This book keeps Kingfisher as one of those novelists whose work I just read pretty much automatically. I read this quickly and it felt just right. It goes at a good pace – not so fast as to leave you spinning, but you’re also not just sitting around always admiring flowers. Also a quest and a heavy dose of gritted-teeth determination and a good level of snark, generally dished out by old ladies, which is of course the best sort. There’s a princess who doesn’t especially want to be and who is really sure that she’s good at it, and a bone dog, and two godmothers, and a dust-wife. And I don’t mean Disney versions, I mean grim/m and sometimes gritty and meaty and fully embedded in the world, where not everything is lovely and wonderful but sometimes they are, and sometimes by force of personality you can make a change in the world and sometimes you just have to roll with the world’s punches. They’re both doing fascinating things with fairy tales… except not really fairy tales, because they’re not always familiar stories, but it’s the vibe of fairy tales – fairy tale logic – fairy tale expectations and narrative structures. If you’re not already… maybe you’re a fan of Angela Slatter? Kingfisher’s books remind me of her work too. (Fair warning: book does include reference to family violence, and an abusive partner.) Kingfisher” and know that you’ll run for a copy of this book. Kingfisher, I can say “this is exquisitely T. I love Toadling and I will not look at Sleeping Beauty the same way again. It’s wondrous and twisty and a bit heart-wrenching, and all in all a really great story. Toadling is not who you think she is, and this story is not what you might expect. One day, when it’s been a long time since anyone approached the hedge, Halim camps outside the wall… and she ends up speaking with him. She’s despaired of knights and adventurous boys coming along with axes to try and cut down the hedge, because she really doesn’t want them to.

Toadling has been sitting behind, and sometimes within, a hedge of thorns and brambles for centuries. And I have no regrets, having just read it in a sitting (it’s under 100 pages, so not THAT extreme). I pretty much love everything I’ve read by T Kingfisher, so it’s a no-brainer that I would want to read this novella I don’t think I even read the blurb before requesting it. Sleeping Beauty, but make it WAY more complicated.

Read courtesy of the publisher, Tor, and NetGalley.

Summer in Orcus by T. Kingfisher