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Book Reviewed by:From New York Times bestselling and Hugo Award-winning author T. Kingfisher comes A Sorceress Comes to Call―a dark reimagining of the Brothers Grimm's The Goose Girl, rife with secrets, murder, and forbidden magic.
Cordelia knows her mother is ... unusual. Their house doesn't have any doors between rooms―there are no secrets in this house―and her mother doesn't allow Cordelia to have a single friend. Unless you count Falada, her mother's beautiful white horse. The only time Cordelia feels truly free is on her daily rides with him.
But more than simple eccentricity sets her mother apart. Other mothers don't force their daughters to be silent and motionless for hours, sometimes days, on end. Other mothers aren't evil sorcerers.
When her mother unexpectedly moves them into the manor home of a wealthy older Squire and his kind but keen-eyed sister, Hester, Cordelia knows this welcoming pair are to be her mother's next victims. But Cordelia feels at home for the very first time among these people, and as her mother's plans darken, she must decide how to face the woman who raised her to save the people who have become like family.
CHAPTER 1
There was a fly walking on Cordelia's hand and she was not allowed to flick it away.
She had grown used to the ache of sitting on a hard wooden pew and being unable to shift her weight. It still hurt, but eventually her legs went to sleep and the ache became a dull, all-over redness that was easier to ignore.
Though her senses were dulled in obedience, her sense of touch stayed the strongest. Even when she was so far under that the world had a gray film around the edges, she could still feel her clothing and the touch of her mother's hand. And now the fly's feet itched, which was bad, then tickled, which was worse.
At the front of the church, the preacher was droning on. Cordelia had long since lost the thread. Lust and tithing were his two favorite topics. Probably it was one of those. Her mother took her to church every Sunday and Cordelia was fairly certain that he had been preaching the same half-dozen sermons for the past year.
Her eyes were the only muscles that she could ...
A large part of Kingfisher's appeal is her ability to eschew the obvious choices when she adapts existing source material. Where other authors might lean into unlikely romantic entanglements or simply swap the genders of main characters, she brings the barely explored magical elements of the original story to the forefront, making power and how it is wielded a major component of the narrative and transforming previously benign characters into terrifying villains. She also explores the complex relationships between women, particularly mothers and daughters, as they struggle for autonomy and personal fulfillment in a world that would prefer they stick to having babies and keeping house while the men do the heavy lifting. In Kingfisher's grittier story, the loving queen sending her daughter off to be married is replaced by the sorceress Evangeline, a diabolical narcissist who uses her magical abilities to ensorcell lovers and steal their money while keeping her daughter Cordelia a virtual prisoner in their dilapidated farmhouse...continued
Full Review
(646 words)
(Reviewed by Sara Fiore).
"The Goose Girl" tells the story of a princess who is sent by her mother to a faraway land to marry. The queen gives her daughter a magical talking horse and talisman, telling her to care for both, as they will protect her from harm. But when the princess loses the talisman, the waiting maid she is traveling with forces her to change places and, when they arrive at the prince's castle, convinces everyone that she is the princess. Fearing that the horse will reveal her treachery, the waiting maid has him decapitated and his severed head laments over the princess's fate as she is forced to spend her days minding the king's geese. After some intervention from the king, and a particularly grisly end for the waiting maid, the true bride is ...
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