{"id":10036,"date":"2023-11-03T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-11-03T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/?p=10036"},"modified":"2023-11-01T21:52:01","modified_gmt":"2023-11-02T01:52:01","slug":"nettle-bone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2023\/11\/03\/nettle-bone\/","title":{"rendered":"Nettle & Bone."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

T. Kingfisher (the nom de plume<\/em> of writer Ursula Vernon) won this year\u2019s Hugo Award for Best Novel for Nettle & Bone<\/a><\/em>, a light fantasy novel that subverts many tropes of the genre while adhering to others as it follows its protagonist on a quest to save her sister, the Queen of the North Kingdom. It is a blast to read, with some wonderful side characters alongside our hero and a great balance of humor and darkness, although I\u2019m not sure it has the thematic depth of some of the best winners of that honor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our hero is Marra, the youngest of three sisters in the tiny Harbor Kingdom, a city-state located around the midpoint of the coast between the Northern and Southern Kingdoms, protected by its strategic location and the desire of both neighbors to avoid having it fall into their rival\u2019s hands. As the story begins, Marra\u2019s eldest sister, Damia, is married to the young Prince and heir to the throne of the Northern Kingdom, but she dies in an equestrian accident before she can produce a son, so the Prince then marries the middle sister, Kania. When Marra goes to see Kamia as her sister is about to give birth, however, Kania gives her a cryptic warning, and subsequent events cause Marra to realize her sister is the victim of a violent husband. She finds a dust-witch to try to obtain a way to kill the Prince, which ultimately leads her on a journey across two kingdoms with a party that grows to four, not counting the chickens, and ends with a showdown in the royal chambers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nettle & Bone<\/em> is a quest novel, and we get a classic adventuring party of a cleric, a fighter, and a couple of mages, roughly speaking, where the pleasure is in the interplay between these characters as well as the world-building. Kingfisher has a Gaimanesque knack for crafting weird and creepy magical realms, with more delightful settings here than I can count \u2013 very reminiscent of a well-crafted RPG campaign, but with the detail of a Neverwhere<\/em> or Among Others<\/em>, where you\u2019re immersed in the scene even as the writer asks you to believe any number of impossible things. The goblin market is an obvious homage to Gaiman\u2019s work, among others, but Kingfisher gives it enough unique flourishes that it stands on its own merits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I absolutely tore through this book, and I\u2019ve already recommended it to two strangers who asked about it when I was reading it in public. That said, I have two major criticisms of the book, although only one of them affected my enjoyment of the work. That one is straightforward \u2013 Marra is not that interesting of a character. Kingfisher sure as hell tries to give her some personality, but beyond making her a worrywart, she doesn\u2019t have much to distinguish herself. She\u2019s the observer of the action, a Nick Jenkins (from A Dance to the Music of Time<\/em>), but all three of her companions on the quest are more compelling characters. Marra\u2019s whole family is boring, honestly; Kania\u2019s a cipher, her mother doesn\u2019t even have a name, I think, and her father is somewhere else. Kingfisher\u2019s strength may lie in creating side characters, which is a real skill and not something I wish to diminish, but the time we spend with Marra alone forms some of the least interesting pages in the book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My second criticism of Nettle & Bone<\/em> is an academic one, which is that I don\u2019t see much of a theme here \u2013 and for many readers, that won\u2019t matter at all. It didn\u2019t affect my pleasure in reading the book, either; it\u2019s great fun, I laughed quite a bit, and I enjoyed a lot of the time I spent with these characters and in this world. I usually don\u2019t think much about deeper themes or meaning until a book is done, after which it\u2019s often all I think about \u2013 what is the author trying to say? What might they want the reader to take away from the book? Marra is a strong female lead, and her world, like ours, is patriarchal, while two of her three companions on the quest are also women, so there\u2019s no question the book has a feminist bent. Beyond that, however, I couldn\u2019t discern any greater themes here. That\u2019s fine for the average reader, maybe for the vast majority of readers, but if we\u2019re comparing books for the purpose of an award like the Hugo, I think questions of theme and meaning do matter. That said, I haven\u2019t read any of the other nominees yet, so I have no opinion on whether this book was worthy other than to say I loved every minute while I was reading it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Next up: Becky Chambers\u2019 The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet<\/a><\/em>, a self-published, Kickstarted novel from 2014 that has spawned three Hugo-nominated sequels. I\u2019m on page 10.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

T. Kingfisher (the nom de plume of writer Ursula Vernon) won this year\u2019s Hugo Award for Best Novel for Nettle & Bone, a light fantasy novel that subverts many tropes of the genre while adhering to others as it follows its protagonist on a quest to save her sister, the Queen of the North Kingdom. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1343,36,684,122,161,603],"class_list":["post-10036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-2022-novels","tag-american-literature","tag-contemporary-novels","tag-fantasy","tag-highly-recommended","tag-hugo-award","entry"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10036"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10036\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10037,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10036\/revisions\/10037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}