[Review, Fantasy] Thornhedge by T. Kingfisher
A melancholic retelling of Sleeping Beauty.
Thornhedge by T. Kingfisher (Tor, 2023)
Information
Genre: Fantasy, Fairy Tale Retelling (Sleeping Beauty)
Demographic: Adult (General)
Length: 128 pages, 3 hours and 43 minutes
Content Advisory: This work contains moderate themes of changelings, death, injury, animal cruelty, abuse of a corpse, and abuse in general.
Representation: non-devout Muslim main character written by a non-muslim author1
A melancholic retelling of Sleeping Beauty.
Thornhedge is an imaginative and melancholic retelling of Sleeping Beauty that flips the traditional tale on its head to tell it from the perspective of the supposedly evil faerie who cast the curse on the princess in the tower. Like many modern retellings of fables from our youth, the truth in this instance is a lot messier and more complicated.
Thornhedge immerses you in our protagonist Toadling’s tragic tale, from her kidnapping by fae as a babe - but having the luck to grow up amongst loving fae - to her reluctant return to the human world and the tragedies that ensue thereafter as she tries to contain the changeling threat that took her place. Toadling is stuck metaphorically and mentally by her circumstances and must overcome them to move forward. And the tower surrounded by thick brambles and thorns is her prison as much as it is the changeling inside.
And this is reflected in how passive Toadling is as a character for most of the book. Our deuteragonist, Halim and non-devout Muslim knight, is far more active in the story than Toadling, pushing onwards towards the tower without a second thought, while Toadling wallows in her memories of how it all ended up like this in the first place. But, Halim is not the perfect archetypical knight as he confesses “he is a knight, but, not a very good one.” and flounders at the last crucial second. However, the dynamic created between the two of mutual inspiration, very much like this Hayao Miyazaki quote below, is what spurs Toadling into action.
“I’ve become skeptical of the unwritten rule that just because a boy and girl appear in the same feature, a romance must ensue. Rather, I want to portray a slightly different relationship, one where the two mutually inspire each other to live - if I’m able to, then perhaps I’ll be closer to portraying a true expression of love.”2
The ending is both a bit anti-climatic and actually well suited to the story. Our primary protagonist, Toadling, is not a grand archetypal hero but a reluctant hero thrust into an unknown situation outside of her control and then haunted by her mistakes. While Toadling finally discovers her courage at the end it is more through luck than outright strength she wins the day.
Narratively this book is very slow-paced and has a fairy tale-like vibe to its writing. I would situate it in a similar stylistic vein to Emily McCosh’s Under the Earth, Over the Sky in how it luxuriates on the interiority of our protagonist. But, lacks some of the cozier elements of that story, especially once we move past Toadling’s warm childhood upbringing in fae to the horrifying reality of the task she is sent to do.
Most of my reading experience of Thornhedge was via Audiobook and Jennifer Blom’s narration is excellent. She has a nice quality to her voice that accurately portrays Toadling’s scared naivete. But doesn’t quite have a deep enough range for Halim and comes across as someone with a feminine voice faking masculine most of the time - instead of someone who has trained their voice to flex between those ranges smoothly. But, I would listen to her work again should she do more high fantasy narration.
I enjoyed Thornhedge for its protagonist duo that inspires mutual respect and inspiration within each other and its imaginative retelling of Sleeping Beauty. As the first work of T. Kingfisher’s I’ve picked up I was pleasantly surprised and will definitely be reading more of T. Kingfisher’s work with her more popular work Nettle & Bone already on my radar.
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Kingfisher notes in her acknowledgements that she had the help of two sensitivity readers to flesh out Halim’s character. However, it is still a Muslim character written by a non-muslim author.
https://theexonian.net/opinions/2017/01/26/how-we-can-learn-hayao-miyazakis-expression-of-love