Review: Nettle & Bone

Nettle & Bone by T. Kingfisher
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I ordered this one at the library after it won Best Novel at this year’s Hugo Awards, and while Gresham Library has been remarkably quick at getting my orders fulfilled, I would’ve expected a longer wait for the winner of a prestigious genre award. But now I can see why the wait list wasn’t so long for this book - and still isn’t, in fact, with only 16 people waiting for a physical copy at this time, in contrast to Fourth Wing with over 300 holds. Not that Fourth Wing being a bestseller is a measure of its quality when it so shamelessly rips off other better bestsellers, but I digress. This book, from an author getting a fair amount of hype in the SFF and horror scenes, promises some bite sized thrills and chills, but overall comes off like a really bad A24 horror movie in book form. It’s bleak, it’s dark, but also it’s shockingly boring and a waste of an interesting premise. I’ll be generous with an extra star for the occasional stab of dark humor from these oddball characters, but overall I’m mystified that this could win the Hugo going up against the likes of Nona the Ninth, or especially Legends & Lattes, which by rights should’ve won. At least it’s still better than Mary Robinette Kowal’s unlikable misfire The Spare Man, or that Scalzi book about the kaiju (I don’t plan on reading that one; Scalzi lost me a while ago). But yeah, I don’t think I’ll be picking up any Kingfisher books anytime soon either, because this one was a poor first impression for me, sadly.

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