Booklog 48/2025: T Kingfisher: Nettle & Bone - Audiobook

I listened to this via audiobook, some three years after the first reading. It's narrated by Amara Jasper. It's a love story on many levels, and I think that was more obvious on the second 'reading.' Amara Jasper manages the different character voices very well. Once again I loved it.

In my review of the Kindle version, I said: I love T. Kingfisher's writing. She's a buy on sight author for me, even her horror books (and generally I don't read horror). This is not horror, it's a fantasy with fairy tale elements: a princess (youngest of three); a dog made of bones; a dust wife who speaks with the dead; a steadfast knight rescued from a goblin market; a chicken inhabited by a demon; two godmothers (fairy variety); and a cruel prince. Marra's two older sisters have been married off (sequentially) to the cruel prince of a powerful northern kingdom. The first mysteriously died, and the second is wearing herself out, staying pregnant to avoid his beatings. Marra, hidden away in a convent in case the prince kills the second sister and needs a third wife, decides to do something about the situation, and sets off to murder the prince. She knows she can't do it alone so she enlists the help of the dust wife who sets her three impossible tasks. These are a nice bit of misdirection. This is not the story you think it's going to be. Marra and the dust wife set off to do the dirty deed (with the demon chicken and the bone dog) and pick up the steadfast knight and one fairy godmother along the way.

Booklog 49/2025: Patricia Briggs: Winter Lost – Mercy Thompson #14 – Kindle

The fourteenth Mercy Thompson book takes place just after the incident with the Soul Taker, a magical artifact that damaged Mercy’s access to the magical world. Though partly fixed, she’s still suffering and on top of that, still being stalked by the evil vampire Bonarata, from a few books ago, but Mercy shoves this all aside when her half-brother, another of Coyote’s half-human children, turns up in the Tri-Cities, unable to communicate because of a spell, but obviously in deep trouble. Mercy and her make – werewolf alpha, Adam – go rushing off into the depths of a Montana winter in an unusually vicious snowstorm, to find a Frost Giant who is responsible for the brother’s condition, only to find that there’s more to it than they first thought. Expect bad weather, an unusual wedding party with fae, a vampire and a ghost, a missing magical harp and, potentially, the end of the world unless Mercy can fix all this mess. Unfortunately, she can’t even fix herself. As you might expect, Mercy goes through the mill, but, hey, the world doesn’t end.

Booklog 50/2025: Sharon Lynn Fisher: Salt and Broom – Audiobook

Narrated by Elizabeth Bower and Tim Bruce

A slightly different take on Jane Eyre. In this version Jane Aire, age 30, teaches witchcraft at Lowood School and is sent to Thornfield Hall at the request of Edward Rochester because there is something wrong, maybe a curse. Some things play out in a familiar manner – Jane causing Rochester to be thrown from his horse etc. Some characters are familiar: Mrs Fairfax the housekeeper, Blanche Ingram the would-be second Mrs Rochester. There’s no mad woman in the attic, but the first Mrs Rochester is still in evidence, and instead of Grace Pool we have Dr Pool. There’s a supernatural mystery to solve, and Jane falls in love with Rochester (of course) while solving it. Nicely read by Elizabeth Bower with Tim Bruce reading occasional passages from Rochester’s point of view.

Booklog 51/2025: Philippa Gregory: Tidelands – Fairmile #1 – Audiobook

Narrated by Louise Brealey

Set in 1648 Alinor, a wise woman crushed by poverty helps a young man to safety in the ever-shifting tidelands, not realising until it’s too late that he is a proscribed Catholic priest and possible spy. Sadly, this did not hold my interest, maybe because the narration wasn’t very gripping. I reached Chapter Five. Did not finish.