Book Review: Nettle & Bone by T. Kingfisher
We open in media res as Marra, age thirty, tries to make a dog from bones and wire in a cursed land inhabited by cannibals. Some of whom are quite nice, really–just don’t eat anything they offer you. It’s damaging her hands something fierce, but then impossible tasks are not easy by definition. She succeeds at this second task.
Then we get into the backstory. Marra is the third daughter of the royal family of the Harbor Kingdom, a small principality squeezed between the more powerful Northern and Southern Kingdoms. For political reasons, the eldest daughter, kind and beautiful Damia, was married off to the prince of the Northern Kingdom. She died unexpectedly “in a fall.” So the second daughter, the sourer Kania, became the prince’s bride instead, and Marra was sent off to a nunnery.
Marra, who thinks of herself as a bit slow, found the life of a lay sister suited her better than that of a spare princess. She became quite good at needlework and embroidery. Kania got pregnant, and Marra was recalled to attend her niece’s christening. Being a princess again, even if not one that attention was focused on, was stressful, and the godmother was weird, so much relief in returning to religious life.
Then came news of other pregnancies and miscarriages by Kania, too close together and Marra (who had also assisted a midwife several times by now) became worried about her sister. A few years later, her niece died and Marra was recalled to attend the funeral. She became aware of some unpleasant facts about Kania’s marriage, and realized that the only way to save her sister was to kill the prince. But how?
So Marra consults a dust-witch (graveyard guardian with hidden knowledge) and is assigned three impossible tasks. Which brings us up to the opening.
This dark fantasy novel is by T. Kingfisher, the name Ursula Vernon uses for her adult fiction. There’s a lot of fairy tale roots in here. Youngest daughter of three must go on a quest, a princess to be rescued, a motley assortment of companions picked up along the way, a witch, fairy godmothers, impossible tasks; this will be very familiar to those who’ve read a lot of fairy tales.
The dust-witch points out early on that they’re in a fairy tale, though Marra can never bring herself to believe she’s a worthy protagonist. She doesn’t quite get that doing impossible things that hurt very badly because they have to be done is in fact a heroic trait.
And the darkness of “dark” fantasy is ever-present. The gods give permanent punishments for temporal crimes. Magic comes at a high cost and with unpleasant side effects. Even the blessings of fairy godmothers may be curses in disguise, and no good thing for those godmothers. Also, there’s a demon in the chicken.
While the survivors may be happier than they were, it comes at a heavy price, and it will take continued effort to make sure things don’t go back to being terrible.
The religious setup is deliberately a bit nebulous. While it’s a polytheistic society, the trappings have a Catholic feel, with nunneries (Marra’s patron is “The Lady of Grackles”), saintly intervention more or less at random, and the concept of godmothers.
I liked the characters for the most part. The evil prince doesn’t get much development as he’s seldom on page, and part of the methodology of the plan is not to confront him or to let him know the plan exists until the companions are ready to strike. If your taste in fantasy requires a good villain, this one’s a miss.
I found the overall plot to be solid, and the descriptions unsettling.
Content note: Murder, spousal abuse, death of children, injustice that does not get rectified by the end of the story, cannibalism in the backstory, mention of extramarital sex. Mature late teens and up should be able to handle it.
Recommended to fans of dark fantasy.
