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a_bow's review against another edition
adventurous
funny
hopeful
lighthearted
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.5
This reads like a Grimm's fairy tale and feels more like a summary of an epic story. There is not a lot of world building or any real magic system. It's fast paced, fun, and allegorical. It had me thinking about how the patriarchy really hurts women from all facets of society. There is not a lot of character development and while I appreciated the main character being a 30 year old woman, I felt like she was very naive for a 30 year old. I felt like she did very little in her adventure and relied all on the other characters' skills. I would have loved if she took her feminine rage on a solo mission and just strike fear into people. Like she just snapped and you really see just how fed up she is with men who abuse power, with men who are bystanders to those abusing power and do nothing, and to women who internalize the mysingony and happily perpetuate it, and the women who don't like it but also dont do much to stand up to it until it personally affects them. I want to see her struggle with her faith to a religion that claims all are equal yet creates a caste system where powerful men are in charge and many times exaggerates/misinterprets the text to take even more power. I want to see a 30 year old woman who has seen it all/heard it all, who has had enough of the bullshit explode on everyone and everything. I want her to use her wits to steal, kill, seduce, threaten, barhain anyone to get her way. Overall I found it enjoyable I just would have loved more! It's like if Paris Paloma's.song Labour was turned to a book.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Murder, Misogyny, and Sexism
Moderate: Death, Toxic relationship, Miscarriage, Child death, Gaslighting, Physical abuse, Infertility, Domestic abuse, and Pregnancy
Minor: Sexual assault, Rape, Suicidal thoughts, Miscarriage, Infertility, Abortion, Sexual violence, and Grief
xwiththevex's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
Would be great for a Greta Gerwig adaptation featuring Saoirse Ronan and Florence Pugh. Big on yearn-core.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Blood, Pregnancy, Body horror, Death, Grief, Misogyny, Murder, Physical abuse, Sexism, Gore, and Violence
Moderate: Alcohol, Alcoholism, Death, Emotional abuse, Murder, Slavery, Blood, Classism, Confinement, Gaslighting, Toxic relationship, Child death, Domestic abuse, Physical abuse, Body horror, Suicidal thoughts, and Violence
Minor: Cannibalism, Miscarriage, Physical abuse, Child death, Emotional abuse, Rape, Sexual assault, and Torture
katvou's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Child death, Death of parent, and Death
Moderate: Injury/Injury detail, Pregnancy, Domestic abuse, Grief, Miscarriage, Murder, and Body horror
Minor: Blood, Gore, Kidnapping, Toxic relationship, Emotional abuse, Gaslighting, Medical content, Torture, Physical abuse, War, Cannibalism, and Violence
pinkfloydian's review against another edition
emotional
inspiring
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Violence, Medical trauma, Emotional abuse, Gaslighting, Grief, Toxic relationship, Physical abuse, Child death, Death, Domestic abuse, Pregnancy, Miscarriage, and Sexism
just_one_more_paige's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
hopeful
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
Shoutout to @staxsonstaxs for the enthusiastic hype for this one. I was getting ready for a trip and was looking for plane reads - this seemed like the perfect mix of fantasy and entertainment and carry-on-friendly sized book. And friends, it was all that and more.
The third daughter of a small realm, Marra is the type of princess relegated to the background (or, in this case, a convent). She's a little odd, not suited for royal life, and honestly it fits her well. But after realizing that while she's been able to escape the demands of her "station," her sisters have suffered at the hands of an abusive prince from a grander, neighboring country, Marra sets off on a mission to do something about it, to save her remaining sister, because no one else is going to. She fumbles through her quest with naivete and unmatched perseverance, picking up allies like a dog made of bones, a powerful dust-wife who can converse with the dead, a former knight recently freed from a curse, a godmother's whose magical skills are a bit darker than she'd like them to be, and a demon-possessed chicken.
This novel opens by dropping the reader *right into* some serious horror-style stuff, like Marra's fingers and hands bleeding as she tries to fashion a dog from wire and old bones in a land filled with cannibals. Yikes! But the writing is so perfectly dark and atmospheric that it overcame any squeamishness I had about what it was actually conveying. And as the story continues and we get more background about what brought Marra to that pit full of bones in the first place, with details from her childhood and growing up in the convent, I settled right into the story that was unfolding. I loved how this novel began with the "impossible tasks" that are usually the meat of a fantasy-quest tale, but then they were just the start, the very tip of the narrative, a sort of buy-in for Marra for the "actual work" that would save her sister (on this note, real life horror and content warning re: physical and emotional domestic abuse). At that point, the shades of horror remained strong, but were never too much (though I hate teeth/teeth-falling-out stuff, so that scene was *almost* too much). And there was a subtle humor in the writing, the kind that recognizes and calls out the normally accepted (and sorta nonsensical) minor details of life, but does so with an aim at poking fun (kinda satirical, but not quite all the way there) and with very astute insight. All in all, it felt sort of Gaiman-esque, in those respects.
