Saturday Review: “Feminism in Dark Fairy Tales,” a review by Kenly Corya of T. Kingfisher’s Nettle & Bone (2022) and A Sorceress Comes to Call (2024) in NCLR Online Spring 2025
Kenly Corya reviews T. Kingfisher’s feminist and deeply imaginative fantasy novels. Corya claims A Sorceress Comes to Call features “the core of Brothers Grimm’s fairy tales” and “explores gender roles and women’s autonomy (and lack thereof) in a rigidly patriarchal society.” Cordelia, a young girl who is subjected to her sorceress mother’s vile machinations, finds hope, courage, and healing through her connections to other women throughout the book. As the women in the novel push against their society’s misogynistic restraints in various ways, “Kingfisher illuminates the dangers in ignoring the injustices around us and encourages us to take action. . . . even in the direst situations.”
According to Corya, Nettle & Bone is “Written in the style of beloved fairy tales” and “challenges real issues pertaining to gender roles, family dynamics, and sisterhood within the context of a fantasy world.” As the princess, Marra, navigates a strange and magical world, she finds family in the most unlikely places. Corya claims “With distinctive wit and sincere characters, Kingfisher creates a uniquely cozy atmosphere despite the characters’ perilous tasks. Kingfisher makes fantasy tangible, and while immersed in her pages, the prospect of a surreal world existing next to our own no longer seems so strange.” Kingfisher “reminds readers that individuals have the power to change our world” and her “heartfelt and imaginative novel is a homecoming for fantasy lovers.”
Read the entire review and Order a copy of Nettle & Bone and A Sorceress Comes to Call from the publisher.
