They’re maddeningly engrossed with form, familiarly technical, and as Kate Bernheimer says in ‘Fairy Tale is Form, Form is Fairy Tale’, they are deceptively simple. Fairy tale or folk magic is wild, indeterminate and unstable, threatening prefabricated concepts such as justice or modernity. They’re tall and stately creatures in other corners, they become intricately domestic-full of chores and intimacies. Fairy tales have more to do with structure and form than with a happy denouement. Nettle & Bone, much like the author’s other work, is set in a low fantasy world that deals in folk magic(s)-a contemporary fairy tale. Nettle & Bone, almost denying the existence of stark binaries-the hopeful narrative set against the dark or grim-begins with Marra in a cemetery, desecrating graves and performing necromancy in order to forge companionships and challenge monarchies.
Her novels stand out from the particular trend in the speculative publishing industry to push for narratives that are more optimistic, agentive, and hopeful. Kingfisher’s stories are rarely ever so straightforward. The narrative follows the adventures of Marra, a thirty-year-old princess who must save her sister from an evil prince. Kingfisher’s most recent novel, Nettle & Bone, is a fairy tale, replete with the usual archetypes: a kind-hearted and naïve protagonist, magical companions, difficult siblings-even a villainous tyrant.
0 kommentar(er)
