Hemlock & Silver by T. Kingfisher Review

From New York Times bestselling and Hugo Award-winning author T. Kingfisher comes Hemlock & Silver, a dark reimagining of “Snow White” steeped in poison, intrigue, and treason of the most magical kind.
 

Healer Anja regularly drinks poison.
 

Not to die, but to save—seeking cures for those everyone else has given up on.
 

But a summons from the King interrupts her quiet, herb-obsessed life. His daughter, Snow, is dying, and he hopes Anja’s unorthodox methods can save her.
 

Aided by a taciturn guard, a narcissistic cat, and a passion for the scientific method, Anja rushes to treat Snow, but nothing seems to work. That is, until she finds a secret world, hidden inside a magic mirror. This dark realm may hold the key to what is making Snow sick.
 

Or it might be the thing that kills them all.

“Mirror mirror on the wall, give me a tale, creative from them all.” (please excuse the clunky line, I thought it would make a fun opening). Anywho, pitched as an original Snow White-inspired fantasy story, Hemlock & Silver is a novel that’s fun and light-hearted in tone with a very creative plot. While classified as a retelling book, T. Kingfisher’s standalone novel is a retelling only by the loosest criteria due to the fairytale source material used. Rather than reinventing or putting a new spin on the classic tale, Hemlock & Silver is almost an entirely original work that reads like a fantasy mystery story as opposed to a fairytale one. Featuring ambitious concepts, creative narrative allusions to Snow White, not to mention an entertaining and lovable main character, this novel was an unexpectedly great read for me that was only hindered by its meandering and underwhelming start and occasional lag in pacing.

Rather than following the typical retelling premise of reinventing its source material with a genre swap, modernization, or flipping the story from a new point of view, Kingfisher’s approach is a bold one that follows an original character, scholarly poison expert Anja who is requested by the King to aid his ailing daughter. Unlike some of her other retellings that follow their base inspiration’s plot faithfully, Hemlock & Silver instead pulls the lightest touches of Snow White and develops them into its own story rather than a direct recreation. A few key elements of Snow White are retained including the iconic apple motif, a magic mirror, a queen going mad, and finally an ailing Snow White. However, how this book uses these loose concepts is entirely original, it goes without saying there are no dwarves included (conveniently sidestepping the contentious portrayal of dwarfism that plagues other Snow White adaptations) nor a magical enchanted forest here; purposefully ironic or not, this book takes place in an arid desert.

Already teased in the book’s blurb, the book story is focused on the poison element of Snow White as well as the magic mirror that spurs the queen’s descent into madness and dark magic, opening with the queen having stabbed and killed Snow Whit’s sister off-page. In particular, the focus on the magic mirror element is a unique choice that instantly sets Hemlock & Silver apart from other Snow White related works. Rather than the traditional sentient magic mirror personality, Kingfisher uses the mirror as a portal or door to another parallel world which is easily the most intriguing and compelling element to the book. How things work in the mirror world, how they shift and reflect changes based on the reflections of the real world, unusual phenomena that occur within the mirrors, I was repeatedly impressed with the creative ideas that went into the story. While the original Grimm Brothers fairytale is one of lessons to be learned using magic to facilitate the necessary events, Hemlock & Silver instead uses the mirror as the base for all unusual things that happen in Snow White. The less the reader knows going in the better to get the full effect of the story’s plot twists, but I found the overall plotting and creative direction taken with the story to be very ambitious and at times, ingenious. The original story has some pretty random elements like Snow White falling perpetually asleep or the queen maliciously abusing her stepdaughter, Kingfisher provides plausible explanations to each of these narrative elements all attributed back to the mirror.

