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babewiththepower.bsky.social · @babewiththepower.bsky.social@bridge.neodb.net

Rated Nettle & Bone 6/10

I picked up this book in my goal of going through Hugo nominee/winning books. After a run of scifi novels, it was a shift for me to go into this fantasy and a fairytale at that. As others have said, at first I thought maybe I wasn't the best reader for it when the opening almost immediately put me off. I did push through that opening and it was a good thing. The rest of the story was much more enjoyable and later on the plot merges with the opener.<br/><br/>I hadn't really thought about it as noteworthy, mainly because it IS a fairytale, but all of the primary characters are women and mostly older women at that which I suppose is the noteworthy part? To be honest, though, the main character, Marra, wasn't my favorite character. In fact, while I count her as an "older" woman, as in not an adolescent/early 20s like in many fairytales, her internal dialogue never felt like her age changed. I was actually a little surprised when at one point she thinks to herself as a now 30-something year old woman. I think maybe this naiveté? was the reason I didn't fully take to her. I probably would've found the book much more interesting from the POV of the dust-wife or godmother - either one!<br/><br/>Ultimately, it was an enjoyable fantasy with a quest and band of friends, but also its unique additional detail/urgency of getting rid of the villain due to his very realistic behavior towards the main character's sister, his wife. It wrapped up satisfyingly with a maybe less naive/juvenile-seeming main character and more adult "happily ever after."

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Published 2026-08-18 17:59 UTC · bridged from Atmosphere