Oh my goodness, T. Kingfisher’s writing is an unending delight! A SCORCERESS COMES TO CALL is another fairytale retelling, this time loosely based on The Brothers Grimm’s The Goose Girl. This is a standalone set in a fantasy world that riffs on Regency romance settings. Kingfisher is a Hugo Award winner, and wow, she’s earned her chops. I adore Kingfisher’s dry wit. Her characters appear unwittingly funny as they scramble to survive in the macabre worlds where Kingfisher throws them. Cordelia is a 14-year-old girl just trying to survive in her broken-down house with her murderous sorceress of a mother. Cordelia is not allowed to shut any doors in the house so her mother can always keep an eye on her. Cordelia’s mother often compels her into total obedience too, controlling her like a marionette. So deliciously creepy! Cordelia’s mother Evangeline sets her sights on a new suitor, Squire Samual Chatham, and moves into his home to start slowly weaving her strands of magic around him. Samuel’s canny sister Hester recognizes the dreadful danger that has arrived and christens Evangeline as “Doom” in her mind. Hester is pragmatic and gratifyingly sensible, attempting to firmly anchor the action as Cordelia becomes more and more frantic. The narration switches between the terrified Cordelia and the rational Hester and makes the headlong rush into disaster more compelling. Kingfisher brings us a robust cast of secondary characters who are lively and compelling, and I love how the group of the Squire and Hester’s friends rallies at a country house party to try to save everyone. Wonderful worldbuilding enmeshes here with folkloric details in an engrossing tale. I eagerly gobble up everything Kingfisher writes, and A SORCERESS COMES TO CALL is captivating and fantastical.
From New York Times bestselling and Hugo Award-winning author T. Kingfisher comes A Sorceress Comes to Call—a dark reimagining of the Brothers Grimm's "The Goose Girl," rife with secrets, murder, and forbidden magic.
Cordelia knows her mother is . . . unusual. Their house doesn’t have any doors between rooms—there are no secrets in this house—and her mother doesn't allow Cordelia to have a single friend. Unless you count Falada, her mother's beautiful white horse. The only time Cordelia feels truly free is on her daily rides with him.
But more than simple eccentricity sets her mother apart. Other mothers don’t force their daughters to be silent and motionless for hours, sometimes days, on end. Other mothers aren’t evil sorcerers.
After a suspicious death in their small town, Cordelia’s mother insists they leave in the middle of the night, riding away together on Falada’s sturdy back, leaving behind all Cordelia has ever known. They arrive at the remote country manor of a wealthy older man, the Squire, and his unwed sister, Hester. Cordelia’s mother intends to lure the Squire into marriage, and Cordelia knows this can only be bad news for the bumbling gentleman and his kind, intelligent sister.
And indeed Hester sees the way Cordelia shrinks away from her mother. How the young girl sits eerily still at dinner every night. Hester knows that to save her brother from bewitchment and to rescue the terrified Cordelia, she will have to face down a wicked witch of the worst kind.
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