Nettle and Bone by T. Kingfisher
Ursula Vernon (here writing as "T. Kingfisher") is one of my favorite discoveries from reading Hugo finalists; I have enjoyed her YA/middle-grade novels (such as the 2021 Lodestar Award winner A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking) and her adult short stories (such as the 2017 Best Novelette winner "The Tomato Thief"). I was curious, then, to read my first novel of hers with an adult audience.
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Published: 2022 Acquired: July 2023 Read: August 2023 |
It actually turns out to have a lot in common with her YA work. Like Defensive Baking and Minor Mage, this is about someone who sets out to right an injustice—an injustice it should not be her responsibility to right, but which only she is willing to take on. Like in those books, the protagonist goes on a journey through a magical land, acquiring friends along the way, and developing an ethos of care in the face of brutality. Plus: lots of jokes! So basically, Vernon is doing in Nettle and Bone the thing she did in the other books of hers I liked, only this time with an adult protagonist, darker themes, and some more horrific magic.
The main character of Nettle and Bone is Princess Marra, whose older sister has been married off to a cruel prince in order to secure a vital alliance; Marra, shunted off to a convent, decides to see if she can help that sister, enlisting the assistance of a "bone-wife" (a woman who can talk to the dead), a disgraced knight, a kindly little old lady, and a dog made of bones. I wouldn't say it's as funny as a Terry Pratchett novel (surely praising with faint damnation!) but it is in the same sort of area as him, especially his work in the Tiffany Aching novels: how to care for others, how to be a better person, how to see the dark power that runs through the real world and overcome it. This is exactly the kind of fantasy fiction I enjoy, and a well-executed example of it. I loved this cover to cover, and if my first Hugo read, Legends & Lattes, quickly established itself as the lower bar, Nettle and Bone is the high bar; if any of my remaining novels are better than it, they must be excellent books indeed.
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