CBR15 Bingo: Using my Getaway key to replace History with Nostalgia and make bingo #2! Diagonal, History to Sex. I used Nettle and Bone for nostalgia because fairytales always make me feel nostalgic for my childhood reading. Note: It has been awhile since I listened to this book and I have forgotten names. Also, I don’t know how names are spelled so please forgive any transgressions.
It feels like a few weeks ago (but the reality is it was probably several months ago because time is weird) that there was a brief conversation on the Cannonball Facebook page about the Hugo Award nominees. If I recall correctly Malin, Emmalita, and I (Apologies if I’ve forgotten anyone else who participated in this discourse) shared that we had each read several of this year’s nominees and who we thought should win based on what we had read. I picked The Kaiju Preservation Society and Malin’s choice was Nettle and Bone. I hadn’t read it yet but it was on my TBR and now moved higher with Malin’s recommendation and the nomination.
I grew up on fairytales. Reading the collected works of The Grimm Brothers and Hans Christian Andersen along with fairytale adjacent works like The Chronicles of Narnia. Once I realized what T. Kingfisher was doing with the story, I was hooked and deeply invested.
Marra is the third daughter born to the King and Queen of the Harbor Kingdom. Side note, I liked how Kingfisher didn’t bother coming up with specific made up names and instead used identifying characteristics to label places, which adds to the fairytale element imho. Her tiny kingdom is sandwiched between the Northern Kingdom and the Southern Kingdom, each of which want to take over the Harbor Kingdom and have the resource of the harbor. Marra’s mother works a careful dance to keep harmony between the rival kingdoms and her own. An alliance is formed with the Northern Kingdom through the marriage of Marra’s oldest sister to the crown prince. A short few months later, the sister is dead and brought back to be interred in her home kingdom. Not long after, Marra’s middle sister, Conya, is wed to the prince and Marra is sent to live in a convent. For many years Marra is under the illusion that this was done to remove her from the political games of her mother. It is much later that she realizes the horrifying truth.
Conya becomes a shadow of herself. Constantly pregnant trying to produce a male heir and at the mercy of the prince. When Marra learns that he is abusive, she loses any semblance of calm and sets out to save her sister by any means necessary. Marra seeks the help of a dustwife, a magical woman who communes and cares for the dead in cemeteries. She is given three impossible tasks. Sew a cloak of nettles, create a dog made of bones, and catch a moonbeam in a jar. And thus begins Marra’s magical journey to save her sister. Along the way she gains several companions, a dustwife, a soldier, a fairy godmother, a magical chick, and a demon possessed chicken. She visits a Goblin Market and meets a Saint.
I unabashedly loved this book. With Nettle and Bone I read four, out of six, of this year’s Hugo nominees and though it is after the fact, I fully support Kingfisher taking home the prize. Nettle and Bone is the work of someone who clearly has a love for fairytales. She creates something both wholly original and comfortably familiar. I highly recommend Nettle and Bone to fans of fairytales, those who like females taking agency, and anyone that enjoys creative fantasy.