T. Kingfisher

by

Sleeps With Monsters: Swords and Salvage

A new post over at Tor.com:

It seems appropriate to talk about Melissa Scott’s Finders and Ursula Vernon’s (writing as T. Kingfisher) Swordheart together. Although in terms of setting and tone they’re very different books—Finders is a space opera with elements of a thriller, a fast-paced adventure story that ends up shaped like an epic; Swordheart is a sword-and-sorcery story with a romance at its centre—they share an interest in relationships and in consequences, and in a certain underpinning of kindness that unites them despite their otherwise disparate elements.

 

by

Sleeps With Monsters: Feeling and Faith in The Wonder Engine by T. Kingfisher

A new column over at Tor.com:

I’ve only ever read a handful of books that treat the question of religion in fantasy with any serious weight. The presence or absence of gods and their powers, the (un)knowability of divine things, the question of whether or not one can get, or understand, an answer from a god—the question of whether, if you’ve given your fealty to a god, it matters if you understand the use said god makes of you—is not a question that fantasy in general deals with in great detail, even—or perhaps especially—in those works that take the existence of gods for granted.

by

Sleeps With Monsters: Odd and Satisfying

The first column of the new year, over at Tor.com:

Clockwork Boys by T. Kingfisher—the penname of the Hugo-Award-winning Ursula Vernon—is really fun, and strangely difficult to describe. Its main characters have been condemned to death (or longterm imprisonment) for various crimes. But their city is losing a war, and losing badly. Their enemy employs “Clockwork Boys”—constructs of machinery and flesh that are practically unstoppable. Finding out how the Clockwork Boys are made, and how to stop them, is a suicide mission that’s already killed dozens. But our heroes’ lives are already forfeit.

 

by

Sleeps With Monsters: Roses and Portals

A new column over at Tor.com:

One of the delightful things about Kingfisher’s protagonists is just how practical they are. Bryony and Roses is the story of a very practical gardener, the titular Bryony, who stumbles into a magical manor house in the middle of an unexpected snowstorm. This brings her face to face with its Beast, labouring—though Bryony doesn’t yet know it—under a curse. Matters proceed in fairytale fashion from there, albeit with Kingfisher’s own unique twists on fairytale matters.