The Spider's Bride

by Debbie Gallagher

It begins with a severed finger and with a gift in Winter. Not realising that she is being courted by a faery suitor, The Bride enters the cold and sparkling world of the Prince of Spiders. She takes the severed finger, unaware that such gifts carry consequences, and finds herself trapped. The Prince of Spiders rules this land of dreams, lost in glittering snow. As a Winter King, he should end his reign by dying at the coming of Spring. Until now he has delayed this by offering the blood of artists and poets to the ancient spirits of the land, eeking out his season long beyond its time. But now he has a more daring plan in his heart... a plan that is thwarted by the disappearance of his human bride.

Genres: Fantasy

248 pages, Paperback

First published October 15, 2007

Reviews

[Lotte · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘It begins with a severed finger…’

An unnamed female, naturally intrigued, steps forward to investigate the severed finger found on her doorstep, unknowingly accepting a faerie gift, sealing her fate as the Bride to be. Next comes a strange interaction with a spider by a hedge that isn’t all it seems. The spider gains the woman’s trust before biting her ear, sending his venom through her body, paralysing her, thus allowing him to take her into the hedge where she becomes the Prince of Spiders’ bride.

The Prince of Spiders is the Winter King in a land known as the hedge, where the unseelie reside. It is a world of magic, mystery and faerie lore, where time stands still and the inhabitants aren’t all human – obviously! The Winter King is devious and manipulative, not content with his Winter reign ending, he must marry the bride before sacrificing her in order to maintain his throne.

With the bride still paralysed it is a grim future that awaits her, and as the ghastly ceremony begins our fears are realised when her hand is chopped off! That is until the Hunter, the Prince of Spiders’ brother, comes to her rescue. Unfortunately he gets a little carried away and adds to the gritty ceremony by feasting on the Bride’s amputated limb.

Caught amidst a war between those that wish the Winter King to remain and those that wish to over throw him, being valuable bounty in the wrong hands, the Bride and the Hunter travel through the hedge, searching for an escape. Throughout their journey the bride must learn the ways of the hedge, interacting with butterflies, crickets, ladybirds and faeries (to name but a few) as well as facing the horrors of walking corpses, vicious dolls and cunning crows, in order to survive.

This book is a wonderful and enchanting (if not grisly at times) novel written by the equally wonderful and enchanting Debbie Gallagher. Gallagher throws us into a fantasy land filled with magic, strange and powerful creatures, as well as unseen twists and insightful extras. In particular, the character Richard Dadd, was a wonderful addition, encorporating the true life of Mr Dadd into this peculiar and rather mad tale (it seems fitting!). Based on one of his paintings, “They stared at me, the beaked and cat-eyed, feathered and scaled, the winged and the webbed and the hooved: and some were people and some were flowers and some were insects or beasts or toys…”. I think Gallagher did a fantastic job of capturing just what Dadd saw, recreating the insanity.

I have to admit I struggled to get into this book to begin with although that could have been my fault. Gallagher delves into the world of the hedge without explanation, sending us straight into the story and with that, the world she has created. I’d decided to begin reading this book whilst at work where my connection to reality remained strong. Therefore I found it hard to conjure up Gallagher’s world and lose myself amongst a fantasy realm. As soon as I realised this and began reading at home, my imagination took hold and I became encompassed completely within her world and the experiences of her characters.

Gallagher writes in an extraordinary way. It's poetic and encapturing adding to the enchantment of the plot. Her prose is easy to follow, without realising it, you'll be swept up amongst the magic and madness of the hedge.

I loved the humour woven into this story, mainly the interaction between the Hunter and the Bride. Their relationship was both intriguing and full of wit. The culmination of differing characters, both in their species classification and personalities and Gallagher’s ability to switch seamlessly between them kept me desperately reading chapter after chapter. I was enthralled, wanting to know more and more. The fast pacing of this book only added to the thrill, keeping me hooked until the end.

I don't usually talk about cover art as for me it's more about the story within. However, in this case, I much prefer the kindle edition cover art. It's much prettier and so much more apt!

I would definitely recommend this book, it truly is one of a kind! I don’t believe you need any prior knowledge of faerie lore or magical realms. You just need to believe, because when you do, anything is possible.

[Dan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I tried hard to like this book but in the end decided it was only okay. There were parts of it I really liked, namely The Hunter and his interactions with The Bride. Otherwise, I felt like much was left unexplained and more than once I felt as if I'd turned over two pages at once. I didn't really care about most of the characters and some of the story logic was a little suspect. I liked the concept of intrigue in the fairy courts and again, the Hunter was a compelling character.

[W. Chan · Rating 5 out of 5]

𝑬𝒙𝒒𝒖𝒊𝒔𝒊𝒕𝒆 𝒗𝒆𝒓𝒕𝒊𝒈𝒐/𝑺𝒕𝒐𝒑-𝑺𝒕𝒂𝒓𝒕-𝑺𝒕𝒐𝒑 𝑴𝒐𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏 𝑺𝒊𝒄𝒌𝒏𝒆𝒔𝒔


Disclaimer: I have only a passing knowledge of certain texts and historical contexts that I feel this book assumes of its reader. I know of the classification of fairies through games and other books (seelie/unseelie courts, light and dark elves, how to pronounce ‘sidhe’ correctly); I did not know Richard Dadd was a real person; and I read The Tempest and A Midsummer’s Night Dream long ago. Which is all to say, I was both far from the ideal reader but also, perhaps, an excellent litmus test for how the book would land with someone literate but not invested.


