Ohhhhh T kingfisher does it again!

I absolutely adored this book (no surprise I love all her books). This was such a charming read:

✅ Wonderful multidimensional characters who span generations
✅ A main character in her 30s (with an appropriate love interest)
✅ An intriguing plot that keeps you on your toes while also being cozy
✅ A talking cat?!?

This is an absolute must read that I’ve already recommended to a handful of friends.

Thanks so much NetGalley and Tor for the advanced copy

This was genuinely a charming book that breathed some fresh life & interest into an old story. Anja & Javier were sweet.

"From New York Times bestselling and Hugo Award-winning author T. Kingfisher comes Hemlock and 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."

I mean, I'll read anything T. Kingfisher writes, but a narcissistic cat? I'm SO there.

This was my first book by T. kingfisher and I have to say I was enthralled and cannot wait to read more books by this author. This book was exactly how a dark retelling of Snow White should be done. I loved the FMC Anja and enjoyed seeing the story unfold as told be her. The constant internal banter and intrusive thoughts were wildly relatable and I found myself giggling out loud more than once. The author did an amazing job of taking a classic story and moulding and expanding it into an entirely new world with twists and turns around every corner. You got mystery and suspense all with that hint of familiarity in the background. Beautifully done.

a little mixed on this one - I enjoyed it by the end, and I’m always a fan of weird mirror stuff. I also appreciate another Kingfisher FMC who’s older (late 30s), childless, and very non-maternal. but the plot took so long to get going, and the romance relationship felt a bit underdeveloped.

Any new T. Kingfisher book is automatically on my tbr (maybe not all the horrors ones though) and if it’s a fairytale retelling, that’s just a bonus. I was very excited to receive the ALC of this one from @macmillan.audio and breezed through it in just a couple of days.

It’s been just about a couple of decades since I’ve read Snow White, so you can guess that I don’t remember anything of it. So while I can’t judge this book based on how close it is to the original, I quite enjoyed this one. The writing is irreverent as expected from the author, though maybe it’s slightly less humorous than her other fare - this can also be due to the fact that a child is being poisoned and our main character has to save her. As it’s told entirely from the MC Healer Anja’s pov, her self deprecating voice comes across very well in the internal monologue.

What’s surprising is that the fantasy elements don’t even show up until half the book is done. It keeps reading like any historical fiction novel, until we are suddenly thrust into the mirror world along with Anja, and it was interesting to see a rational and scientific mind like her grapple with the possibility of the existence of magic. While the fantasy world was expected - because ultimately this is a Snow White retelling - I think I enjoyed Anja’s passion for diagnosing poisonings and researching antidotes more. She is ably helped in her endeavors by the broody bodyguard Javier and it was so lovely watching their relationship develop.

Overall, this was just a fun novel, especially with some wonderful narration by Jennifer Pickens. It may not be my favorite Kingfisher, but I don’t think she can write anything that’s less than enjoyable. I also immensely appreciate the fat representation as well as a single female protagonist in her mid 30s. The next book by the author is a horror, so I may not read it, but can’t wait to see what her next fantasy will be.

Thank you NetGalley for an ARC of Hemlock & Silver by T Kingfisher. I recently decided I wanted to read more outside my genre (which is typical just sci-fi and fantasy and any variations therein) and figured I’d give a fairy tale retelling a go. I’ve never read one of those, and I’ve always wanted to read something by Kingfisher (though I expected it would be Clocktaur War, in truth).

I was not disappointed. In fact, I loved this book a lot more than I thought I would. I went into it remembering fairy tales from my youth. They weren’t exactly my thing. I wasn’t huge on disney. I didn’t hate those stories, but they weren’t the ones I was pulling up. So I went in expecting a fairly generic retelling with a smidge of creative liberty and little else. I was very wrong. And gladly so. Though I should mention I don’t exactly know the full fairy tale, or at least how it was originally penned by Brothers Grimm.

Hemlock & Silver follows a healer, Anja. Specifically, someone that treats poisons and venoms and similar maladies. She’s not very good with people. Not nearly as she is with poisons. The object of her obsession since she was 12 (which we get a rather endearing flashback for). But then the king arrives, and tells Anja his daughter, Snow, is sick. Gravely so. And he fears it poison. This is, of course, terrible news. What if Anja fails? What will be the repercussions? What if someone tries to kill her to cement Snow’s fate?

All this and more Anja deals with on her journey to Witherleaf, where Snow is staying. She’s been getting sicker and sicker and nobody knows why, not even Anja, until she stumbles upon a magical realization. An apple. Thus begins the fairy tale retelling.

As much as I enjoyed the beginning, it felt its own thing up until that point which was (in my not so great recollection) at least a third, maybe half, of the way through the story. The rest proved to be a retelling with a lot of originality, yes, and I loved it, yes. Though (SPOILER ALERT) there were no dwarves…Sad.

The character work here was phenomenal. With Anja, at the very least. The side characters (save Javier and Scand, the latter of whom is hardly involved in the story) feel quite flat. And of course the talking cat was a lot of fun, but that is expected, isn’t it? I just wish there was a bit more to some of them, especially Snow. And the king and queen. And even one of the other characters that is kind of bad but not really whose name I won’t say. They don’t have much substance, but it is a rather minor point, all things considered.

Mainly because the atmosphere was wonderful. Exactly what you want from a fairy tale retelling. It transports us. To a world that leaves and breathes and feels as genuine an article as can be. Kingfisher’s writing is masterful from front to cover. The story is paced perfectly (for all I wished the retelling started earlier). When there is action, its done very well, though I did wish for a tad bit more. The romance, too, felt genuine and was enjoyable. Thats from someone that does not really read romance at all. Mainly because I do not particular like it as the main driver of a story (which it isnt, here, though it is quite important).

Now for the bad. The story is told in first person POV, but the tense is a MESS. I realized it quite earlier on, and could not get out of my own head as it kept happening, multiple times a page, all the way to the end. Within PARAGRAPHS—not chapters, not pages—the tense would switch from past to present. There were entire passages where it hopped around each sentence. It was exceptionally infuriating and I cannot fathom 1) why it could have slipped through edits or, 2) if it was a stylistic choice…WHY?

I do appreciate the stylistic choices and remixing of the original fairy tale, i.e. a desert instead of a forest, among other things. The “poisoner” was a remix as well, though not a surprising one, I must admit.

Regardless, I did enjoy this one and imagine fans of Kingfisher’s other retellings (or just retellings in general) will enjoy it as well. Hemlock & Silver by T Kingfisher is a fun, heartfelt retelling of a classic we all know (and maybe love?) that was a joy to read.

Healer Anja has a passion for poisons. Or rather, for finding their antidotes. Into her mid-30s, she's made a name for herself as she doggedly pursues cures for common poisons. She's the first to correct you that she's not a healer, since she prefers solving problems to bedside manner, so she's shocked when the king arrives on her doorstep and insists that she come heal his 12-year-old daughter Snow, who he suspects has been poisoned. Less of a request and more of a demand, Anja travels to the palace, where she's ready to find the root of Snow's suffering.

T Kingfisher's reimagined dark fairy tales are some of my favorites to read. They take the threads and some of the themes of the original stories and twist them around, giving them a light horror element and a completely different angle of approach. (Others include Thornhedge, Nettle & Bone, and the Raven and the Reindeer.) Instead of a linear retelling, Kingfisher takes the element of the Queen's mirror and writes a whole new world, literally, relying on the now-dead Queen's magic. Her worldbuilding is spectacular, borrowing only the elements that she needs from the original, and then crafting a kingdom seen through the eyes of a middle-class middle-aged scholar woman. Elements of suspense and horror haunt the tone, but don't make the story scary overall. Add a dash of [closed door] romance, and the book strikes a lovely balance.

Anja is a prickly, straightforward, practical, and very relatable main character. She has the experience of age that she uses when it comes to solving problems, and the doggedness of a scientist in pursuit of an answer. She's funny when she doesn't mean to be, and has the embarrassing trait of speaking her mind, which wouldn't be a problem except she then has a tendency to talk about her snakes and roosters and poisons and antidotes, which don't make for good dinner conversation around courtiers. I loved the insight we get into Anja's perspective, which serves as narrative driver but also as worldbuilding device.

I LOVE T. Kingfisher, and mix in a Snow White reimagining?! Yes please! I knew T wouldn’t do a direct retelling, thank heavens, but it was a little fun spotting the similarities. Magic mirror, education of poison, and a talking cat (yes, I am jealous) are some of the elements used in this reimagining. To me, this was super cozy, and perfect for fall.

Thank you to NetGalley and Tor Publishing for this eARC in exchange for a review. Thank you!!!!

T. Kingfisher has been my favorite author for several years now, and I'm always excited to see she has another horror/fantasy coming out. This one is very loosely based on Snow White, and while it doesn't follow the Snow White plotline quite as closely as some of her other fairytale books, Hemlock & Silver stands on its own very well. The talking cat in this one stood out, I loved him. The mirror scenes really freaked me out and left me a bit skeptical of my own mirrors after reading this. Kingfisher has such a way with words that always scratches an itch in my brain. I'm so glad she's finally getting the recognition she deserves in mainstream publishing!

This book blends elements of T. Kingfisher's other works that I have enjoyed. There is humor, a funny animal side character, and some grotesqueness. I love that her fairytale retellings are more inspired than closely match the original. I do enjoy seeing the story from a different set of eyes than the typical heroine. I liked the addition of a cute romance. I feel like most of the books I have read from her have platonic relationships.