This ended up being one of the most heartwarming, ragtag groups of mismatched people out on a rescue mission that I’ve ever read. They were all quirky and slightly "off" from what their stereotypical character would be in ways that were so endearing, edgy enough to be original but close enough to feel familiar. Speaking of, that combination really describes the entire reading experience for me. The simultaneous sense of recognition and foreign-ness in the novel is fascinating. Elements of so many different fairy tales are there and mashed up, so that they are like, right on the edge of my tongue, but I just couldn't bring a particular story/plot to mind exactly. I loved that. It was like reading a combination of all the background, practical, parts of a fairy tale, but they were brought to center stage and given the attention they don't normally get. And, my last story-telling comment: what an ending! Where we left each character was a great fit. Plus, the feeling of promise for the future, but also an undertone that things are not "all's well that ends well" (as it were), as a subversion of the traditional "happily ever after" fairy tale ending, was just right for this book. I was just so full and satisfied after I finished.
There are a few other points I want to make, mostly related to the themes and social commentary within the context of this fantasy tale. First, as I mentioned, there were many insights that Kingfisher made with a subtle humor, through Marra's internal dialogue, that concisely, and with stunning accuracy, conveyed indictment of that uneven-ness (unfairness) of life. Like right from the start, they wrote something like "it was cruel to punish starving people for that they had been forced to eat" and like, what a sentiment (meant literally here, but think of all the metaphorical extrapolations as well)! I'll be honest, Marra’s naïveté and incredulity at his sisters' reality is…a POV that I wish all of us could have, that I wasn’t so jaded reading this that I thought she was silly-unaware. Real life can really suck. Speaking of Marra, her many roles (woman, sister, princess, nun) are contrasted with really well-crafted commentary on the various truths of moving through the world as a female. She was also a spectacularly written “reluctant heroine,” one of the most believable I've ever read. Her simultaneous loss of innocence and growth into her own strength of character in the face of brutal realities is inspiring and heartbreaking in equal measure, the exact right mix for someone with no resources taking every chance/sacrifice to right a terrible evil. Side note: I sort of read her as being austistic, or somehow on the autism spectrum, did anyone else feel that? Finally, the hardness/heaviness in the messages about how “not all ______” is a flawed argument were spot on. Like, just because your experiences are good with that population, doesn’t mean that everyone’s are and turning a bling eye only hurts people further. Ugh, such an important concept.
Ok, let me just say, I have never found another book that made me want to write this description before, but this was such a wonderful and fascinating mix of dark-horror vibes and wholesome, heart-filling characters. Like, who thinks to combine those? But thank goodness Kingfisher did, because this was wonderful! I loved it, for all the adventure and character-strength-growth and magic and human insight. I highly recommend it!
“…she was kneeling on the edge of a pit full of bones, in a land so bloated with horrors that her feet sank into the earth as if she were walking on the surface of a gigantic blister. A little wildness would not be out of place at all.” (What a description!)
“If you had learned not to trust your own senses, you might wait too long to run from an enemy.”
“…the history of the world was written in women's wombs and women's blood and she would never be allowed to change it.”
“But everywhere’s dangerous if you’re foolish about it.”
“It’s all just a little overwhelming, isn't it? [...] You've done so much and here we are and now it feels like there's so much left to do, doesn’t it?” (The best encapsulation of ambiguous anxiety that I have ever read.)
“Nothing is fair, except that we try to make it so. That's the point of humans, maybe, to fix things the gods haven’t managed.”
“You cannot help people who do not want help. [...] You can't force someone to do what you think is best for them. [...] Well, you can. But they don't appreciate it and most of the time it turns out that you were wrong.”
Content Warnings
Moderate: Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Miscarriage, Grief, Cannibalism, Death, Gaslighting, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Pregnancy, and Child death
Minor: Confinement
smitinghedgehog's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.75
Content Warnings
Moderate: Cannibalism, Child death, Death, Injury/Injury detail, Confinement, Body horror, Misogyny, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Gaslighting, Grief, Physical abuse, and Pregnancy
aardwyrm's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
funny
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
T Kingfisher brings us the tale of a woman who is deeply practical in most ways but vulnerable on a few fronts, her ill-assorted chosen companions with unexpected magical gifts, and an enemy who is more about the implacability of entrenched power structures than personal malice but has plenty of personal malice, too. There are some writers I've had to step back from after learning their beats this well, but the world, the prose, and the poignancy are all as sharp and bloody as ever. Never miss a Kingfisher.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Cannibalism, Violence, Confinement, Medical content, Murder, Death, Child death, Miscarriage, Misogyny, Domestic abuse, Gaslighting, Pregnancy, Sexism, and Physical abuse
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