I am continuing my year of T. Kingfisher. For my third read, I jumped into Nettle & Bone. It wasn’t quite as dark as A Sorceress Comes to Call, but it shares the same vein of eerie fairy tale, with characters that carry some emotional weight. 

 

Now that I’ve read my third story from Kingfisher, I'm realizing that my love for her writing stems from the way she writes about found families (my favorite).  It is more than tossing a quirky group together; it is about how she weaves them together to tell the story. Every character connection feels distinct and intentional.  In this tale, you have the friendship between the dust-wife and Agnes-Love. The motherly tone of Marra and the dust-wife - Love. The soft, respectful, slow-burn between Marra and Fenris - Love.  Plus, you have your sidekicks of a demon-possessed chicken and a dog made of bones to round everything out. The character depth overall came more from the relationships made and not from us learning their internal thoughts, etc, which was fine by me. 

 

For a short novel, it had strong themes of finding your power. It wasn’t in that epic fantasy way of ‘you are the chosen one’, but a softer element of you can do hard things, even if you have to prove it to yourself first. And by doing those hard things, you might find where you belong.  Makes you question if you’ve been living in your comfort zone a little too long. 

 

I had worries about the ending, but it ended, leaving me content. And sure, you could tug a few plot elements loose, but what is the fun in that? Just enjoy a slightly twisted fairytale that includes more chickens than you expected. 

 

My bottom line: I’m still obsessed with Kingfisher.