A Sorceress Comes to Call
T. Kingfisher
The publisher identifies T. Kingfisher's (AKA Ursula Vernon's) A Sorceress Comes to Call as 'a dark reimagining of the Brothers Grimm's "The Goose Girl," rife with secrets, murder, and forbidden magic'. That's fairly accurate. The Goose Girl (Die Gänsemagd) is one of the more obscure Grimm's fairy tales, by which I mean it has never, to my knowledge, been the basis of a Disney feature film, and therefore is less known than, say, Cinderella or Snow White.
If you're familiar with Grimm's Fairy Tales, you might be inclined to remark that they're pretty dark already. We owe the familiar upbeat children's romances mostly to such Bowdlerizers as Andrew Lang and, of course, Walt Disney. However, The Goose Girl strikes me as dark, even for Grimm. Most Grimm's Fairy Tales are more gruesome and bloody than scary. But The Goose Girl is more than that. There are terror and psyops. In The Goose Girl a servant woman tries to trap a prince into a marriage under false pretenses, by taking the place of a princess, whom she intimidates and from whom she forces an oath of silence.
Also, there's a super creepy horse called Falada. This is right in Ursula Vernon's wheelhouse. She's still working through some trauma resulting from a scary horse incident when she was twelve years old. Set her loose on a story with a Falada in it, and she'll give you one Hell of a scary horse. Give her the opportunity to include some heroic birds, and she's right at home. (There are no Evil Rose Bushes in this one, though.)
"Reimagining" is a good word. A Sorceress Comes to Call is not so much a retelling of The Goose Girl as a new story built on its bones. In A Sorceress Comes to Call the seductress Evangeline is a powerful sorceress -- a classic femme fatale with extra magic mojo. Much of the story is told from the point of view of her oppressed daughter Cordelia, who in part plays the role of the princess in the original story.
The first 80% of the book is a straightforward femme fatale story -- the entrapment of the male quarry by the sorceress, resisted by his and her relations. But at 80% the "dark, weird" turns up to 11. The story ends with a satisfying Bang.
I thank Tor and NetGalley for an advance reader copy of A Sorceress Comes to Call. Release date 6-Aug-2024.
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