Booklog 42/2023: T Kingfisher: Thornhedge

[jacey]

Considering our heroine, Toadling is kidnapped as a child in order for the fairies to substitute a beautiful changeling in the queen's cradle, this is a very sweet book. The fairies don't care what happens to the real princess once their wicked substitute is in place so they dump her on the greenteeth, swamp monsters who, against all odds, don't eat her. Instead they bring her up with love and kindness, and show her how ro change herself into a toad. Then she's taught some specific magic, given a few spells and sent back to the castle of her birth to give the changeling princess a christening gift.  The gift is that she will hiurt no-one. But the queen interferes, the spell goes wrong, and Toadling feels honour bound to stay at the castle and mitigate the change-child's ever-growing tendency towards cruelty. Two hundred years later, the changeling princess sleeps in a tower behind a hedge of thorns and a knight comes to rescue her, only to meet tadling, still on duty. Toadling is a gentle character, trying to do her best whatever the cost. The knight , a Muslim, is not handsome, but he's earnest and kind, and also quite determined to rescue the sleeping princess. Can Toadling stop him?