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Jul. 18th, 2016 07:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsWriting up Plain Kate reminded me that I never did a post about the other dark and non-romantic fairy tale that I read recently (...ish), T. Kingfisher's The Seventh Bride.
I'm familiar with Ursula Vernon aka T. Kingfisher mostly by proxy -- people talking about her and reblogging her stuff in my vicinity -- and I've been meaning to read her stuff for a while; I liked The Seventh Bride and thought it was well done, but I'm not sure it was the best place for me to start.
In The Seventh Bride, Rhea the teenage miller's daughter is deeply disconcerted one day to learn that a friend of the local lord has asked for her hand in marriage. Rhea has minimal interest in marrying a stranger at best, but she and all her family are aware that if she refuses, economic consequences could potentially be severe.
Before the wedding, Rhea's creepy new husband-to-be asks her to come to his creepy manor house in the middle of the woods and spend a couple of days there, which everyone agrees is WILDLY INAPPROPRIATE, but. (The author clearly wants you to feel sympathetic for the family and their predicament and their inability to help their daughter, and I do, but I kept wondering at this point why, even if they know they can't cancel the marriage, one of her family members doesn't at least go with her into the creepy forest! But that's another story.)
Anyway, although Rhea is aware that the situation is deeply sketch, she is nonetheless still surprised to find the creepy manor house populated by several other wives, each one weirder, angrier, and more magically cursed than the last.
What follows is an unnerving sharp-edged fairy tale full of the kind of surreal and vivid imagery that I associate with Peter Beagle, or even Angela Carter. Occasionally I felt that the prose style was a little bit at war with the actual story. Kingfisher/Vernon (both from this book and from the the other snippets I've seen of hers) has a light, warm authorial voice that gets a lot of its humor out of pragmatism -- it's the kind of thing I tend to like a lot, and often balancing that kind of voice with a darker story can work very well for me, but in this case I was thrown a little off-balance a few times as events got more and more Gothic and the cute pet hedgehog continued to look adorably sardonic about it. I liked the book overall, though, and will definitely be reading more Kingfisher.
I'm familiar with Ursula Vernon aka T. Kingfisher mostly by proxy -- people talking about her and reblogging her stuff in my vicinity -- and I've been meaning to read her stuff for a while; I liked The Seventh Bride and thought it was well done, but I'm not sure it was the best place for me to start.
In The Seventh Bride, Rhea the teenage miller's daughter is deeply disconcerted one day to learn that a friend of the local lord has asked for her hand in marriage. Rhea has minimal interest in marrying a stranger at best, but she and all her family are aware that if she refuses, economic consequences could potentially be severe.
Before the wedding, Rhea's creepy new husband-to-be asks her to come to his creepy manor house in the middle of the woods and spend a couple of days there, which everyone agrees is WILDLY INAPPROPRIATE, but. (The author clearly wants you to feel sympathetic for the family and their predicament and their inability to help their daughter, and I do, but I kept wondering at this point why, even if they know they can't cancel the marriage, one of her family members doesn't at least go with her into the creepy forest! But that's another story.)
Anyway, although Rhea is aware that the situation is deeply sketch, she is nonetheless still surprised to find the creepy manor house populated by several other wives, each one weirder, angrier, and more magically cursed than the last.
What follows is an unnerving sharp-edged fairy tale full of the kind of surreal and vivid imagery that I associate with Peter Beagle, or even Angela Carter. Occasionally I felt that the prose style was a little bit at war with the actual story. Kingfisher/Vernon (both from this book and from the the other snippets I've seen of hers) has a light, warm authorial voice that gets a lot of its humor out of pragmatism -- it's the kind of thing I tend to like a lot, and often balancing that kind of voice with a darker story can work very well for me, but in this case I was thrown a little off-balance a few times as events got more and more Gothic and the cute pet hedgehog continued to look adorably sardonic about it. I liked the book overall, though, and will definitely be reading more Kingfisher.
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Date: 2016-07-19 12:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-07-20 01:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-07-19 01:28 am (UTC)My introduction to Vernon's long-form prose was Castle Hangnail (2015), which I recommend basically without reservation. It's a children's book and therefore not as violently Gothic, but it handles the complexity of painful emotions and bad relationships almost as well as Diana Wynne Jones—in whose tradition I would say the book very strongly is—without ever losing the ability to digress hilariously into squid coinage, brain-chewing weasels, or the kinds of sweater a voodoo doll knits for a goldfish.
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Date: 2016-07-20 01:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-07-19 03:49 am (UTC)The Raven and the Reindeer
The Raven and the Reindeer
I'm so serious here. You need Ursula Vernon's quirky lesbian Snow Queen retelling in your life.
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Date: 2016-07-20 02:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-07-19 04:57 am (UTC)Okay, technically that one's Vernon and not Kingfisher but omg HAMSTER PRINCESS. It is everything I have ever wanted out of life. HAMSTER PRINCESS, FRIEND. HAMSTER PRINCESS.
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Date: 2016-07-20 02:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-08-06 06:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-07-19 05:13 am (UTC)And Digger, which is the story of a cranky atheist female wombat engineer by the brilliant name of Digger of Unnecessarily Complicated Tunnels. It is awesome. Highly, highly recommended.
... also epic. You'll want a week. And tissues.
(Remember Tunnel 17!)
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Date: 2016-07-19 03:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-07-19 05:54 pm (UTC)Um, baby me also had and apparently still has a giant soft spot for Gearworld, which like, all the illustrations have been borked for some eight years and it's about investigating a Secret Underground Maze Filled With Decorative Gears, but. listen. sometimes--
Gearworld
Date: 2016-07-19 10:49 pm (UTC)Re: Gearworld
Date: 2016-07-19 11:58 pm (UTC)And I hope you enjoy the story!
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Date: 2016-07-20 02:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-07-20 02:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-07-20 02:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-07-19 06:08 pm (UTC)*it seemed, in fact, to be a direct response to the Disney version, though of course she changed certain circumstances at will
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Date: 2016-07-20 02:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-07-24 10:01 pm (UTC)If anything I think she's at her best in her short story collection Toad Words (insofar as narratorial voice not clashing a bit with all the rest).