Nettle and Bone - T. Kingfisher
Paperback | Tor Books | April 26, 2022
The GisT
A princess who’s been raised in a convent assembles an alpha wolf dynamite squad to kill an a-hole prince that’s abusing her sister.
Read if you like
Fairytales
Dark fantasy
Quests
Howl’s Moving Castle by Dianne Wynne Jones
The Verdict: Rent It, But Read It
When Princess Marra learns that her sister is being abused by her husband, the future king of the most powerful kingdom in the land she does what any shy, convent-raised, younger sister would do: She sets out to kill the prince. To take down Prince Vorling, Marra knows she will need help and so she travels far to find a dust-wife who will bestow on her what she needs to accomplish the impossible task. What does it take to kill an evil, abusive, and absurdly powerful prince?
A dust-wife and a demonic chicken
A fairy godmother who is better with curses than she is with blessings
A veteran soldier who’s been held prisoner by fairies
Kingfisher’s exposition is lean and her dialogue is sharp. She effortlessly creates a complex cast of characters that put a twist on the sort of players you’d typically find in a fairytale. Marra is an atypical choice for a main character. She’s shy, skittish, and has never swung a sword. However, time and again she proves that she is determined in her convictions to kill the prince and save her sister. There are moments where Marra takes a backseat to the secondary characters and she seems to stumble into solutions. Still, Kingfisher’s knack for storytelling always makes you feel like the story is moving toward the climatic showdown between the misfit band heroes and the evil prince.
