I love fairy tales. I’ve got a special spot in my heart for Sleeping Beauty (I mean, the prince’s name in the Disney version is Philip, after all). So imagine my joy when I learned that T. Kingfisher’s newest novella, Thornhedge, was a retelling of one of my favorite fairy tales.

Thornhedge is the story of Toadling, a fairy who has a limited amount of magical ability and a very important task. There is a tower, and within that tower lies a sleeper who must never be permitted to awaken. Toadling keeps watch from a distance, ensuring that none who pass by ever realize that anything could be found at the center of the field of briars, let alone the remains of a castle. For over two hundred years, Toadling does her job. However, she underestimates the power of stories.

Stories have spread, filtering down through the generations. Stories of a lost tower, and an enchantment waiting to be broken. A young Muslim knight named Halim arrives, having heard the tales. Unlike the people who have come across the thorns before, Halim is not discouraged or distracted. Instead, he spots Toadling and recognizes her for what she is. Halim’s arrival disrupts everything that Toadling has come to know over the last centuries, and forces her to face the truth about the sleeper in the tower.

T. Kingfisher, as I have mentioned before, is an incredible writer. This is the second novella that I’ve read from her this year, and I’m absolutely thrilled to have been given the opportunity to go through Thornhedge ahead of its public release. My utmost thanks to NetGalley and Tor Publishing for an eARC in exchange for a fair review. Thornhedge will be out in stores on August 15th. I hope y’all like it as much as I did.

This review originally appeared here: https://swordsoftheancients.com/2023/08/01/thornhedge-a-review/

This novella subverts the Sleeping Beauty narrative. T. Kingfisher asks us to imagine the beautiful princess as the monster. While the main character, Toadling, is a human stolen at birth from her royal family and adopted into a thriving family of slimy, swamp-dwelling fae fish-monsters. "She was theirs; they were hers. The love of monsters was uncomplicated." Thus the classic true love conquers all theme slants a bit here, too. For me, this book was about found family, skewed perceptions, and opening yourself to love. The handsome prince character in this take is a knight who's not much of a looker and not all that into being knightly. Halim's heard all the classic versions of the Sleeping Beauty tale and feels like maybe he should offer his assistance. In flashbacks of her life experiences as an inept fairy, Toadling disabuses him of his skewed notions. Though Toadling fumbles as a fairy, she is unfailingly kind. Halim 'sees' her. They work. This was a delight to read and a fine twist to a classic fairy tale.

[Thanks to Tor Books and NetGalley for an opportunity to read an advanced reader copy and share my opinion of this book.]

I read a few of the early reviews for THORNHEDGE, and was intrigued. So, thanks to #MacmillanAudio and #Netgalley I was able to receive an advance copy of the Thornhedge" audiobook.

Listening to Jennifer Blom narrate this phenomenal story was an experience not to be missed.

There have been many, many books published over the past few years that are retellings of fairy tales with more modern perspectives and diverse characters which is fantastic. However, none of those other authors have anywhere near the originality and imagination of those written by T. Kingfisher.

T. Kingfisher (a pseudonym for multi award-winning author Ursula Vernon) is my type of woman. Her imagination, creativity, and pure, unadulterated 'twistedness' make her books captivating and un-put-down-able.

THORN HEDGE may start out as a Princess-Locked-In-A-Tower story, but readers quickly realize that, for once, rescuing the princess is not what this story is about.

I refuse to ruin even a small part of this book for potential audiobook listeners, so suffice it to say that readers from the age of 8 to 98 will love this listening experience.

I rate THORNHEDGE as 6 out of 5 Stars ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ and cannot recommend this strongly enough - you NEED to pre-order this audiobook and/or the print version asap.

Even though I now own a copy of the audiobook, I want ahead and pre-ordered a copy of the hardcover because of the superb artwork I saw only a small taste of. I am excited to receive my copy.

*** Thank you to #NetGalley for providing me with a free copy of this audiobook. ***

3.5 stars

My first T. Kingfisher book! This was a very interesting take on the Sleeping Beauty fairytale. It reminded me a little of Maleficent but only certain parts. I liked Halim and his curiosity, it almost seemed like something I would do. The main character, Toadling, had a weird life and I loved reading about it.

I will definitely be checking out other books by this author.

