Fenris is the closest thing to a typical fairy tale hero that we have and he is happy to play a supportive role. Marra is thirty years old, has renounced being a princess to the best of her ability, and is accompanied by the aforementioned Bone Dog as well as two old women (and the demon chicken, let’s not forget that). The characters are all wonderful and many are characters we don’t often see take central roles in fantasy quests. Everything and everybody feels just right, fitting or failing to fit into a structure of magic, survival, and politics that reads as ancient and established. I like how the world-building smoothly incorporates politics, messy family relationships, and difficult moral choices in a way that feels organic and inevitable and deeply tied to place. I love the world-building which portrays places and people that feel completely real while also appearing to be utterly fantastical. There is horror, action, humor, tragedy, a slow-burn romance, and a lot of fairy-tale tropes both invoked and subverted along the way, grounded in a lot of realism. As Marra continues on her quest she is joined by the dust-witch, an evil godmother, a demon chicken, and a warrior named Fenris. Marra’s older sister is married to an abusive prince, and Marra is desperate to help her, through murder if need be. If the above paragraph seems like a lot, fear not, for all shall be explained, although the plot will become increasingly complex as more characters join Marra on her quest. Marra is attempting to complete the three impossible tasks that will convince a dust-witch to help her kill a prince. Even in a desperate situation such as this, Marra (the above mentioned princess/almost-nun) is capable of dry humor.
Our story opens with an exhausted princess who is also almost but not quite a nun (it makes sense in context) struggling to build a dog out of bones, so right away we know we are not in for a light hearted romp.
I ate this book up to the detriment of several other things that I was supposed to be doing. Kingfisher’s novel The Hollow Places and combine them with the character dynamics and gentle, slow-burn romance of the Paladin series and you get Nettle and Bone, a fairy tale in which a princess enlists the help of a witch, a warrior, and an evil godmother in her efforts to kill a prince. TW: stillbirth and death of infants, domestic violence including rape (all of these are alluded to but not shown or explicitly described)
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