(Part of me wants to believe that naming him Fenris is supposed to evoke Dragon Age II, rather than the wolf of Ragnarok. The inevitable romantic arc develops naturally, believably, with Kingfisher’s usual sense of humour and attention to the absurd. She also builds herself a dog made of bones, and rescues a handsome and competent man from a fairy market. She needs a powerful dust-wife, essentially a witch of the graveyard, who can command the dead, so she sets out from the convent on a quest that will end up seriously testing her capabilities and her will. To have any hope of success, Marra needs magical help. There’s only one problem: Vorling, like all his ancestors and descendants, is protected by the actions of a powerful magical godmother. And Marra… well, Marra decides that she’d better kill him first. He will kill her, once she provides a son. But she gradually comes to realise that Prince Vorling is an extremely cruel man who killed her eldest sister and is beating her middle sister, and is essentially killing her by keeping her pregnant with children that she constantly miscarries.
She can learn things, and be useful, and not have to guard her words. Marra likes the convent much more than she liked palace life. Marra is sent to a convent, to Our Lady of the Grackles, until Kania produces the desired male heir, held in reserve, although she doesn’t realise it until much later. Shortly thereafter, she comes home in a coffin, and Marra’s middle sister – Kania, who Marra knows hates her – is sent to take her place.
Her eldest sister – Damia, beautiful, beloved – is married off to the prince of a neighbouring, much more powerful kingdom. Marra is the third daughter of the ruling family of a very small and not very powerful kingdom. This has a dog made of bones, a dust-wife, a demon chicken, a man rescued from a goblin market, a magical godmother better at curses than blessings but determined not to do harm – and Marra, so determined that even impossible tasks won’t put her off. Like many of Kingfisher’s novels, it draws on fairytale elements in its worldbuilding like most of them, it’s strongly concerned, in its own way, with ethics, with power, and with what you do in response to cruelty. Nettle & Bone shares this combination of the peculiar and the pragmatic. I imagine they share many of the same characteristics.)
Vernon is an award-winning author under both names, and her novels and stories as Kingfisher are united by their combination of pragmatism among characters and peculiarity in worldbuilding, with a strong sense of humour and a definite impression that, given a choice between several options, Kingfisher will choose the one most likely to turn out weird. Kingfisher, as many of us know, is the open pen name of Ursula Vernon.
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