Reviews tagging 'Child abuse'

Thornhedge by T. Kingfisher

2 reviews

axel_p's review against another edition

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challenging emotional funny relaxing medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

This whas absolutely adorable.
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ramalam98's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes

3.75

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book. This is my honest review.

I enjoyed a lot of things about Thornhedge. The characters Toadling and Halim are delightful, and I love how their friendship develops and how Halim gives us some 'modern' worldbuilding as well. I like how the plot took a lot of fairytale tropes (largely from Sleeping Beauty) and either subverted or significantly changed them. The magic system was also really well done. 

It was a quick read, with great pacing that kept me engaged throughout, and the atmosphere and worldbuilding definitely had that distinct fairytale feel to it (the author describes it as 'sweet' in her acknowledgements and I agree!) 

The downsides for me are the ending and the changeling trope. 

I'm very wary of the changeling trope. The myth/history of changelings is deeply rooted in ableism, as children with physical or mental disabilities (and who therefore didn't develop or act as expected) were thought to have been fae or monsters swapped with the real human child at birth. This therefore 'justified' abuse and murder of these children. Because of this it can be a very 'problematic' trope in books, though can be done really well (House of Hollow for example!). 

This book was feeling like it was going to do it reasonably well, discussion under the spoiler cut. 

There was a lot at the beginning where the changeling was portrayed as a violent monster with a total lack of empathy, only interested in causing pain. This wasn't great. But then towards the 70-80% mark we had a lot of discussion between Toadling and Halim about the possibility of change. However, in the end, she was shown to be irredeemable and was quickly killed. 

This felt anticlimactic to me and left me a little disappointed, not only from a 'bad changeling trope' point of view but as a general ending to the story. It happened very quickly. I'm not opposed to the 'princess' dying per se but it all felt very rushed and left me dissatisfied in a way I can't quite put my finger on. 



Overall, I did like this. I don't want to use the term cosy but something about this book felt that way and I would have loved to see more of the world. Folklore/fairytale type stories are something I'm wanting to get into more and I think this is a decent addition to that genre. 
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