Nettle and Bone

Only T. Kingfisher could pull off this unique mix of horror, humor and fairy tale, complete with a possessed chicken and a bone dog. I loved the fact that, although Marra is the POV heroine, the two older women in the story are the ones who Get Things Done, and the "F the Patriarchy" vibes are strong.

Only complaint about the book is that it wasn't longer.

It has all the trappings of my favorite Neil Gaiman stories - funny, a little bit creepy, and filled to the brim with wondrous and whimsical magic - and adds on top of that a beautiful set of characters who are broken and hurt and assume themselves useless, but who hold each other together as they face down ancient systems of power and oppression. Each of their introductions stand out in my memory, and they each get at least one brilliant moment to shine in the finale.

Stare evil in the eyes and tell it, "You're going to fix what you've broken or you're going to have to deal with my demon-possessed chicken. And my bone-dog."

This isn't the kind of fairy tale where the princess marries the prince. It's the one where she kills him.
Possible Triggers: Abusive relationships/ References to miscarriage. The story is composed of; a princess, a bone-dog, a dust-wife, a godmother, a demon-possessed chicken, (the chicken was a completely new and unexpected "idea"... Kudos to the author for that one.) ...and a man set out to save the sister of the princess from her abusive husband. Kudos again to the author for actually building a pretty good, or at least interesting, story on the that menagerie. The whole book has a fairy tale core that really is somehow delightfully and charmingly told. You have to remember that most fairy tales and nursery rhymes have a much darker show more message embedded in them....and the folks, at the time they were written, used them to keep their heads, literally, connected to their necks.

Marra is a princess, the "spare heir", who is sent to a convent to wait until the prince of the Northern Kingdom needed a new wife. Her oldest sister married him and died in an "accident", and then the middle sister is currently married to him. The current wife warns her that she that she DOES NOT, under any circumstances want to be his next. This dire warning causes Marra to be determined to save her sister...and herself...just in case.

Marra is not your typical princess nor is she a typical heroine. She has not one smidgen of talent for saving anything, much less heads. Her talents consist mostly of embroidery work...which is not very helpful in this situation...so she decides to get some help from a dust-wife... (a powerful spiritualist), who of course can't just simply help her...but instead, gives her to three impossible tasks. The dust-wife has magic, but it mostly has to do with communing with the dead...which none of the group is...yet. She's the owner of the possessed chicken. Said fowl is possessed by a demon that sits on the dust-wife's staff and provides one egg a day for their journey. The two women pick up and add to their group, a disgraced knight who fell asleep in a fairy fort...and a fairy godmother who mostly hands out blessings for your good health.

The opening chapter provides the answer to what a 'bone dog" is as we see Marra digging through a charnel pit with her bare and bleeding hands to gather bones to thread together with wire and build said, "bone dog". This is both delightful and creepy in equal measures, but Marra is such a likeable character that I was instantly invested in her quest. T. Kingfisher has created a puzzle. The reader might recognize certain pieces but how they fit together and what the finished creation will look like remains a mystery, which makes this story an exceptionally good read.

To begin with this cast of characters looks like a bunch of misfits. Naïve Marra, a grumpy dust witch, a rather ditzy godmother, a former knight, and the animal sidekicks consisting of Bone dog, and a demon possessed chicken. They are all a part of this well written journey. It's an extraordinarily impressive, twisted mix of morbid horror and absolute delight, which shouldn't...yet somehow...works.

Oh...in case you're wondering or want to try it...How do you get a demon in your chicken?'....'The usual way. Couldn't put it in the rooster. That's how you get basilisks.”. See...when you read, you learn something new every day. show less

My first T. Kingfisher book, and certainly not my last, since with this one the author turned me into an instant fan - and with good reason, given that I found the combination of fairy tale elements, tongue-in-cheek humor and delightful characters quite irresistible.

Marra is a princess in a small but pivotal realm set between two larger ones that are in a constant state of conflict: as the youngest of three daughters, she sees her eldest sister Damia married off, for political expediency, to the son of the northern realm king’s, only to learn that a few months into the marriage she died as the result of a fall from a horse. Her middle sister, Kania, is then chosen to marry that same prince Vorling, in the hope that an heir will seal show more the alliance between the two realms; then, to prevent the possibility that a child from Marra’s eventual marriage might upset the balance, she is sent to live in a convent.

Rejoining her family for the christening of Kania’s daughter, Marra discovers - to her horror - that her sister is living in a nightmarish situation with a violent, abusive husband whose only goal is to produce a male heir, after which Kania’s life might become worthless: fearing for her sister’s life, and enraged by Vorling’s treatment of her, Marra decides to remove him from the equation, and to fulfill that goal she seeks the aid of a dust-wife (a sort of sorceress dealing with the dead) who sets her on three apparently impossible tasks before lending her help. On the course of her journey of vengeance, Marra ends up collecting a ragtag group of allies, consisting of the aforementioned dust-wife (and her demon-infested chicken), an apparently goofy godmother who is everything but, a former soldier enslaved to a merchant in the goblin market, and a dog made of bones - oh, and a chick endowed with a sort of magical GPS qualities ;-)

Nettle and Bone mixes the classical elements of the quest with those of the found family, wrapping the result in an atmosphere that blends seamlessly darkness and humor, fear and whimsy, and that turns what might look like a “been there, done that” reading experience into something unique and compelling. Most of the credit goes of course to the characters, both as individuals and as members of the group: as they get to know each other in the course of the journey, they also learn to trust their respective gifts and put them to use toward the final goal, and in this way allow the reader to see what makes them tick and appreciate the skill with which the author trust them together.

