A healer dedicated to curing poisoned patients is swept into a royal mystery in Hemlock & Silver, an eerie and clever dark retelling of "Snow White" from fantasy and horror novelist T. Kingfisher (A Sorceress Comes to Call).
Anja has just finished dosing herself with snake poison when the king arrives to ask for her help with his daughter, 12-year-old Princess Snow, who is slowly dying of an unexplained illness. He suspects poison and wants an expert opinion. Anja, whose passion is developing cures for poisons, agrees to investigate, though with some worry for herself should she fail in her mission. But Snow's symptoms provide little clue, and Anja's unease is worsened by the princess's aloof manner and the oversized mirror in her assigned bedchamber, a treasure from the dead queen's dowry. Catching onto one of Snow's secrets leads Anja to fall through a mirror into a strange gray world. At first the disquieting reflected world seems empty, but she comes to realize it contains a force that could upend reality forever. Anja will need all her prowess at experimental design as well as the support of silent but steady royal guardsman Javier and a talking cat to save their kingdom and her own life.
Kingfisher smashes the well-known "Snow White" story and reworks it into a shadowy mosaic underpinned by its original themes of envy and usurpation. Anja's irreverent narration, bashful romance with Javier, and unabashed fascination with poisons provide a humorous counterpoint to the story's more frightening elements. Readers looking for a menacing, off-kilter fantasy that keeps some lightness will enjoy peering into this glass. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads