Climbing Mount TBR: Hemlock & Grove by T. Kingfisher

Welcome back to Climbing Mount TBR where I, your humble Book Kaiju, struggle to climb to the top of my “to read” pile one book at a time. This time I’m pulling T. Kingfisher’s newest novel Hemlock & Silver off the stack. Shout out to Tor Books who gave Kaiju & Gnome a free eARC in exchange for an honest review.

By this point you’ve probably noticed I’m a bit of a T. Kingfisher stan. I think this is *checks notes* the fourth book of hers I’ve reviewed on Mount TBR. So keep that in mind, that I’m a little biased towards her work. She has a way of mixing fantasy, fairy tale retellings, humor, and romance then adding a dash of horror on top that creates the most delightful books.

So what’s it all about?

Anja is not a healer. A healer is someone that can set broken bones and cure a cold. She doesn’t know anything about that. Yet still, she’s called upon by the king to save the life of his only daughter. Why? Because Anja’s hyperfixation is poison (and the very few antidotes that exist).

The royal family is in turmoil. The King killed his wife just a few months ago. Yet that doesn’t make him an evil monarch since the queen was attempting to cut out the heart of their youngest daughter, Rose. Neither queen or young princess survived. Now Princess Snow is sick and no healer in the land can cure her. The fact that the illness seems to come in waves and has doctors stumped leads to one conclusion: It’s poison.

Now Anja is on a clock. She must discover what the poison is and save the princess or else her family’s reputation would be ruined. Worse, Anja hates not being able to solve a puzzle, and Snow is the biggest puzzle she’s ever seen.

The mystery will lead Anja through an adventure involving royal intrigue, talking cats, and magic mirrors. Plus there’s even romance! What more could a reader want?

Overall, I liked this book. I found the character of Anja likable. As someone who has weird hyperfixations, I found myself relating to her. Her inner monologue is humorous while not being overly comedic. She has her self-doubts but they come from a reasonable place.

The world setting is interesting. Kingfisher breaks the mold of the stereotypical European setting by instead placing her heroes in a kingdom based in a desert. The “saints” that are the center of worship are a fun twist on religion too. See, there used to be gods, but they were all kinds of jerks. So humanity sought the help of the animals who kicked the gods out. Now the people pray to Saint Adder or Saint Toad. An interesting concept that isn’t important to the plot, but is an interesting world building detail.

I did find the first half of the novel pretty slow, however. There’s a lot of “fish out of water” as Anja gets used to the situation she finds herself in. A lot of pages happen while the book is on the look out for the plot. However, when it does find that plot… Dang, does it become good! Just wish I didn’t have to read page after page about Anja’s self-doubt to get there.

Despite that pacing issue, I still enjoyed the book. If you’ve ever read T. Kingfisher, then you’re going to be a fan of this one. It’s also a good starting point if you’ve ever been curious about her works. It’s a stand alone and you get a sense for her writing style in just the first few chapters. Give it a look!

That’s one more off the pile. Only… 327 to go!

Let us know what your poison of choice is over on Bluesky!