Gary K. Wolfe Reviews Thornhedge by T. Kingfisher

Thornhedge, T. Kingfisher (Tor 978-1-250-24409-3, 128pp., $19.00, hc) August 2023.

A few months ago, in reviewing Kelly Link’s White Cat, Black Dog, I made the thoroughly unoriginal observation that fairy tales seem almost infinitely malleable, and almost irresist­ible to fantasy writers; it’s as though they were the base pairs that make up the very DNA of a lot of Western storytelling. In the last year or so alone, I’ve looked at creative and sometimes brilliant improvisations and variations from Link, Jane Yolen, Theodora Goss, Alix E. Har­row, Catherynne M. Valente, and even Gene Wolfe. I mention this because, even in such august company, T. Kingfisher’s Thornhedge stands out as a strikingly original take on the Sleeping Beauty tale, based on a central reversal that I, for one, hadn’t seen before. In deference to the spoiler-sensitive, I’ll only mention a couple of questions that most readers will find themselves asking early on: exactly what is that forbidding hedge of thorns around the castle keep really for, and why is the fairy changeling Toadling so devoted to keeping it secret that she maintains a lonely vigil for centuries? By the time we learn the answers, we’re so thoroughly invested in Toadling’s own story, and her cau­tious relationship with a peripatetic and not very heroic knight named Hamil, that the real focus of the novella becomes clear. And while it does eventually involve some brutal murders, sui­cide, abandonment, and hideously reanimated corpses, it’s finally a sweet-tempered tale of loyalty, patience, honor, redemption, and love.

The opening chapter not only serves as a remarkable evocation of loneliness, but estab­lishes the story in that liminal space (see, there I go again) between fairytale lore and actual medieval history. Toadling, with her greenish skin and frog-like face – and the habit of actu­ally turning into a toad in moments of stress – has been keeping watch over the thornhedge for so long that she suspects generations of humans must have passed, leaving the actual tale of what happened there transformed into legend. She marks the passage of time by noting the shifting bird populations, a road being built nearby, and the fluctuating numbers of humans who appear. At one point, when travelers have all but disappeared, she sees what we recognize as plague doctors and bands of flagellants, and when the knight Halim shows up much later, he explains that the plague has been over for two centuries. With his references to the Pope, the Byzantine-Seljuk wars, and his own Muslim background, he also yanks the story more firmly into history. Though he describes himself as neither a very good knight nor a very devout Muslim, he proves to be unfailingly polite and considerate, convincing himself that Toadling may herself be the one under an enchantment, and determines to rescue her.

Meanwhile, Toadling recalls the now-ancient story of the princess in the tower, and why she blames herself for her present dilemma. What begins as a rather innocent comedy of errors briefly turns into a gruesome horror tale, then into a melancholy, almost elegiac account of loss and abandonment as everyone remaining in the castle either dies or wanders off, and finally into that long lonely vigil that first introduced us to Toadling. That may sound like a lot to pack into a relatively short novella, but Thornhedge is actually a masterful demonstration of what novellas do best: focusing largely on a single individual facing an apparently insurmount­able dilemma while trying to find a place in the world. Puzzled by a human world she has never belonged to, and yet never fully at home among the fairies, Toadling is one of the more endear­ing and memorable characters I’ve encountered this year, and pretty much the same can be said for her tale.

This review and more like it in the August 2023 issue of Locus.

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