I received an advance copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

4.5 stars

This was a captivating novella about magic, violence, and fairy tale traditions. I quite enjoyed it. This story was my first from the writer, and I’m looking forward to seeing what else they’ve created.

Thornhedge is one of the most unique takes on a classic fairytale that I have ever seen, and I really appreciated how T Kingfisher flipped took everything we thought we knew about this story and flipped it upside down.

Unfortunately, while I absolutely adored the concept, writing and general storytelling, the story itself left me feeling rather underwhelmed. That said, I am really excited to check out other books by Kingfisher because I did really, really enjoy her writing style.

I definitely recommend this novella to anyone looking for a short, fun cozy fantasy.

---3.5/5 stars!

Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for providing me with a copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

Rating: 4.5 ⭐️
Pub Date: Aug. 15th

Thank you to NetGalley and Tor Publishing for a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

It’s a sleeping beauty retelling, so of course I had to read this! I loved the horror element and the slight role reversal of the main characters. It was short and sweet, but there was some interesting world and character building; I do wish that there were pictures to get a better idea of what the creatures looked like, though. Overall, this was a solid retelling, and I would definitely read another horror fairytale retelling by T. Kingfisher!

👑🧟‍♀️💧

Thornhedge is a retelling of Sleeping Beauty from the viewpoint of the fairy who cursed her. I don't want to tell much of the plot because it would spoil it!

This retelling is fresh and different, and because it is a novella, it is a quick read. I'm not sure it was exactly my cup of tea, but I enjoyed it.

Thanks to Netgalley for the advance copy of this book.

This is a retelling of Sleeping Beauty with a twist. Here we follow Toadling, the fairy who put a curse on the princess and now guards the thorned hedge and brambles that surround the tower.

This is a sweet story with some dark undertones. It was a pleasant read but really not much else. I prefer Kingfisher's horror at this point but I'll continue to read her fantasy as this is still an unusual tale.

A sweet but dark fairytale novella with an unlikely damsel; it’s not the Sleeping Beauty you remember or expect. There’s a hidden tower nestled amongst a forest of thorns - within lies a cursed princess, waiting to be awoken. But what if the one guarding the tower isn’t the villain, but the hero…

Kingfisher did it again. I was impressed after reading their “Nettle and Bone.” It seems so few Fantasy novels can really paint a full and satisfying picture without requiring a multi-novel series, but Kingfisher delivered. Now, after “Thornhedge,” I’m astonished that the same can even be said for their 128 page novella. A quirky, sweet, but completely satisfying bite. The plot was uniquely twisty, even compared to other re-tellings, and the characters were well developed for such a limited adventure. A far better job than many books I’ve read that are three times that length. You’ll love, and pity, and cheer for Toadling; you’ll appreciate the honor and gentleness of Halim, and the princess… ah, the princess.

A refreshing take on knights, heroines, and heroes. Highly recommend. Thank you NetGalley and Tor Publishing for this ARC.

Another Kingfisher book I’m reading this year and who knows, it’ll probably not even be the last. And every book of hers always manages to leave me feeling satisfied but wanting more.

This is a Sleeping Beauty retelling told from the POV from the faerie guarding the tower, Toadling. She is such an endearing character who is scared and unsure of herself, hasn’t gotten much of a chance to make choices in her long life, and always tries to help in whatever way she can. The way the author reveals her backstory little by little is beautiful and she is definitely what makes this little novella memorable. The knight Halim on the other hand is a nice guy - no doubt - but the kind of nice guy who thinks he is doing the right thing, irrespective of the wishes of those around him. So while I thought he could be better, I wasn’t totally swept off by him.

The prose is lyrical and haunting and sweet, something I’ve come to expect from the author, and it always marvels me how she manages to show the darkness in her stories but still ensures that there’s enough light to be found at the end of the tunnel and the readers are always left with hope. It’s the same feeling I got after finishing this story - it’s too short but we get enough of it that we are satisfied despite all the awful moments that have passed, and we are left with hope for the many adventures Toadling might go on after this end.

To finish this off, you can’t miss this if you are a Kingfisher fan like I am. And if you haven’t encountered her works yet, this little novella is not a bad starting point. Just go in expecting something weird and horrific but also sweet and cozy and get swept up in its magic. I do have to mention that the audiobook narrator Jennifer Blom does a lovely job bringing Toadling’s story to us and I would surely recommend the audio format to those who enjoy listening to fairytales.

