It’s also true to how a marriage made purely for political purposes would be. I thought it was a brilliant and clever fairy tale retelling, and I liked that Alyrra and Kestrin aren’t instantly in love with each other (well…he might be).
However, besides those few issues, I enjoyed the book a lot. She has no flaws…even her apparent flaws aren’t really revealed to be actual flaws. I thought the inclusion of Falada the talking Horse was a bit odd until I remembered the fairy tale, though I still thought the talking part was odd-it makes sense in some way because Khanani needed to have a reason to have that part of the fairy tale work, but still…it just seemed to serve to show, along with many other things, how Morally Virtuous Alyrra was in comparison to everyone else, which is my biggest flaw about the book as a whole. I wish there hadn’t also been the inclusion of rich/poor dynamics (because OF COURSE the rich don’t care AT ALL about the poor and leave them to rot, and all the caring characters are Aghast and Astounded and morally virtuous, etc…can we please have some originality?), but whatever.
And Khanani really did have some great things to say about the relationship between justice, revenge, and violence. I’ll start with the themes first: while many of the messages I thought were not extremely subtle-to say the least, since justice and violence is the focus of the story-they didn’t feel forced at all, and these are things that a princess such as Alyrra/Thorn would be focused on, so the characters talking about them so much was realistic.
She also turns some elements completely on their head: rather than a forced switch, it’s a magical one there are more characters and more worldbuilding there are doubts and lots of talk about justice and violence. Khanani plays around with the familiar aspects of the original: the wind that talks to the princess, the horse head that speaks, even the focus on the princess’s hair is slightly winked at. Rating: 4/5 Thorn is an expansive, rich retelling of “The Goose Girl” fairy tale.
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