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…
First line: In the early days, the wall of thorns had been distressingly obvious.
Thornhedge is the only T. Kingfisher book I hadn’t heard of before I accidentally found it at a library I visited last month. It’s a dark, twisted retelling of Sleeping Beauty.
I love retellings of classic tales, especially when they have darker themes than the originals, so I figured I’d like this book, but I didn’t expect to fall so in love with its heroine, Toadling. She’s kind, curious, but cautiously so, and has a strong sense of what’s right. And she can turn into a toad. What’s not to love?
I also didn’t expect this retelling to twist the original tale as much as it did. So many pieces of the story I am familiar with were molded into something completely different, until only the most important foundational aspects of Sleeping Beauty remained. Instead of a simple story about a lovely princess cursed by an evil queen, Thornhedge is a short story with much more depth. We’re presented with the question of nature vs. nurture, there are moral quandaries, and there are relationships deeper than the insta-love of a prince who kisses a sleeping princess.
Thornhedge is one of my favorite retellings of all time and I will easily recommend it to anyone who is a fan of T. Kingfisher, a lover of fairytales, or just, you know, a person.
Little Vermo Reviews 