Nettle & Bone - A Review

Few people are as imaginative as Ursula K. Vernon, a.k.a. T. Kingfisher. Her dark fantasy novel, Nettle & Bone, is no exception to this rule.

The story opens with a strange event. A dust wife (i.e., witch) cobbles together the skeleton of a dog out of the bones of many other dogs. Having wired all the bones together, she spells the bones to life and the dog, not realizing it's made up of dead components, bounds away.

And that's one of the least strange things that happens in this novel.

Marra is a nun who isn't really a nun. That is, she doesn't take her vows. But she is sent to a nunnery, because she's of royal blood, and if her elder sisters die in childbirth, she will need to be a proven virgin in order to be wed to the prince and sire any offspring. Her life seems relatively carefree, until she observes that one sister has already died in childbirth, and the next-eldest sister, the one right ahead of her, keeps herself pregnant to prevent the prince from beating her continually (since beating a pregnant wife might lead to miscarriage, and he desperately needs a son). The elder sister warns Marra to run away - to never allow them to haul her away and wed her to become the royal broodmare.

Horrified, Marra decides to do something. Motivated by a desire to save her sister from her horrible fate, but more so to prevent her from suffering the same fate herself if her elder sibling dies (her older sisters never were very kind to her), she goes off on a quest. Her quest is not to find sanctuary from the royal family (she knows there is likely no escape), but to somehow free her sister from it.

She learns that what's binding her sisters to their fate is, oddly, a "blessing." One that's given out to every member of the royal family at birth by the Fairy Godmother. One might think that a blessing couldn't possibly result in evil, but this blessing is actually a curse. The blessing is for all the royal children to be healthy. But this has somehow been twisted to mean that healthy members of the royal family die relatively young, with the residual life-force going towards keeping the Fairy Godmother alive for centuries.

Marra learns about this through a lower-ranking fairy godmother, who realizes that this problem is well beyond her. She directs mara to the dust wife and her bone-dog (in fact, it's actually named, "Bonedog."), who agrees to help Marra, but promises very little. On the dust wife's staff is seated a chicken, which might seem an innocuous thing, except that this chicken contains a demon. They decide they need a hired sword, so they procure the help of a wizened old knight who has enough strength left in him for just one more quest. Despite his age, Marra finds herself developing feelings for him. Their path takes them through faraway lands and into unknown terrors, both above ground, and deep down inside a labyrinthine royal crypt.

The story contains a running theme throughout Ursula Vernon's stories, which is that simple magic can nevertheless effect big change. In this case, something as simple as a "blessing" can cause untold suffering as well as great joy. I can't say more than that without spoiling the plot, but suffice it to say that sometimes blessings are curses, and curses are blessings.

This is not the happy and bounding Harry Potter replacement that A Wizard's Guide To Defensive Baking was. This is darker. Much darker. But also enjoyable.

Eric

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