Nettle & Bone is T. Kingfisher's 2023 Hugo-winning novel.
Marra is a princess, the youngest of three in a tiny kingdom squeezed between two much larger, more powerful kingdoms. When she is a child, her eldest sister is sent to the Northern Kingdom as a bride for the prince, but dies mysteriously some months later. Her elder sister is sent as the prince's new bride, and it's only when Marra attends the birth of her niece that she realizes how bad her sister's abusive marriage is, and how little anyone can do about it.
But Marra has been in a convent since she was a teen, living and working with the nuns and the wider community, and she's now a grounded, practical, sensible woman of thirty. If there's no political solution, she reasons, maybe there's a magical solution. If so, she'll need the help of a dust-wife: a graveyard guardian witch.
Tropes appearing in Nettle & Bone
- A Dog Named "Dog": Bonedog is, well, a dog made out of bones.
- Ambiguously Human: According to the dust-wife, her parents were human, anyway.
- Bad Powers, Good People: Agnes. As the dust-wife puts it, "Evil magic could flow through her like a river in full flood. Fortunately for the rest of us, there's a lot of Agnes in the way." This is also the reason Agnes doesn't do a lot of big magic; she basically can't cast anything serious unless she's trying to hurt somebody, and she doesn't want to hurt people.
- Bathos: Marra might be on a quest to assassinate an evil prince, but she has any number of incongruously ordinary experiences along the way. Exemplified when she reaches the famous dust-wife's home and sees chickens in the yard.It was hard to be frightened of the unknown when the unknown kept chickens.
- Bazaar of the Bizarre: The Goblin Market is reached by invoking it at a liminal space, is staffed by The Fair Folk, deals in all kinds of magical and mundane sundries, and trades for anything from years of lifespan to teeth. Marra makes several handy purchases with the dust-wife's guidance.
- Boring, but Practical: Marra's fairy godmother Agnes gave her and her two older sisters the gift of health. Marra's at first outraged that Agnes didn't give them something with more immediate oomph, such as a blessing that would've protected her sisters from marrying the abusive Big Bad prince. But being healthy, As as Agnes points out, is pretty much always useful and doesn't have nasty side effects or unintended consequences. By contrast, the far more grand and exciting-sounding blessing the godmother of the Northern Kingdom gives is actually a curse and is the reason all its kings die young.
- Canine Companion: Bonedog, the dog Marra constructed out of bones for one of her tasks, remains her loyal companion.
- Demonic Possession: The dust-wife says to beware of her chicken, who's got a devil in her. Literally.
- Domestic Abuse: Prince Vorling is thoroughly bad—cruel, despotic, controlling, paranoid. He killed Damia, Marra's eldest sister, and now has middle sister Kania in his clutches.
- The Exile: Fenris is exiled from his homeland. If he returns, it will start a clan war.
- Fairy Godmother: A godmother is an actual job title in this world, complete with abilities and expectations.
- Fantastic Light Source: The dust-wife keeps some moonlight in a vial for a pure clean light.
- Geas: Agnes uses this for Mundane Utility, cursing a chicken to die unless it leads her to a place of safety in an unfriendly city. The chicken runs straight to a good boarding house.
- Glamour: A stall at the Goblin Market sells magical disguises for nearly anything, animal, vegetable, or mineral. Marra buys one to make her skeletal Canine Companion look and feel like a living dog. (Sound would have been trickier and more expensive.)
- Immortal Apathy: The Northern Kingdom's godmother is said to have outlived all her feelings; when she's not performing her duties, she simply sits at home for decades. She's equally unconcerned to finally die.
- Impossible Task: Three of them. Marra must sew a cloak from owlcloth and nettle wool she's spun herself, build a dog from cursed bones, and capture moonlight in a jar.
- Impossible Task Instantly Accomplished: The dust-wife assigns impossible tasks because they're supposed to be impossible. When Marra completes the first two through sheer self-destructive determination, the dust-wife spots her the third task and agrees to help. (Actually performing it, says the dust-wife, would have cost Marra her heart.)
- Locked Away in a Monastery: Marra is sent to live in a nunnery to keep her safely unmarried—both so that she doesn't bear any inconvenient legitimate royal children who might challenge Vorling's children for the succession of the Harbor Kingdom, and so that she's available as a backup bride if Vorling kills Kania too.
- Magic Prerequisite: The goblin market is only accessible at the right time of the moon and from a liminal location.
- Map All Along: Marra identifies directions through the palace crypts encoded in the weave of the tapestry the Northern Godmother gave her. Justified because a Magically-Binding Contract prevents her from aiding Marra, so she can only give her the tapestry because Marra doesn't understand its significance at first.
- Nonhuman Undead: Bonedog, the dog made of bones.
- Nothing but Skin and Bones: The Northern Kingdom's Fairy Godmother is so old that she's gone past wrinkles and on to translucent skin stretched taut over her skull. When she's finally able to die, the skin simply crumbles off the bone.
- Really 700 Years Old: The Northern Kingdom's Fairy Godmother.
- The Three Trials: Three impossible tasks set by the dust-wife before she will agree to help Marra. Afterwards, the dust-wife admits that they were a deterrent, not a test, but Marra was too stubborn to quit.
- Touch the Intangible: The dust-wife can somehow trap moonlight in a jar. She says the feat would have "broken" Marra, but doesn't elaborate.
- Willfully Weak: Agnes doesn't use her curse powers because being a decent person is much more important to her.
- Withholding Their Name: The dust-wife confirms that she has a name, but it is never revealed.
