SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: A Sorceress Comes to Call by T Kingfisher

 

A Sorceress Comes to Call is the latest novel by T Kingfisher (aka Ursula Vernon) to be nominated for some major awards, in this case the Hugo Award for Best Novel. The novel is ostensibly a fairy tale adaptation of "The Goose Girl", but honestly it's an incredibly loose adaptation if that and I completely missed the intent to be such an adaptation until I read other pieces explaining the connection. It's also kind of a regency novel in setting, but not really. Honestly, I felt like the novel was almost more one of Kingfisher's horror novels (another of her common genres) as it dealt with the horrifying implications of a powerful sorceress - who can bind minds, has an extremely scary familiar eek - and the two protagonists' attempts to get free of and to stop her from taking over. Again, I don't think this was meant as a horror novel - it's been a long running joke on social media that Vernon's fluffy romance novels have horrifying moments just because of how her imagination works - but I found it quite chilling and I had to put it down a whole bunch at times to take a break before continuing as a result.

Notably, the horror does work to keep the story intense and strong the story's two main characters - Hester and Cordelia - are excellent in their own very different ways: Cordelia, as the daughter of the sorceress who feels hopelessly alone, unable to break free of her mother and unable to figure out if there is any way of escaping, but who finds some key moments of bravery to take steps forward; and Hester, as the unmarried older sister of the Squire the sorceress wants to seduce and who is desperate to find a way, with the help of some friends and the man she loves, to stop the person she recognizes as "Doom" from getting her way. The story contains some of the trademark T Kingfisher wit in the dialogue, especially when Hester calls for allies, which I think most readers will enjoy, and overall the story ends in a very satisfying fashion. It's not my favorite T Kingfisher book, but it's a very good one and worth your time.


Plot Summary:  

Cordelia has spent the entire 14 years of her life under the control of her mother, Evangeline. Literally under control for much of it, as her mother is seemingly a powerful sorceress, able to use an "obedience" spell to force her physical body completely under her mother's control, with her mind fully aware of all the sensations in the meantime. It's a life that has made Cordelia want to scream but also too afraid to ever try to do so, with her mother making sure she has no actual friends (not that she would risk anyone else by saying something) and even the one friend she thought she had - her horse Falada - being not a true friend at all. So when her mother finds that their patron is no longer willing to support them and takes Cordelia off from their small village to a noble household to try to seduce an unwed noble born man, well Cordelia finds herself all out of sorts, not knowing what to do with the people who work in a proper squire's household, and desperately afraid of what her mother might do when she gets her way.

Hester has spent her life, now as an unwed older woman and sister to the nobleman often called the "Squire", trying to avoid the dooms she sees around her - whether that be the young man her parents tried to match her up with or the doom that would follow if she accepted the marriage proposal of the love of her life, Lord Richard Evermore, and thus ruined his life prospects. But now a more dangerous Doom, with a capital "D", has come to her lands in the form of this woman, Evangeline, who clearly has intents on her brother. Hester knows she has to act to prevent Doom from singing her clutches into her brother and even calls in help in the form of her close friends and Richard himself. But what she doesn't know is the true danger of a sorceress like Doom, and it will only be with help from Cordelia that they will stand a chance at stopping her.....

A Sorceress Comes to Call starts off from Cordelia's point of view, with Hester coming in more and more as the story goes on until they basically feel like co-protagonists (and my plot summary reflects that). And the combination of the two characters works really well, because they balance the story: Cordelia is naive about the state of the world, Hester's life is well-lived and knows how the world works (even if the idea of sorcery is entirely new to her); Cordelia is terrified of acting due to her mother and is very passive (up until when she can't take it anymore and confides in Hester), whereas Hester is proactive, knows a problem when she sees it coming, and always looking for some way to save her brother, etc. There's not necessarily a problem with having a protagonist be passive and acted upon rather than acting - it can work in many stories and others have noted that complaints about this tend to ignore the fact that such protagonists are more common in non-Western works - but Hester's active nature really prevents any of the passivity from ever becoming irritating - especially because it's extremely understandable.

Which is not to say that Cordelia IS totally passive - she's not, and as I mentioned above, a major turning point in this book is her deciding to take action and confide in Hester. But she is understandably completely and utterly terrified as a child who has not just been abused and controlled by her mother her whole life, is just 14 and has been kept from acquiring an education about the way the world works (she has a basic education, but not the regency equivalent of civics), and is literally every so often MAGICALLY COMPELLED to move and speak as her mother wishes. And Kingfisher does an Excellent job showing how this fear was earned, as Evangeline is utterly terrifying in what she can do, both in her controlling spells and in one other spell that I won't spoil but is a major focus of the book's last act, as the protagonists wind up facing it in terror. So to see Cordelia find a way to fight back, even in a limited fashion, it itself compelling and strong and helps make this book work.

And then there's Hester, whose plot along with her friends (and her own not-so-secret love in Richard) features her more actively trying to find ways to thwart Evangeline, first by trying to distract and keep her brother less interested and then, upon discovering the real danger of the sorceress, trying to figure out a way to stop something she could have imagined. Her plotline, especially her banter with Richard and her two friends, is a lot more filled with banter and at times fun, even amidst the danger, which is kind of a staple of Kingfisher's work. I know a friend of mine found this a bit offputting and tonally jarring, but for me it worked to convey a bit of lightness even as we also dealt through Hester with the struggle of an independent older woman in a regency world to both have the love she wants but also the independence she seeks, something that she clearly does not believe she'd have if she actually married Richard.

It all comes together in excellent, if maybe a little abrupt fashion, to make this one another winner from Kingfisher, even if it probably wouldn't be among my top five of her many many books. But that's largely because Kingfisher has written so much that I've loved and I totally do see how this earned a Hugo nomination.