Marra might not have a high opinion of herself, probably because her family never considered her of great use (except as a second-hand replacement for her older sisters), but when we meet her she’s already more than halfway through the tasks set by the dust-wife, and we are immediately presented with her determination and resilience, qualities that endeared her to me from the very start. I like the author’s choice of introducing her in medias res and then backtracking to the past and the road that brought her to that point: it’s an excellent way to showcase her emotional and personal growth from the contented almost-nun, who found joy in the simple pleasures of embroidery and tapestry making, to the resolute avenger of her sisters. There is a sentence that encapsulates that transformation very well, and shows how even the more unassuming, self-effacing person can find the courage to act when necessity arises:

[...] watched Vorling’s face and realized that she had never hated before now. This must be what this new feeling was. It took up so much space in her chest that she did not know if she could breathe around it.

Marra might be burdened by self-doubt, fears - mainly fostered by her family’s treatment of her as something of an afterthought, or an inconvenience - and by an overwhelming guilt for not having understood sooner the danger represented by Vorling, but she compensates those traits by not giving up even in the face of apparently impossible obstacles, and in the end she becomes a surprisingly (for the times and background in which the story is set) feminist character, particularly when she understands how women are endangered by the role that this world has saddled them with:

[…] the history of the world was written in women’s wombs and women’s blood

a consideration that I found even more pertinent in these recent times….

The dust-wife and Agnes the godmother earned my instant sympathy, and not only because they are older women (Crone Power!!! :-D ) but because the combination of dry humor from the first and apparent absent-mindedness from the second offered many occasions for amusement - and here I feel compelled to mention the demon-infested chicken that’s the dust-wife’s constant companion and whose pointed squawking calls often underline a given situation in a delightfully fun way. A special place must however be reserved for Bonedog, who literally stole my heart and was one of the best non-human additions to the story.

I did not expect to enjoy this story so much: what on the surface might have seemed a fairy-tale retelling ended up being a compelling adventure with a lot of heart at its core, and it’s my hope that other books from T. Kingfisher will prove equally engrossing and satisfying in what will be my own journey of discovery through this author’s works. show less

Marra is a princess, the youngest of three. Her oldest sister marries a nearby prince and dies, so the prince moves on to the middle sister, who ends up frequently pregnant with bruises on her arms. Naturally Marra, who has been confined to a nunnery in case he requires a third wife, decides to kill the prince. To help her she gathers a motley crew of a graveyard witch, a chicken with a demon in her, a dog made of bones, a freed slave of the elves, and a half-assed fairy godmother.

This is my first T. Kingfisher and my expectations were very high, but I didn’t love it. The overall plot was fine, and spending time with the characters was nice, but the message was a little muddled. I really enjoyed the use of bits and pieces of various show more fairy tales, without a straight retelling. I thought the logic and plan of killing the prince didn’t really make sense. The only way it could have worked out without making the whole situation worse was the way that it did end up going, which was not according to plan and a little too convenient. I’ll definitely pick up more Kingfisher but I was not blown away. show less

I loved this story, as I have loved few stories recently. The prose is beautiful, the imagery is so strong it will be tattooed into my dreams. Fairy tale tropes galore, upended and repurposed, fresh and new. The characters feel simple, yet they are layered and nuanced as the story unfolds. Dogs made of bone. Cloaks made of nettles. Women who speak with the dead. Godmothers wicked and wonderful. Honorable men who choose to murder. A goblin market. Evil puppets. Demon chickens. Actual family. Found family. True love. Toxic love. All woven together in a tapestry of surprising richness and humor. If this book were mine, I would keep it to read it again. Alas, I must return it to its owner.

First person POV, linear narrative with flashbacks. show more Structure is an example of the heroine's journey. show less

Marra, the youngest princess, doesn't really love palace life and is rather relieved when her mother sends her to a convent. While there, she learns that her sister, Kania, wed to a prince in a treaty keeping her kingdom from being at war, is being abused by her husband and has been pregnant several times now with miscarriages. After completing impossible tasks, Marra enlists the help of a dust-wife to attempt to rescue her sister.

A clever tale that subverts a few fantasy expectations, [Nettle & Bone] may be Marra's adventures with a found family, but it also lets readers behind the scenes of the Great Quest to reflect on the drudgery and difficulty involved. Don't let that be a turn off - the journey is enjoyable for the reader, with a show more witty narrator reminding us of the quotidian without getting bogged down in boring details. It reminded me a little of Diana Wynne Jones' way of writing books firmly in the fantasy genre while also playing with the tropes and being wholly original. Marra is a fun heroine to follow, one that at age 30 is a little older than most, not always sure of herself, but still attempting to do the right thing even if she's not sure how or if she'll succeed. And, at just under 250 pages, it's rather spare and a refreshing change from some of the bloated fantasy tales out there. show less