In addition to its unique utilization of its source material, Hemlock & Silver’s other strong selling point is its refreshing main character Anja and the tone of her narration. Driven by scholarly discoveries and repelled by social interactions, her character is a great ISTP/INTP-like portrayal full of comedic reactions and rambling “what if” thoughts. Her character is drab, academic, and large in stature, notable departures from the typical fantasy female main character with the self-awareness for humorous self-deprecation that’s neither a pity party nor over the top positive. While rarely laugh out loud funny, her character and book have a fairly light-hearted, casual tone that has a lot of smart humored, soft chuckle moments that nicely balance out the darker subject matter of poisons and murder. Her interests and aspirations based around scientific discovery paired with her logical point of reference also give the book a very experimental study, dark academia feel. Despite the story taking place outside of the traditional university/academy setting and the subject matter being atypical for the academic fantasy norm, Anja’s scholarly pursuits and trial test-based approach to Snow White’s ailment and the mirror world feels like a dark academia book, despite Anja’s skepticism of fantasy magic and the narrative tone being far from dark. While dark it has some dark concepts in theory, this book feels like an adult novel based on Anja’s age and character logic, though it can also be read by younger readers due to its limited graphic violence and chaste romance (barely there for fun flavor rather than a focus), bridging the gap between Kingfisher’s past YA works.

Beyond Anja, the other characters are likewise appealing and quite likable. While not being the main character, Snow White is also represented in the story, with Kingfisher modernizing the original Grimm Brothers version of her with independence and strength. Unlike the Disney interpretation, she’s presented faithfully based on subsequent adjusted editions as a 12-year-old with exceedingly pale blonde hair and a strong-willed personality. Most impressively, Kingfisher is able to somehow follow the general events of the original story while simultaneously having Snow White do more than just be a meek damsel in distress and a suffering victim to bad situations. But it is perhaps the story’s scene-stealing and sassy one-eyed disheveled cat that is likely to be the fan-favorite. Serving as both comic relief as well as a mentor role of sorts, Grayling certainly is Kingfisher’s favorite as evident by the acknowledgement section, the book’s cat inspired by her real life adopted pet.

While Hemlock & Silver’s original story and tone easily carry the book’s reading experience, both perhaps wouldn’t have to work so hard if not for the novel’s occasional issues with pacing and unfocused first third. While the book overall has a slow and methodical pacing akin to a researcher experimenting in a trial-and-error manner, there are extended sections that tend to drag, the vast majority of them occurring prior to Anja’s discovery of the mirror world. While the back half of the story is very compelling, the first half often feels a bit directionless and overwritten with unnecessary tangents. Heavily based around her internal thoughts and demonstrating her expertise with various poisons, it feels like the story takes far too long to get Anja to the King’s palace where the story dramatically picks up. Additionally, while the slightly comedic and casual tone works when the book is focused on the mystery and fantasy elements, it’s less successful and interesting when Anja is rambling off-topic. In moderation, the free flowing style of off-beat musing is quirky and refreshing, but the frequent mental comments in excess can be tiring and repetitive to read. I had a similar issue with Kingfisher’s Sworn Soldier series that would interrupt the story and ambiance with cut-ins to its main character’s home country, so it may be one of the author’s writing quirk, though it’s far more forgiving here within a full-length novel compared to the novella format where pacing and utilization of the limited page count is of the utmost priority. The book takes 130 pages to get her to the palace where the story feels like it starts and while some of the material before it provides good context for Anja’s backstory and expertise, most of it feels like unnecessary filler. While a decent cozy fantasy read in theory, I feel like that entire first third could’ve easily been condensed down to 30-40 pages for a more relevant reading experience as this slow start is the biggest contributor to DNFing the book or the story being called boring by other reviewers. Fortunately, once the story passes the first third of the book, the pacing and general interest jumps and the momentum keeps growing until the ending that’s effective at closing out the story while also avoiding any unresolved plot threads that are all too common in books involving parallel worlds or realities.

Moreso an original story vs a traditional retelling, Hemlock & Silver is a great fantasy book that blends elements of cozy fantasy with dark academia with a well-crafted plot. With creative ideas, a light-hearted tone, and a charming main character, this book has a lot of mass appeal and is a bit of a happy medium between Kingfisher’s Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking and her more serious or dark fantasy outings. Though I enjoyed the back half of the book a lot, admittedly the first half of the book dragged for me, and I often found myself appreciating the creative elements incorporated into the story more than the actual end result itself. Still, I found this book to be a fun read and more importantly, a high-concept and excellent retelling after a string of other rather disappointing or underwhelming fairytale retellings. I also appreciated how different Kingfisher’s writing style and tone in this book is compared to her Sworn Soldier series that I’m a bit lukewarm on, an encouraging sign to give more of her books a try. For those looking for a unique hidden world type of story or a fairytale inspired book rather than a direct retelling, Hemlock & Silver is a safe and enjoyable pick!