T Kingfisher
Titan Books, 15 August 2023
Available as: PB, 128pp, audio, e
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(PB): 9781803364230
I'm grateful to Titan Books for providing me with a digital copy of Thornhedge to consider for review.
In a retelling of Sleeping Beauty, or perhaps, an anti-Sleeping Beauty, T Kingfisher gives us, yes, a beautiful princess sleeping in a tower around which thorns and briars have grown up - but the princess is not the centre of the story. Rather, the author asks, exactly why might a princess be cursed to sleep, and what are the thorns really all about?
Are they, as often assumed, to keep others out?
Or are they to keep her in...?
In a short novel, Kingfisher provides answers but more interestingly she gives us Toadling, the fairy who wrought the magic and who now guards the castle through endless centuries. Generally successful, she is thought about to encounter a particularly resourceful and determined knight. Salim, is driven neither by desire for a bride nor lust for treasure, but by simple curiosity.
In other words the very worst, most difficult challenge an overworked fairy could face.
The blooming relationship between knight and fairy, people from unimaginably different backgrounds, casts light on the sort-of history to which Kingfisher assigns the story. It's sometime after the breakup of the Roman Empire, in a region populated by Muslins, Christians and Jews, where a knight might be of any faith or none. Fairies are respected and feared, but not hated, and people get along in general.
The sleeping princess is, though, a problem, for reasons I won't go into as they would spoil the story. Finding a solution to that problem will require Toadling to explore her own past, confront loss and consider her place in the world. Above all, after being alone for hundreds of years, she will have to learn how to actually be with others - whether these are the fairies that raised her (the Greenteeth of I think Northen English legend) or the humans from whom she was snatched as a baby.
A sweet, engaging story with a core of steel (or perhaps, thorns) at its heart.
Recommended.
For more information about Thornhedge, see the publisher's website here.
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