A wicked mother and a terrifying horse

A Sorceress Comes to Call, T. Kingfisher (Ursula Vernon)  (TBR shelves, 2024) 

T. Kingfisher would be an "auto-buy" author for me, except that I find her horror stories too disturbing to read (I have a very low tolerance for horror). When she announces a new book, I have to wait to see what type of story she is telling this time. A Sorceress Comes to Call is usually described as a retelling of "The Goose Girl." That is not a story I know, but I figured this book was one of Kingfisher's reshaping of fairy tales. Her Thornhedge, which has recently won several awards, is a take on "Sleeping Beauty" that I very much enjoyed. I wasn't prepared for just how dark this story became, particularly in the deaths of several innocent bystanders (most thankfully off-page), and the monstrosity of the title character. I skipped to the end more than once, just to verify that my favorite characters were still safe.

The book opens with Cordelia, sitting stiff in a pew listening to a long boring sermon, while a fly torments her. She cannot move to brush the fly away, because her sorceress mother Evangeline can take complete control of her body whenever she wants. Fourteen-year-old Cordelia calls this "obedience," something her mother inflicts on her for misbehaving or for her own convenience. Mother and daughter live in a small ramshackle house in the village of Little Haw, where Cordelia is never allowed to close doors, and where she does much of the housework. Her only relief is in rides on her mother's horse, Falada, whom she considers her only friend and confidant (spoiler alert: he is neither). Every so often, Evangeline rides Falada off to visit her "benefactor," who supports the two of them with money and jewelry. Except one day Evangeline returns home in a rage, saying she has to find a new benefactor, and muttering that she should have made him cut off his own legs with an axe (a grim bit of foreshadowing).

The story then switches to Hester Chatham, who awakens in the middle of the night with a shuddering presentiment of Doom. She lives with her bachelor brother Samuel, the Squire of their neighborhood. And then "Three days after her first panic-filled awakening, Doom appeared on Hester's doorstep, in the shape of a woman." Evangeline (who has given herself a title and a deceased husband) has met the Squire in the neighboring city, claiming to be lost in the bustle and in need of his aid. He chivalrously brings her home to his sister, and Evangeline wrangles an invitation for herself and her daughter to stay. Hester sees exactly what is happening but isn't sure how best to protect her brother. It isn't until Cordelia arrives with her mother that Hester begins to realize Evangeline is even worse than she thought. Cordelia on the other hand finds an ally in Hester and in the maid assigned to her, Alice, and she even gets to shut her door against her mother. Even as Hester gathers allies, though, Evangeline draws Samuel into her coils and doesn't hesitate to use her sorcery on anyone she perceives as getting in her way.

By the end of the story, I was quite attached to Hester and Cordelia, and I would happily read more about them. I was delighted to find at least one Easter egg in the story. When Cordelia is helping to search a library for books about sorcery, the stories she reads blur into "a morass of lost princesses, feckless soldiers, evil wizards, and dogs made of bones" - a clear reference to Kingfisher's Nettle & Bone, a wonderful story.

I was entertained by KJ Charles's review of this on Goodreads, where she wrote, "I will add that I read the author's note, and if T Kingfisher could get therapy for her horse issues, the rest of us might not need to get therapy for the horse issues she's giving us, because WOW the horse in this book." I have to agree, and I don't believe Kingfisher's promise in the same author's note "to write a book in the near future where the horse is pleasant and not attempting to murder anyone," since she adds "Probably."