There was a point, early on in the book after the awkward first-person prologue and my first introduction to the noble creatures of The Hedge, where I realised that while very well written, The Spider’s Bride would make for an incredible stop motion production. Or perhaps one of those old Rankin and Bass animations. And this would certainly help with concrete visualisation, because Gallagher sometimes forgets to be merciful in that department.


The Spider’s Bride knows precisely what it is and makes no effort to ease readers into its glutinous intricacy. It is beautiful and sensate, indulging in descriptive language that never even flirts with the familiar. It flits from scene to scene, shifting points of view and tones with no real transition or connective tissue. Separate arcs only come together overtly near the end, or so it seems. Gallagher’s web-like approach to the overall construction endows The Spider’s Bride with a value that only reveals itself with repeat readings. This isn’t to everyone’s taste (especially nowadays) but, combined with the nudges towards external research via the prose’s assumptions of reader knowledge, I found myself alternating between trapped and suspended by the sticky strands.


I could trot out a dozen more spider/web metaphors, but as with the text, these would distract from the matter at hand: deciding if it’s actually any good beyond its clever ensnarement and referential pastiche.


Other reviews have noted that The Spider’s Bride is confusing and often feels like you’ve missed a page. My own experiences agree with this, but it’s not as though Gallagher doesn’t tell us explicitly to expect it. At one point far too deep into the novel, the words “scale being a matter of continual surprise” almost taunt the reader with something they’ve already been forced to accept. I appreciate the lack of handholding and surrendering to the idea that scale and form are fluid to the typically miniature-by-human-standards denizens of The Hedge made reading this book a lot easier, but that surrender did not come quietly. I found myself constantly struggling to focus on that which the author almost aggressively refused to clarify. Again: a second or third reading will likely be much less contentious.


The near-endless deployment of poetic flair comes very close to overwhelming the story, itself subordinate to a notion of being a play that must play out, per the novel’s inspirations. If pressed, I would have trouble laying out the plot of this book, which is fine by me since plot is one of those pedestrian elements of prose with which The Spider’s Bride seems disinterested. For those seeking a straightforward story with clearly drawn characters and events, do not be tempted by the glistening silkiness of this whimsical and yet very serious work. This convoluted weaving is not for you.


But for those who want to step up to a challenging work and be rewarded for their persistence, The Spider’s Bride is an easy recommendation. Three stars for the technical competency. Four stars for the evocative writing. And five stars for the overwhelming desire to immediately read it again immediately. The Spider’s Bride is a selfish, demanding work that entices, teases, captivates, and eventually consumes. As the afterword says, Debbie Gallagher likes spiders and spiders like her, and this book is how she unrelentingly proves it.


Favourite line in the whole book: “The way the hare twitched a single ear had the same tone as the flip of a finger.”

[Rachel · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was just wierd. I kept thinking I would read it for a few more pages to see if it would make sense, or if I would like it. I finished the book (which is more a testament to my desire to avoid school work than anything of inherent value in the book), and it never did come to make any sense. I kept wondering if the author was on drugs when she wrote it.

Then I read the author leaflet, which informs the reader that she has interviewed psychics and mediums and is into madness and art, and I felt like the novel was explained. Not clarified, not justified, but explained. I have journeyed through madness (extremely superficially), and confirmed that it isn't a nice place to visit.

I guess there are worse things than textbooks that weigh more than a new baby.

[Buffy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was out there.(In a good way.) I wasn't sure about it when I first started reading it, but the more I read it, the more I loved it. It was written as a fairytale or a legend and was crafted with great imagination.

My one complaint with this book, and the reason I didn't give it 5 stars, is because it was really difficult to picture all of the characters at first. Who was human and who was a spider or other woodland creature? To be fair, this was my commuting book (I always have 2 books on the go; one for home and one for my commute) and there are a lot of distractions on the train. So it could be that I wasn't paying as much attention at the beginning as I should have because of that.

Overall, I really loved this book. I would like to read it again one day.

[Charlie · Rating 5 out of 5]

The folk of the hedge do not perceive time or size or identity quite the way the mortals do, so it is not surprising that a book about them should look confusing to the mortal reader when first they look at it. But as you go deeper into the hedge, you start to see it more the way the seelie and unseelie do and the spider in the tricorn hat is only to be expected.

A wonderfully tangled tale of the old fashioned fae, of a ladybird with an arquebus and a prince with an unwilling bride.

[Straylights · Rating 3 out of 5]

I honestly don't know what to rate this book. It was confusing but I liked the story? I think?

[Beckey · Rating 2 out of 5]

Confusing and lost...& Just plain weird but what may not be my cup of tea may be someone else...

[Jenn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Weird,but I liked it, in spite of the spiders.