Book Review: Nettle & Bone
After seeing T. Kingfisher conduct author interviews at my local bookstore, I walked away with the opinion that I would get along with her and also walked away with a copy of her most famous book, Nettle & Bone. A few weeks later I read the book while out of town and was hooked from the beginning. It is short for fantasy but not for fairy tale, which is a more apt category for this dark and also kinda light tale. A cross-ages fantasy that goes down easy, Nettle & Bone is a standalone journey for a spunky princess and an acquired entourage of witch, fairy godmother, hero, and two pets, all of them twisted versions of their usual iterations. If you like that sort of thing, you should like Nettle & Bone.
Marra is the third daughter of a king, which means she’ll be allowed to just putter around and be unimportant, right? Well, the cruel prince in the kingdom next door has already worked his way through the first sister and moved on to the second, so Marra is afraid she might not be so forgotten as a pawn used for the safety of the realm. She’s relieved when she’s able to quietly retire (for now) to a convent. But when she sees more than she was intended to about her second sister’s circumstances, she can’t just sit idly by and let fate ram into her somewhere down the road—nor can she let her sister live under the whims of the cruel prince. So she asks a grave (dust) witch how Marra might free her. And the grave witch sets Marra three tasks that send her on a quest which becomes much more than just a rescue mission.
Like I said, it began with a book tour interview consisting of four authors plus the local author conducting the interview. That local author was T. Kingfisher, an author I had heard of but hadn’t given a ton of brain space to before the night arrived. (Veronica Roth was also there, and at least I had seen the Divergent movies.) My thoughts throughout the night contained a repeated impression that I would maybe get along with Veronica Roth and I definitely would get along with that T. Kingfisher lady. My ticket to the event had come with one book, but I ended up walking away with a couple more, including Kingfisher’s Nettle & Bone. I wanted to read something of hers and it was the most lauded. Weeks later I was doing some research into Kingfisher when I came across a mention of “Ursula Vernon writing under the name T. Kingfisher.” Whaaaat? This isn’t going to mean much to almost all of you, but my son is a fan of only like four books series in the whole wide world. One of them is Dragonbreath, a graphic novel series for kids by Ursula Vernon. I had met Ursula Vernon and didn’t even know it! What the heck?! Sorry, T., but I would have freaked out a little on my son’s behalf if I had known! And then shortly after that I went out of town and took along a few books to read on the plane and before bed. On the first night I picked up Nettle & Bone and snagged my new book light. I read the entire thing in just a few nights of reading and exhaustion in the quiet dark, my roommate snoozing, staying up later than I should have each time.
Even though I pretty much flew through this book, it was a little hard for me to get into at first. And even later, it wasn’t as smooth an experience as some books. I don’t exactly know why, but the writing was harder for me to sink in to. Even so, I thought the writing was more than adequate. Occasionally I was a little confused about what something looked like or how an action scene was going down, but overall, it was straightforward as a fairytale with the bonus of some fantasy world-building and a modern perspective on fairytale tropes.
Who is this book for? Something about it (size? idea?) makes one think it might be for kids. It’s not. Or that it’s YA since the character is a young woman, a princess, and we are in her head. It’s not really that, either, and by the main part of this book Marra is thirty anyhow. Combine that with themes of domestic abuse and the darkness of some of the elements (occult magic, a creepy-as-heck marionette, eternal torture, etc.) and it’s really an adult book. But the romantic vein remains fairly chaste, and Marra’s voice is a little innocent. Some have called it coming-of-age for a thirty-something. Huh. It just is what it is.
The first line of the book is: “The trees were full of crows and the woods were full of madmen. The pit was full of bones and her hands were full of wires.” We begin in the middle of the story, Marra already on the quest, finishing up the first task with bloody hands in the middle of a desert of cannibals. Yeah, some of the scenery and scenarios are pretty bleak, but as a hero Marra has to undergo some stuff. In the meantime, we get to consider the reality for female fairytale characters who were often treated as objects in the story, princesses mere pawns (or currency) in the dynamics of royal houses and impersonal kingdoms. But we’re not thinking of that so much as following Marra back into her story on its road to this moment and then on through the quest to its appropriately dynamic ending. It gets really dark, but Nettle & Bone is also shot with humor and ends up a sweet friends-made-along-the way story.
For the record, Nettle & Bone won the Hugo and was nominated for the Nebula and Locus awards. These are the top fantasy awards.
I love the last line of Anne’s review on Goodreads: “Because bibbido bobbidi boo is for punks.” It’s not totally right, but it really captures the spirit of this book.
There is something misleading about the beginning. It isn’t immediately apparent that this is a fairy tale or will have the tone of a fairy tale since the immediate structure is more modern, traditional fantasy. And while we keep the bone dog around, we don’t come back to the cannibal world or even really get into why it’s there in the first place. Cuz it’s a fairy tale and that was just a setting along the way.
A warning besides the domestic abuse: demon possession. Like, humorous demon possession, so demon possession taken lightly. I mean, there’s a comic-relief chicken possessed by a demon and I’m guessing Kingfisher has chickens and this is her retaliation mixed with love. I have one of those pets where one might be tempted to say that they are possessed or, perhaps, call him a demon dog. So I get it. But there it is. The chicken and her person are usually sited as the best characters of the book. The real moment, I think, is when we meet a woman who has a doll on her shoulder controlling her every move: this character and situation have something to say even if it is really disturbing, and the doll comes much closer to actual possession (though in this case I think we’re talking more about a non-literal possession). So humor, yeah, but still Kingfisher is tackling larger topics and occasionally scaring us. Another warning: plenty of graphic bleeding. I find this to be a book trend, strangely. Authors are big on the blood these days. I am not. Which is why I called it graphic bleeding. Probably 99.9 percent of you will not find this problematic in any book.
So a fun read that goes fast and leaves the reader with memorable characters and settings and concepts, even if the book only goes as deep as a short-novel-length fairy tale. There are issues being dealt with here, mainly domestic abuse and women empowerment, and someone who likes a dark fairy tale is going to enjoy this award-winning book.
T. Kingfisher is also Ursula Vernon! (Note: I also have two writer names to distinguish my kid stuff from adult stuff, I just haven’t published under my kid name yet.) I was impressed by her when I watched her interview other authors at a book tour and my son loves the Dragonbreath series. The author writes for both kids and adults, is a novelist and a visual artist. She has won some impressive awards like the Nebula and the Hugo. She started out doing webcomics involving anthropomorphic animals (thus Dragonbreath). Another of her more notable works is the comic Digger, though some of her short stories have also been lauded. She also does illustrations for other peoples’ work from time to time. The woman produces like a crazy amount.
And who wouldn’t want to read the award-winning A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking?
“Then again, few humans were truly worth the love of a living dog” (p6).
“’Lots of people deserve to die,’ said the dust-wife finally. ‘Not everybody deserves to be a killer’” (p72).
“’But just because you need someone doesn’t mean they are under any obligation to provide. He may leave to take his chances elsewhere’” (p103).
“I do not fear retribution; I fear what sort of person I would become by doing it” (p111).