T. Kingfisher has several modes in which she operates (I'm a big fan of "mocking paladins (affectionate)", though less keen on "horror, genuinely horrifying" because I am coward), and one of those is "fairytale retelling, but make it dark, vaguely feminist and contains at least one aggressively practical woman". Unsurprisingly, Thornhedge is an entry into that latter category.

I mean this as no insult at all, but you know what you're getting into when you start a T. Kingfisher novel. Maybe not in terms of the plot beats or events, nor the interpretation of the source material if it's a retelling, but in the tone. She has a very, very distinctive voice in which she tells her stories, and opening a new book from her is like greeting an old friend, because as soon as they open their mouth/you read the words on the page, you're back in a familiar, comforting place, even if they're telling you about their new partner you've never heard of, or the job you didn't know they had. In her own afterword to Thornhedge, Kingfisher protests that this book is sweet, despite it being filled with death and biting and curses - which... I agree, though it's not the word I'd use. I'd say "friendly" instead. Or "welcoming", perhaps. No matter how gruesome the murders, how many corpses are made to dance and how many demon chickens there are, a T. Kingfisher story is always a welcoming one, where the narrative voice is clear, and comforting and on your side while you watch the terrible things happen. In this, Thornhedge is entirely like her other fantasy works, and particularly her fairytale interpretations, like Bryony and Roses or Nettle and Bone. I think this is a wonderful thing, especially for an author with an extensive catalogue of work not in a single series or unified world. Once you know you like that voice - which, if it wasn't already clear, I very much do - you can dip your toe into anything in the back-catalogue that takes your fancy and know that, regardless of whether the plot is to your taste or the paladins sufficiently attractive and guilt-ridden, there will be something there, constantly, throughout the reading experience, that will make you happy. It reduces the risk inherent to picking up something new.

It then obviously helps if the story, characters and so on are well-constructed and enjoyable, but luckily she's got that covered too.

Thornhedge is a retelling of the sleeping beauty story, but one that asks "what if the briars, the sleep and the centuries of magic weren't to keep people out, but the sleeper in?". Our viewpoint character isn't the sleeper, but instead the godmother who put her into this position, who, through a mixture of flashback and present time slowly shares with us and a knight errant the series of events that led to her solitary vigil of a tower and a tangled hedge of thorns.

Because it is a solitary vigil, this is, primarily, a novella of few characters. We of course have our protagonist, Toadling, but outside of her, the time we spend with other characters, in memory and in present narration, is relatively brief, and most of them suffer a little for it. The minor exception is Halim, the knight errant, who manages to be endearing to the reader in almost no time at all, just as he is to Toadling. But even he could perhaps have done with some more space and time. We know a little of him, and we are charmed by him, but he lacks the depth many of Kingfisher's secondary characters achieve in other works, simply because he lacks the space to encompass it. Even Toadling is done a little dirty by this, and does not get the impact for instance Bryony does in Bryony and Roses. That being said, what we do get is incredibly sweet and wholesome, while never straying into the saccharine, so it's more a problem of wanting more, than an issue of what we actually get.

The balance between the flashbacks and the present time is very crisply managed, without feeling artificial, and the pacing is well balanced, so we come to the intersection of backstory and story at a very natural point. It never feels like we're being force-fed context and exposition, rather this is just how Toadling is thinking about her predicament. She's intensely inward looking - unsurprisingly, given her solitary situation - which makes it all the easier to achieve, but even so, it's nicely managed to give us those morsels of backstory sufficiently spaced out as to feel worth each wait to get to them.

There's also a pleasing brutality to the world - as is true of many of her books. It never feels gratuitous, like some of the Game of Thrones style attempts at historical "realism" that stray into torture-porn, but rather emblematic of a pragmatism that feels well situated in the period the story is from. Likewise, her fairies are deeply alien things, who do not behave, speak or feel as humans do, and this comes with a cruelty that links them into many of the traditional fairy stories. And yet, it always gets looped back to some essential piece of them, or their nature or their setting in the book, so it never feels forced. They are what they are, and that can sometimes be cruel, but it's never there simply for the sake of it.

