Thornhedge
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4.5 • 16 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
Winner of the Hugo Award for Best Novella!
From New York Times bestselling author T. Kingfisher, Thornhedge is the tale of a kind-hearted, toad-shaped heroine, a gentle knight, and a mission gone completely sideways.
*The very special hardcover edition features a foil stamp on the casing and custom endpapers illustrated by the author.*
There's a princess trapped in a tower. This isn't her story.
Meet Toadling. On the day of her birth, she was stolen from her family by the fairies, but she grew up safe and loved in the warm waters of faerieland. Once an adult though, the fae ask a favor of Toadling: return to the human world and offer a blessing of protection to a newborn child. Simple, right?
But nothing with fairies is ever simple.
Centuries later, a knight approaches a towering wall of brambles, where the thorns are as thick as your arm and as sharp as swords. He's heard there's a curse here that needs breaking, but it's a curse Toadling will do anything to uphold…
"The way Thornhedge turns all the fairy tales inside out is a sharp-edged delight."
—Katherine Addison, author of The Goblin Emperor
Also by T. Kingfisher
Nettle & Bone
A Sorceress Comes to Call
What Moves the Dead
What Feasts at Night
A House with Good Bones
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Kingfisher (What Moves the Dead) continues her hot streak with this equally haunting, heartfelt, and darkly humorous horror riff on "Sleeping Beauty." The fairy Toadling is "neither beautiful nor made of malice, as many of the Fair Folk are said to be," but instead "fretful and often tired" due to her exhausting efforts to keep a certain princess confined within a tower surrounded by a wall of thorns. It would be an easier job if tales of the princess did not keep spreading, unabated even by an early medieval outbreak of the Black Death. These stories draw Halim, a curious and courteous Muslim knight in search of a good quest. Halim is not put off by Toadling's habit of turning into a toad when overwhelmed or frightened, and befriends her, helping Toadling to move past 200 years of dread to explain just who—or rather what—is in the tower, and how the fairy came to be responsible for keeping it there. The slow reveal of Toadling's connection to the princess, and what the princess actually is, fashions a subtle and satisfying horror story, while Kingfisher's trademark wit and compassion transforms "Sleeping Beauty" into a moving meditation on guilt, grief, and duty, as well as a surprisingly sweet romance between outsiders. There are no false notes here.
Customer Reviews
Quite excellent
A delightful little retelling, not quite a novel, but absolutely worth the read.
Not good
Quite dull.