Hemlock & Silver by T. Kingfisher – Book Review

Book Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Genre: Adult Fantasy

Spice: Medium

Summary:

Anja is an expert on poison. This makes most people call her a healer, but Anja doesn’t agree…she’s not in it to heal and care for people. She’s in it to find cures for uncurable poisons. So, when the King believes his daughter is being poisoned, he turns to Anja, the foremost expert on poisons. Reluctantly, for she knows what will most likely happen if she fails, Anja travels to the royal family’s remote castle where Snow has been kept since her mother attacked and killed Snow’s sister.

Once there, she finds no trace of any poison she’s ever known, along with a secretive Snow and a mysterious family background. Anja is running out of ideas when she accidentally walks into a mirror, finding an entire mirror world containing mirror objects and mirror people. Now Anja believes this other world must have something to do with Snow’s sickness, but she’ll have to use her scientific process and help from a talking cat and her reticent guard, to save Snow from this mystery poison.

Reaction:

Hemlock & Silver was a wonderful book to read. It had an entertaining world and characters, a unique point of view for a classic fairytale retelling, and a blend of elements from fantasy, horror, mystery, and romance. Billed as a retelling of Snow White, it takes the basic bare bones of the original story and spins into a completely different direction, injecting a modern psyche and a whole new world into the original story.

Anja, the main character, carries the story with her dry sense of humor, erudite attitude, and oddly endearing insecurities. I loved that she was grounded in science as the story gets more fantastic. It allows a modern reader to relate to her in the way she goes about her investigation. I also loved Anja and the snooty mirror cat playing off each other’s attitudes – it’s exactly how I imagine cat’s think about humans. It was unique to read a fantasy in this style (rather cozy with minimum action) that had an adult woman in her 30’s as the protagonist. That helped the book stand out from similar stories I’ve read.

The romance in this book is very slow developing. I had almost decided there was no romance at one point, but it did finally start to bloom. Because of the slow start, I didn’t get as invested in the relationship as I do in some other books I’ve enjoyed. But what romance there was I thought was cute and made sense in the context of the story.

My favorite thing about the book was the concept of the mirror world. It completely deviates from the Snow White retelling and allows the author to create a fantasy world that’s unique and interesting. This fantasy reader loved the extra world building that provided, and learning the rules of the world along with Anja was probably my main source of excitement from the book.

The only thing that kept this book from a higher rating is that I don’t know if I would want to reread it. Even though I loved aspects of it, it was at times a bit predictable, I wasn’t totally invested in the romantic subplot, and it didn’t have as much fantasy action as the books I tend to enjoy the most. But overall, I would recommend this book for those that like a cozy fantasy book that blends science and magic, with a mature protagonist, and an interesting fantasy world.