresses, so she voices an enchantment to make his hat blow away so she has time to brush out and plait her hair each day. Thank goodness for her princess hair, or this tale would have gone seriously wrong! And let's not get into how, if she's like her mom and can conjure enchantments, why not produce one that sets this all aright?
Anyway, this happens between "The Goose Girl" and Conrad many times. Eventually, he gets sick of weird things happening around her, goes to the king (apparently any Tom, Dick and Harry can approach the king himself for any reason) and says he won't herd geese with her anymore. The king convinces him to continue one more day, and that morning the king watches in stealth. Finding things just as Conrad told him they were with this strange girl, the king summons her and orders her to tell him her story. She says she can't because of the oath the maid dragged out of her. He suggests she go tell the stove then. (Yes, you read that right.) She climbs in, lays her troubles bare to the cast iron, and he hears everything.
At that point, the king decides to trick the maid into choosing the manner of her own punishment. Hey presto! All gets swapped back to the way they're fated to be. We've all long forgotten the magical elements her mother sent her on her way bearing. So, what was the point of them? Who knows? In any case, I'm sure the prince must not have been swindled into believing the maid was authentic at any point because he sure doesn't seem to mind the new bride that gets traded in while the one he thought he was going to marry ends up dragged naked through the kingdom in a barrel filled with spikes. Summary: I can safely say that T. Kingfisher's version wasn't much darker than the original.
Okay, so now that you know the basis of "The Goose Girl" story (if for some odd reason you didn't already know it), I'll tell you that A Sorceress Comes to Call is almost nothing like it. To even call it a loose rendition is a stretch. For the life of me, I couldn't twist or finagle Kingfisher's story to fit much of anything within the fairytale it was supposedly based on beyond that, in A Sorceress Comes to Call, there's a magical horse named Falada who eventually becomes headless and there were geese (after a fashion) in the retelling.
None of this is actually a judgment on Kingfisher's story, nor was there any real sadness in there not being much by way of parallels between these two. I would, however, like to hear it directly from the author why or how the original story inspired her tale. 'Cause I just don't get it. Almost always, Kingfisher includes some illumination about her inspiration for the story in the note she puts at the end of nearly all her books. With this one, she didn't bother to mention it, and this is the one I'm most wanting an explanation for. Sigh. Getting past that (I will eventually), I will say that A Sorceress Comes to Call was just as unique and unexpected as its predecessor.
Fourteen-year-old Cordelia isn't a princess and her mother is not only a living nightmare but also a dreadful sorceress with a horse-shaped familiar. When their finances run to ground, Evangeline decides to snag a rich squire for herself. In order to do so, she first has to win him with her natural charm, as any magical enchantment enhancements would be broken during the church wedding ceremony (which uses wine, salt, and water) to ensure nothing unholy takes place. What Evangeline hasn't counted on is the Squire's sister Hester, a woman who chose to be a spinster (long story you'll discover in the course of reading this). Hester befriends Cordelia and realizes her mother is far removed from the innocent, sweet woman of misfortune she appears to be--only on the surface. From that point on, Hester becomes determined to save her brother along with this poor, abused daughter of an evil witch. But how to do that?
I would have liked to know more specifics about Evangeline's origins, though the story does give a basic presumption about what happened to the most powerful sorceresses in that time period and area. Outside of that, the story told was very satisfying, filled with thoroughly engaging characters. Again, Kingfisher's lively prose made for a humorous, suspenseful journey toward solving a most beguiling conundrum about what to do when a sorceress comes to call.
I'm hoping to get hold of Kingfisher's newest (at the time of this writing in November 2025), Hemlock & Silver, soon for review to complete the circle of fairytale-spun retellings. Don't miss this one. It may not be anything like the origin story, which you might want to peruse before or after, but it's definitely worth a read on its own, considerable merits.
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/
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