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Book Reviewed by:From USA Today bestselling author T. Kingfisher, Thornhedge is the tale of a kind-hearted, toad-shaped heroine, a gentle knight, and a mission gone completely sideways.
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…
Hugo Awards
2024
Kingfisher, who also writes children's books under the name Ursula Vernon, knows how to spin a compelling tale. Toadling's story—and the castle's lurking secrets—unfold gradually, interspersed with scenes depicting her growing friendship with Halim. As the narrative progresses, so does readers' sense of mounting horror and dread, as they realize just how high the stakes are, even as they, like the curious Halim, might want to see the truth for themselves. Kingfisher consistently upends expectations, whether by having her aspiring Prince Charming be a Muslim refugee from Anatolia (modern-day Turkey), or by making her heroine not the sleeping princess but the ugly creature who cursed her...continued
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(Reviewed by Norah Piehl).
In addition to being a reimagining of the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale, T. Kingfisher's novella Thornhedge is inspired in part by the tradition of stories about changelings. In European folklore, changelings represented an intersection between the fairy world and the human world; a fairy would steal a baby—usually one who had not yet been baptized—from its cradle and leave a non-human replacement.
The human child could then serve as a servant or a source of amusement to the fairies, or, according to some stories, could fulfill old deals with the devil. Meanwhile, the changeling, who was often believed to not be a child at all, but rather an old, worn out, or particularly nasty fairy, or even an enchanted object like a block...
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Juliet Marillier, author of the Blackthorn & Grim and Warrior Bards series
Kingfisher weaves elements of fairy tale, folklore, and history in this beautifully crafted story of loss, endurance, terror, and kindness. Thornhedge is sheer magic from beginning to end!
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