And, as ever, there are some really cracking occasional lines dropped in without any warning - "thorns die from the inside out, like priests" hit me out of absolutely nowhere and I was thoroughly unprepared for it, and now it's stuck in my head, likely for the rest of the week. Some of this impact comes from the fact that, for the most part, she's not a prose-forward kind of author, so when you get those little snippets of gold (to horrendously mix some metaphors), they stand out all the greater. Or rather, to borrow Max Gladstone's phrasing, her work is primarily aerodynamic (though with its own, very distinctive style), but this means when it's got a little wing or spoiler or something that affects the flow, it's all the more distinctive for it.

I'll stop brutalising analogies now, I promise.

In any case, all in all, it's nice - more than nice, it's a very enjoyable read with some interesting and thoughtful choices about worldbuilding - and very much worth the time spent reading it, but it's not going to set the world on fire or be thrust into the awards limelight. Luckily not all books need to be that - it's a book for the fun of reading, one that you'll blitz through the first time, then put aside, and maybe come back to a few years later when you need something cosy and cheering. And those are just as important as the ones that break your heart or change the way you see the world entirely. Sometimes you need the downtime, the calm and the comfort, to leave you able to appreciate the bright and the brittle and the brilliant. And this is exactly that, done beautifully.

As with everything Kingfisher (aka Ursula Vernon) writes, this is an engaging, delightful read. It's a retelling of Beauty and the Beast, and has Kingfisher's usual engaging characters, as well as a happy ending. Love it.

This was such an interesting take on the classic story of Sleeping Beauty! Each book I read by T. Kingfisher reminds me of why they are such an auto buy author for me. Each book feels so different, but still has the same Kingfisher dark storytelling. I recommend this to anyone who loves fairytales, especially more of the original stories!

I love T. Kingfisher and this quirky, sad, delightful, very full short story just gives me another look into this author's brilliant mind.

As you may know, Kingfisher writes horror and fantasy(particularly fairytale-ish fantasy). This is a sleeping beauty retelling that basically flips the Disney version many of us grew up with on its head. A fairy godmother unlike any I've seen before and a princess who is not so sugar sweet.

The main character, a swampy toadish foundling, is protecting a tower surrounded by knife like thorns and brambles. But is she keeping people out? Or keeping something in? When she meets a knight who is charming and quite apologetic for his idiosyncrasies, she realizes how much the world has changed and possibly not all for the worse.

I can't recommend this enough!!!

Out August 15, 2023!

Thank you, Netgalley and Publisher, for this Arc!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I would like to preface this review by saying I'm not usually much of a novella girlie. When I read a story, I want a nice, fully formed, long form story, you know? I will, however, make an exception for this novella, because It delivered in less than 150 pages what many thicker books have not: a great plot, characters with heart, and just enough whimsy peppered throughout, and I do love a good subverted fairytale retelling. The main character, Toadling, is probably one of my new favorites, as I can relate to her on so many levels (feeling incompetent, wanting to spend life wallowing as a toad, getting sidetracked by thoughts and tangents... I could go on.) While this story is nicely self-contained, would I be mad at seeing more Toadling stories? Absolutely not. Bring them on, I say!

T Kingfisher never misses. Always an insta buy author for me. This is not your typical fairytale and was the perfect novella length to devour in one sitting. 5 stars i loved it with my whole heart!

Kingfisher knows how to write a story.

I really enjoyed my time reading Thornhedge, I enjoyed the world and the characters. The reason why this one wasn’t a higher rating for me was just because I wasn’t able to connect with any of the characters.

What a bold, memorable story packed into such a tiny book. This dark fairy tale was perfect from start to finish. It has all the elements I love from kingfisher - unique and interesting characters, dark elements, humor and heart. This was a strong five star read for me. I didn’t want it to end!

Taken from her family and raised by the fairies, Toadling is such a charming character. She's innocent and a bit naïve, but determined to fulfill her given task no matter what goes wrong along the way. An endearing character trying to correct a mistake with a great deal of effort and a curse. I loved the magic in this, fueled by water and described as a physical thing.

Surprisingly sweet, even with some of the creepier fae activity. The part of faerieland we get to see was unique and the glimpse into the other fae relations kept up how mischievous faries are known to be. I expected the ending to be a little more climactic than it was, but ultimately I was not disappointed with how things wrapped up. A unique take on Sleeping Beauty, this story flips the roles of good and evil.

Overall, I had a wonderful time reading this and definitely recommend for a cozy fantasy and a fresh take on a familiar fairy tale.