I don't have the words for how much I love T Kingfisher's MCs. T. Kingfisher writes novels for adults with jobs who still want to feel fantastical and I will always support that.

T. Kingfisher had me from the first line of this book. She took a classic fairy tale and made it mysterious and even a little fun. I was surprised at how much I laughed while reading this book. The protagonist of this story isn't your usual hero, she's a nerdy, ironic and somewhat rude expert on poisons. I found her absolutely delightful! This book is a must read for any fans of T. Kingfisher or fantasy. I thoroughly enjoyed it and quickly read it to figure out the mystery and how our hero was going to save the day. Highly recommend!

A good Snow White tale, but not Kingfishers best. I have faithfully read everything I can get my hands on from this author, but I just couldn't get into this one.
thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC.

It was a little slow but I’ll confess that I really liked Healer Anya and her systematic approach to poisons and her rather autistic approach to well everything else. She’s awkward and curious and intelligent and methodical. Honestly, though, I think the book probably could have been boiled down to a novella and we wouldn’t have lost much more than the love story

Fairytales get passed down and re-imagined for a reason and this one did not disappoint! This new fresh take of Snow White gave me everything I look for when I read “re-tellings” or “re-imaginings.” From the darker fantasy themes, to the dry witty humor, to the talking cat, I was definitely entertained the whole way through. I loved that even though Snow White is a story I know well, Hemlock & Silver still had so much originality that it felt like it’s complete own concept.

Hemlock & Silver is an inspired dark retelling of the fairy tale Snow White, paired with poison, intrigue, and possibly magic.

I enjoyed following along with the main character Anja as she gets personally called by the King to figure out what is making his daughter Snow sick. Seeing the particular quirks of the main character endeared her to me, and it was nice learning about the different types of poisons from her knowledge (and from the author who I'm sure had to do plenty of research on the topic!). It was also refreshing having a main character who is in her 30s, giving more maturity to the plot and events that unfold.

The first 30% or so of the book builds the world, involving the mention of several different Saints, Anja's preparations for the journey ahead, and the gentle introduction to characters who become mainstays through the plot. From there, the plot moves smoothly along as Anja investigates what is making the daughter sick, testing different theories until we move shockingly into a more magical aspect of the plot.

I enjoyed the light magical aspect we moved toward as the very scientific Anja tries to rationalize what's happening around her. The mystery surrounding the king's daughter's sickness kept me turning pages to find out the answer. Overall, I enjoyed the story to its conclusion and felt satisfied.

What I Enjoyed:
- a pragmatic, scientific older main character
- the allure of the mystery that requires unraveling
- the no-nonsense cat-like cat
- the world building involving certain things

Thank you so much Tor Publishing for the arc! This is a highly anticipated title for me!

In Snow White meets Through the Looking Glass, this dark retelling is imaginative, suspenseful, and exciting. T. Kingfisher hits it out of the park again with a relatable FMC, a hunky but mostly silent love interest, this time with royal intrigue. 10/10 will recommend to any fantasy or fairy tale fans, even as a beach read- it hooks you until the last pages. Absolutely will read again!

I am a loud and proud T. Kingfisher fan and will read anything that she publishes under this penname. Hemlock & Silver is a Snow White reimagining, focusing on our main character, a 35 year old healer and poison expert, Anya. Anya is ripped out of her daily life by the King, who requests her expertise in figuring out what is wrong with his daughter Snow, who is mysteriously ill. She must figure out what is wrong with the princess, and fast- before it is too late.
I enjoyed experiencing the story through the lens of Anya and appreciated how different she is from your standard fantasy heroine. The side characters were loveable (a specialty of Kingfisher’s), and of course, there was a talking animal to round things out. I appreciated the very sweet, very subtle romance, and thought that the worldbuilding was well-developed, interesting and unexpected.

I did feel that were some pacing issues. The story dragged around the middle of the book and I felt it could have been a smidge shorter. I was also a bit disappointed with how the story wrapped up- things felt incredibly rushed, which was a stark contrast to how meandering the center of the plot sometimes felt.

Overall, I did enjoy Hemlock & Silver. I found it intriguing, spooky at times, and overall, an enjoyable adventure. It’s a clever reimaging of a classic story, with just enough similarities to feel familiar, and a plethora of differences to keep things interesting.

I really wasn't all that invested in the main plot of this book, but I loved the main character and everything about her and her poisons and antidotes!! Her inner dialogue was always so funny and witty and her dealing with other people was delightful!
If you want a fun twist on Snow White with some creepy horror elements with a witty main character this is for you!
There's even some fun animal companions too!