title: Thornhedgeauthor: T. Kingfisher
published: 8.15.2023
publisher: Tor Books
genre(s): folklore, reimagining
pages: 113
source: library
format: eBook
buy/shelve it: Amazon | B&N | Kobo | BookBub | BookHype | StoryGraph | Goodreads
rating:
the blurb
From New York Times bestselling author T. Kingfisher, Thornhedge is the tale of a kind-hearted, toad-shaped heroine, a gentle knight, and a mission gone completely sideways.
There's a princess trapped in a tower. This isn't her story.
Meet Toadling. On the day of her birth, she was stolen from her family by the fairies, but she grew up safe and loved in the warm waters of faerieland. Once an adult though, the fae ask a favor of Toadling: return to the human world and offer a blessing of protection to a newborn child. Simple, right?
But nothing with fairies is ever simple.
Centuries later, a knight approaches a towering wall of brambles, where the thorns are as thick as your arm and as sharp as swords. He's heard there's a curse here that needs breaking, but it's a curse Toadling will do anything to uphold…
a few notes
trigger warning: ❗some violence, mention of suicide❗
POV: 3rd person
keywords/phrases: magic, horror, reimagining
tropes: hero’s journey, medieval-adjacent setting, high stakes, unlikely allies
spice: 0🔥
language: 0🤬
awards: Hugo Award for Best Novella (2023), Nebula Award Nominee for Novella (2022), Locus Award for Novella (2023), World Fantasy Award Nominee for Novella (2023), British Fantasy Award Nominee for Best Novella (2023), RUSA CODES Reading List Nominee for Fantasy (2023)
read this if… you love reimagined fairytales, flipped roles, and unlikely allies.
my review
Thornhedge is an interesting reimagining of the classic Sleeping Beauty tale, with the adorable Toadling cast in the role of Sleeping Beauty. Once upon a time, she was human, the daughter of a king and queen. But she never knew that life, stolen within moments of her birth by fairies, replaced by one of their own. Once in Fairyland, she was given to a clan of fairies who lived in the warm swamp waters of Fairyland. She became more and more fairy as time went on, eventually thrust into the role of Fairy Godmother over the very child who had stolen her place with the king and queen.
This reimagining of Sleeping Beauty was interesting, with Sleeping Beauty less a victim and more of a villain. As the fairy changeling, she had no humanity, no compassion. Instead, she had a fondness for violence and chaos, even from a very young age. I thought this was an interesting twist, playing into the mythology of the fairy as less than idyllic creatures, unlike the Disneyfied versions. Enter Toadling, the human-turned-fairy who is tasked with keeping her from harming those around her. It’s a task that is insurmountable, which she all too quickly realizes. Enter her unlikely ally, Halim. He is a Muslim knight who has heard the more Disneyfied version of Sleeping Beauty’s plight and is determined to save her. Until he meets, Toadling, and she tells him the truth about how and what the “innocent maiden” is.
All of that, I very much enjoyed. But…
The time setting. It was anachronistic. It was supposed to be set in the “real world,” some time after the third plague. But that began in 1855 and ended no later than in the late 1950’s. At some point, Halim tells Toadling that it’s been more than two centuries since then, which would set this… in the future? Which it definitely wasn’t, with questing knights and a setting that felt medieval.
My other issue was with the way Halim as a Muslim was portrayed. There was a comment about his mother being “Muslim enough for all of them,” which is pretty dismissive, as part of the Muslim faith involves individual responsibility for one’s own actions. Devout or not, his continual touching of Toadling seemed odd, as did his offer to give a Christian prayer to break Fayette’s curse. And then there was the matter of his previous interactions with Christian monks that seemed improbable with the medieval setting, a time when the Crusades were still a thing.
It was these two things that really brought down the story for me, as it just didn’t track.
About T. Kingfisher
T. Kingfisher is the vaguely absurd pen-name of Ursula Vernon. In another life, she writes children’s books and weird comics, and has won the Hugo, Sequoyah, and Ursa Major awards, as well as a half-dozen Junior Library Guild selections.
This is the name she uses when writing things for grown-ups.
When she is not writing, she is probably out in the garden, trying to make eye contact with butterflies.
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Reading this book contributed to these challenges:
- 2025 52 Books Reading Challenge
- 2025 Alphabet Soup Reading Challenge: Author Edition
- 2025 Fairytale Reading Challenge
- 2025 Linz the Bookworm & Logophile Reading Challenge
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