Thornhedge is the latest fantasy novella by prolific author (and personal favorite) T Kingfisher (aka children's author Ursula Vernon). It's yet another one of Kingfisher's takes on classic fairy tales (one of the many subgenres of fantasy she has explored) and this time it's a take on Sleeping Beauty where the protagonist is the fae spirit Toadling who is responsible for putting the princess to sleep in the tower and in making sure that she stays that way. Yet unlike typical takes like this which flip the protagonist to the evil witch and explore the roots of the witch's evil, Kingfisher makes Toadling not evil at all but instead a Fae spirit who is just trying to do her best and who wishes the responsibility for containing an evil didn't fall to her, so that she could enjoy time with her fae family once more. Until of course years later a knight comes to her tower...
The result is a novella that is incredibly charming and whimsical, as one expects from a T Kingfisher work, and while it's not long, the novella tells a very complete and enjoyable story. Both Toadling and her knight Halim are endowed with tremendous personality, especially Toadling, and the story that results both in flashbacks and in present works really well. There's nothing here that's truly mind blowing or completely unique, but there's plenty of charm and fun to make this an easy recommend for someone looking for a light fairy tale subversion.
Plot Summary:
For centuries, Toadling has stood guard over her tower, where a princess is held in magical sleep. The land around the tower has grown dry and desolate and the tower was guarded by first a wall of thorns and then brambles grown high enough to conceal that the tower ever existed. And so, while Toadling had to scare off knights and other champions who heard of the tower for the first few years, the tower thereafter clearly became forgotten, with no one even trying to approach to rescue the princess.
But now as the years have passed, Toadling is tremendously lonely and depressed with her charge. And so when a knight comes after all this time, driven by curiosity over something he has read in a book, Toadling isn't sure what to do about him. And as she talks to him and grows to like him, it soon becomes clear that Toadling may not be able to bring herself to try to stop him from waking the princess. A princess who Toadling knows must NEVER be woken....
Quick Thoughts: Thornhedge is not a very long or complicated story, but it is one with a tremendous amount of charm. The story is told largely in flashbacks, with Toadlings thinking back to how she became raised by the Fae, pressed into the charge of ensuring that the changeling child who replaced her as a princess does no harm, and then finally became stuck in her current predicament, guarding the princess in solitude for years and years. Notably, despite the whimsicality and fairy tale nature, the story takes place in a very real historical fashion, with Toadling's observations making clear that her time started before the plague, continued (with her unaware of it) during it, and then continues until the Muslim Knight named Halim shows up, looking to sate his curiosity. You could thus if you wanted put a date on the story, and that real historical background, in combination with the fantasy actually works really well to kind of ground it all in reality if that make sense. And then there's Toadling herself, a woman/fae who just wants to go back to the family of fae she was forced away from and then there's Halim, a knight who isn't driven by chivalry and highmindedness but just curiosity and trying to do the right thing. Both of these characters work really well, with their interactions being incredibly charming and entertaining, and their minor romance is quite well done. I really haven't said much about this story because there isn't much to say, it's an excellent flip of the sleeping beauty story with excellent characters, a whimsical real world, and a story that is satisfying. As expected for T Kingfisher, this is another easy to recommended.
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